I'm partially ears

Last week I got my ears pierced - here's a picture.

One thing about having ten pounds of hair is that ear piercings for me are like stomach piercings or inside-of-the-spleen piercings for other people - they're nobody's business because no one can see them but me. 

It's hard for things to stay nobody's business when you write about them on the internet but something very important happened that I need to tell you about.

You can save $15 if you get a hoop earring instead of a little post earring.

I'm all about saving $15 and I figured I could spend a few weeks secretly looking like a gypsy and then switch it out for a post when my ear healed from having a hole punched through it. Right? 

WRONG. Putting a metal hoop in a piece of skin as fragile and rip-able as wet tissue paper is the worst idea I have ever had. The hoop earring catches on everything. It somehow gets caught on light breezes, and on music and smells. It keeps me awake at night wondering my ear's intact or if my pillow's ripped it to pieces, and when I finally fall asleep I wake up from nightmares about combing my hair.

Here is a useful chart of things I'm worried about my ear catching on.

I have more to say but my ear is making me too tired to write.

Write me a rap song

I run almost every day, but never in shorts.

I always wear running tights. I like running tights because they look like what a superhero would wear but mostly I wear them because I'm a girl and it's 2014 and so, I hate my legs. That's what girls do in 2014.

Boooo, legs, right? Hate 'em. I have the worst legs.

But then a few weeks ago all my running tights were all in the wash and so instead I put on shorts and, you guys. I was completely wrong. It turns out I actually have amazing legs.

There are some things words can't describe but there are other things that inspire millions of words, that deserve thousands of volumes of literature describing them and my legs are that second type of thing.

If I were a poet I would write poems about these legs. I'm not great at poetry but you know what I am great at? Legs. I have the best legs.

So now it's weeks later and I wear shorts every day and sometimes when I run past a bus stop or restaurant or dog-walker someone will yell "I love your legs!" and I keep running even though I want so badly to stop and talk to them because we have so many similar interests: I also love my legs.

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.

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.

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.