This is what karma looks like

A year ago I wrote a story about injuries I was jealous of and a day later I ran into a wall and my chin was navy for a month. Here's the story anyway because now I have the world's healthiest chin again.

Things I'm jealous of:

SCARS.

I wish I scarred easier. Nothing makes me more jealous than someone pointing casually to a part of their body that tells more of a story than the kind of stories my body tells: “Good morning I am a shoulder.”

My sister has a scar on her forehead because she ran into a kitchen chair as a child. And a few years ago I had to have a test done where a doctor pulled a slice of bone out of my back through a giant syringe and I have no physical proof to back up this story besides a hospital bill, because the cut disappeared hours later.

Some people walk into chairs and get to celebrate it for the rest of their lives, I could spend a year juggling chainsaws in South Asia and no one would believe it, maybe even someday I would forget it had happened. “South Asia,” I would say, “Now there’s a place I’ve always wanted to go.” I wish I scarred easier.

SUNBURNS.

I wish I sunburned easier. Nothing makes me more jealous than people who get to enjoy the memory of sunlight days after they return indoors, peeling off pieces of their skin in long, clear strips like pubescent snakes.

One summer when he was little my brother spent too much time outdoors with no UV protection and for days he couldn’t wear a shirt and would sit on a stool in the kitchen, feverish and hunched over from pain. His skin was bright red and shiny from the aloe vera and his bones poked out and he looked like an injured demon playing Gameboy and eating corn chips.

Once I thought I had a freckle but it was actually a speck of chocolate. The only time my skin has changed color was when I forgot to wash my new dark-wash jeans, and my legs turned navy from the dye. I wish I sunburned easier.

BLUSHING.

I wish I blushed easier. Nothing makes me more jealous than people whose faces glow when they exercise, like lightbulbs powered only by soccer, tennis, and chasing the bus.

My friend Katie can’t keep any secrets because she turns bright pink whenever you ask her anything. In high school we always knew who Katie had a crush on and who was having a surprise party and what was for lunch because her face would switch from peach to apple to cherry; she was like a 14-year-old lie-detector test. If Katie were a lie-detector test I would be every machine besides a lie-detector test, never changing, always giving the same non-blushing answer. I am an electric sandwich maker, a can opener, a broken alarm clock.

Once I bought a brand of blush so expensive it was like applying quarters to my face every morning, but my cheeks still look less like roses and more like rug burns and no one was fooled. I wish I blushed easier.

BRUISES.

I wish I bruised easier. Nothing makes me more jealous than someone rolling up their jeans and showing off a giant swollen mark on their shin “Look what happened on my bus ride yesterday.”

Last week while getting off the bus I yelled “THANKS!” to the driver because I’m working on being polite when I feel shy and then, once I had all eyes on me, I stepped off the bus, misjudged the distance to the ground and fell shoulders-first into a puddle while three tied-up dogs watched. It hurt a lot, and I can roll up my jeans and talk about it, but there’s nothing to show. I wish I bruised easier.

Tips for young people

Here's the most useful tip you'll ever read here: the best way to do an impression of an old person, I think, is to add the word "the" before nouns. "I'm trying the yoga lately" or "Load up the Microsoft Word, and do some of the typing."

It seems like maybe taking "the" out would be a good impression of a young person but I don't know if it's that easy. I might know when I'm older.

I realized the other day that the age I've been telling everyone I am all year, and even writing on forms, is actually the age I'm turning this year. That seems like maybe a pleasant surprise but is also pretty embarrassing. I won't make these kinds of mistakes when I'm older.

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This woman is 101 and I'm pretty sure she could beat me up. 

Maybe this year, when I finally turn the age I thought I already was, will be the year I get really good at doing impressions of young people. And sitting on couches like I mean business, and doing yoga. And throwing a few punches, when someone deserves it.

Mothers Day however many days late

Lately my hair has been getting longer on one side than on the other. I think it's because I sit by a window but other people said it was because I did a bad job cutting it.

Everyone says I should get it cut by a professional hairstylist but the problem is my hair acts more like a liquid or a gas than a solid - it fills whatever space it's given so the size and shape and texture and molecular breakdown depend on the day. It seems more like a job for a scientist than a hairstylist.

I went to a professional anyway. I brought this list of things I wanted changed:

I DON'T WANT TO LOOK LIKE: Someone who owns a minivan, a child under the age of six, someone who doesn't shave, a talk show host, or a drug addict.

I DO WANT TO LOOK LIKE: Someone you would be fine with sitting by on the bus.

My hairstylist said that was pretty helpful. Feel free to copy/paste that and bring it to your next haircut.

My hairstylist has cut John C Reilly's hair before. What are the odds? John C Reilly sounds like someone I would love to meet.

My hairstylist says that since my hair is closer to chinchilla fur than human hair, hair products are all going to be pretty hopeless so should just mat it down with a generous amount of hand lotion every morning until it's small enough that I can walk through doorways.

"Any brand of hand lotion. But really massage it in," she said. "Your hair's going to fight it."

Considering my other haircuts have been zero dollars and this haircut was many dollars I thought it would look pretty good but instead I look like a bombshell. It's incredible how great my hair looks. It looks so small.

I am smiling in this photo but this is important: the smile is for MY MOM'S EYES ONLY because she hates that I don't smile in photos. But look at the haircut part - does this look like the hair of a five-year-old van-driving drug-addict talk show host? Definitely not as much as it did a week ago.

I'm out of chinchilla photos but check out these rats playing instruments:

And sit by me on the bus, this seat's totally available. I'm just a friendly-looking girl who's real into rats.

My dalmatian tree

I don't know what happened but suddenly I have fifteen plants in my apartment.

Fifteen plants is so many. You would guess that after a handful they would all be the same to me, like people who have more than one child. But you would be so wrong and as soon as you see this picture you'll realize why.

Look at it! It's so beautiful, did you look at it? Scroll up and look at it again.

Now that I look at it again I realize maybe inside the bookcase might be a better place for those books than on top of it.

I wanted a plant like this forever (or at least since October when I wrote that) but they're real expensive and impossible to take care of because they're native to the tropical rain forests of West Africa. They're like having a dalmatian as a pet, which thousands of Americans wanted to do after the movie 101 Dalmatians came out in 1961 so they raced out and bought them before learning that dalmatians are difficult and terrible and hate apartments and then for years there were homeless dalmatians everywhere because people took on more than they could handle because they fell in love with an idea that wasn't going to love them back. I thought this plant was just like that.

But then one day I discovered they are $12 at Ikea. For $12 at Ikea I was willing to risk a dalmatian-level mistake so I went to Ikea and bought it and carried it home on the bus.

I assumed it would die in about a week. Other bloggers who have fiddle leaf fig trees say they had to move them subtly one inch a day to find what sort of light they like best, and that they wrap blankets around the pots on cool days and never stand too close to the window in case they mess up the light. My plant looked like a hot mess after our bus experience. I give it two glasses of water every Saturday morning. That's all I do. I haven't said this word in probably a year, but this situation deserves it: this plant looks rad.

It might be the photo of the cheetah that's helping it stay alive. I try and take tons of showers so the apartment stays humid. Sometimes I worry that the reason it looks fine is it's actually an artificial plant in a pot of real dirt, and that I've been pouring two glasses of water on a large plastic plant every Saturday morning.

I haven't repotted it yet even though I have all the supplies. Repotting it is what I'm really dreading. It reminds me of the feeling I had before I got my ears pierced, and that idea scared me so much I once chickened out at the mall but bought magnetic earrings instead so I wouldn't have to tell my grandmother I had chickened out.

Please don't tell my grandmother I haven't repotted the plant yet.

Some other plants:

One of those five plants is super dead, guess which!

This totally counts as a plant - that's an avocado seed I'm growing in a glass. They take eight years to grow but I'm already two months in.

Please don't be sad if you have a dalmatian as a pet and it's the best pet. I bet your dalmatian is the sweetest and I bet you are also a better pet owner than some people were in 1961.

DALMATIANS by Simon Rich

“Hey, look, the truck’s stopping.”

“Did they take us to the park this time?”

“No—it’s a fire. Another horrible fire.”

Another dimension another dimension

Every time I walk into the locker room and don’t recognize a single person in there I panic. 

Because the last thing I want is what happens in level three of Chex Quest, which is both the only game ever released by General Mills and the only video game I’m familiar with. In level three there’s one door you walk through and instead of taking you to the room on the other side of the wall it takes you to an entirely different part of the video game. Everything looks the same, but it’s slightly different and wrong and you’re lost. 

Then I have to think back of all the doors I went through that day, and figure out when people stopped looking familiar to me. Did I recognize anyone at the grocery store? The coffee shop? Did I walk into another dimension sometime last night? And I have to look in my locker to check if in this dimension I have better shampoo than I do in my regular dimension. 

At this point I assume the only thing making my hair look like a sad electrocuted dog instead of a wet glitter supermodel is that I can't use Bumble and Bumble's new Cityswept Finish Spray. The main ingredient is gluten. The packaging says it makes you look street-style ready in a New York Minute. No one's ever said that about the way my hair looks.

I would put up with a bit of alternate dimension weirdness for some really nice shampoo.