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Archives for January 2011

Bringing Hope to The World, One Cut at a Time

Finding a good hair stylist is as difficult as finding a good husband, exactly why I went about eight months without a hair cut.  Then my mother, feeling sorry for my pathetic mop, gave me a give certificate for a conditioning treatment.

I’m a lot like the Sahara Dessert.  I have a very dry, crackling surface that expands with each winter.

Not. a. good. thing.

I didn’t want to waste good conditioner on hair so dead it wouldn’t be revived in the second resurrection, so I got a hair cut.  First.

In an effort to help ensure the success of the pruning process, I went through agonizing task of blow-drying my not so golden, but kinda gray locks.  Suddenly a fantastic idea sailed through one ear and lodged itself in the right front lobe of my brain.

I can take before and after pictures.

Because what woman does not enjoy when some celebrity stylist walks the streets in search of a poor, middle-aged, haggish soul?

The transformation makes hearts sore with the hope that help can be had for the right price.

I wanted to give you hope my friends.

The before photos – splendid.

I just scrubbed my face with apricot sand, then moisturized.  What better time to take a photo?

The before shot – scrubbed raw, shiny, exposed, lifeless, dull.

I’ve totally found my niche!

I should become a ‘before shot’ model.  Why didn’t I think of it sooner?

I floated in to my appointment, blown by the hot air of hope; however, my stylist quickly sliced through my hope with her scissors, sharpened to devastate and decimate.

Snip! Snip. Snip!

I sat looking into the mirror with a cape draped over my shoulders and pile of hair in my lap.

All I thought was, Now how am I going to get a good after picture?

Too often my thoughts show up in my face.  I knew my stylist noticed, because she said, “Don’t worry!  It will be better after the conditioning treatment.”

Apparently I forgot the lesson of the spiked bangs on Easter.  You can read about that cut HERE.

The conditioner was fabulous.  Thanks mom!  Imagine the Sarah Dessert experiencing a monsoon.  That’s how my hair felt, and I had no umbrella.

Thankfully I have somewhat curly hair, so I can mask a bad cut.  I think I’ll be wearing my mask for another eight months, give or take a tendril.

Oddly enough I really like how this stylist cuts my mother’s hair.  I guess next time I need a hair cut, I’ll just borrow my mother’s head.

I know, I know.  You want pictures.

Before

Celebrity stylist, my schedule is flexible.  Anytime you need a sucker volunteer to be made over, I am your girl.

Why are ugly pictures so dang easy to take?

When I saw this picture, I realized how much I look like my brother.  Except I have hair.

After

Ok, so I’m not bring as much hope as I once imagined.

What can I say?  This is as good as it’s gonna get my friends.

Now forget the hair.  I want to show proof that my counter is clean.  Sometimes.

Every picture I post has a terribly messy countertop as a back drop.  Once in a while, I do put things away.

My spell check just told me ‘moisturized’ is not a verb.  I must have a male spell-checker.

As I  scoured my archives looking for a link, I ran across these picture of my kids.  The post is titled Bad Hair Days.  My kids were so little and cute once.

Put On A Party Hat & Let’s Celebrate

Happy Birthday FringeBoy!

Here are eleven things I love about you:  (I stole this idea from Nina@Portugal Bound)

– your sense of humor

– you are honest enough to land yourself in a load of hot water sometimes

– you are a loving little boy with a wide open heart.

– you give me a great big hug when you wake up in the morning

– you’re smarter than a fifth grader, and maybe your fifth grade teacher

– you love to read

– you write funny stories and cartoons, leaving them all over the house for me to find

– you don’t yet realize maybe you should hide some of those stories

– your heart is tender

– you’re old enough to shovel snow and take out the garbage

– you are my gift from God.

French Fried Baby

I shoveled curly seasoned fries into my mouth at speeds only seen on the autobahn, while my purple escort burped carbonated Sprite at each stoplight.  Approximately every 2.3 seconds I rolled down the window for a burst of fresh air.  It didn’t matter that the harsh winds of Maine’s frigid winter would rush into my lungs and push discarded Dunkin Donut wrappers from under the front seat.  The morning commute was long and my breakfast stop a full forty minutes from my front stoop, but afternoons brought my growling appetite almost immediate gratification.  Some call it chance, others good planning; I call it nothing less than miraculous.  Arby’s sat at the mouth of the highway.

Pure ignorance nurtured my pregnancy and fast-food nourished my quickly growing baby.  Today I would be considered a failure among the perky, slightly bloated with baby, Yoga moms.  I neither read the appropriate amount of baby books and magazines, nor did I reunite with my core, fostering balance and peace.  I was all sway, my back arching in directions sure to cause osteoporosis or at least ache.  Standing upright without sending shock waves through my office was pure success.

My sole purpose in pregnancy was to avoid what some call morning sickness, an illness that strikes with no regard to the clock.  For me, keeping my tummy full kept the waves of nausea at bay, so I ate my way through two hundred eight-days (give or take a few hours).  No grown man’s lunch tote was sacred territory when hunger struck.  Although I kept my top desk drawer chock full of snacks, I often out-ate my shopping list.

I reflect on my appetite, not with pride, but with awe.  It seems humanly impossible for an otherwise average woman to wake up one morning and find she’s eaten the equivalent of the corner market, but I did much worse.  I attempted to hide wrappers and eat behind my husband’s back; however, the scale bragged.  It also lied.  I am convinced, and there is no changing the mind of a hormonally distraught woman.

I no longer knew the body I hauled.  I felt like a woman trapped inside of a baby instead of the other way around.

I’ve never felt as physically mortified as I did the day my doorbell rang just a few weeks postpartum.  My newborn lay snuggled in his bassinet when I went to greet my husband’s friend and coworker.  I hadn’t had the opportunity to know him pre-pregnancy, but never considered it to be unfortunate until the moment I looked into the eyes of pure confusion.

“I-I’m sorry.  I must’ve stopped at the wrong house.  I thought a friend of mine lived here.”  He stammered in a fog.

Thinking he must be having a lapse in brain function, but not wanting to cause offense, I happily welcomed him into my home.

“Barry, John should be home any minute, come in.”  I said.

He blinked no less than a thousand times in thirty seconds.  I saw beads of perspiration burst from his taut brow and feared he may have a stroke on the threshold of my home.  Reaching for his arm to pull him into the house and onto a seat, I asked if he was feeling ok.

Hesitantly he looked me over with a mixture of intense wonder and slight disbelief.

“Tr-i-c-ia?”  He asked.

My face must have indicated my response, because before my voice could escape my mouth, he continued.

“I didn’t recognize you.  You had your baby.  You don’t even look like the same person now!”

With the clarity absolute knowledge brings, I regretted every mid-pregnancy bagel I had consumed.  Eventually I shed the weight, but kept the baby.

 

Writing is Like Playing Dress-Up

I have a mutated germ, a hybrid crossover of tuberculosis, the flu, and a common cold.  Last night I sat in bed sopping my nose with one hand and reading a book with the other.  I read blogs until my coughing made my screen blurry with mutated germ spray.  I figured it was in poor taste to sneeze on my cyber friends, so I opted for a real page-turner and about finished Stephen King’s On Writing.

I fell into a restless slumber, continually disrupted by fits of coughing up my left lung, only to wake at 4:20 am with the thought, I Must Write.  In my feverish opinion, writing for magazines is a little like playing dress-up in my daughter’s room.  If I want to be a ballerina, I simply twirl in my tu-tu.  If I want to be a doctor, I throw on a white jack and prod a bear’s ear.  If I want to be a good mommy, I rock a baby doll.

Magazines want experts.  If you want a magazine to purchase your writing, you must be an expert.  So before the sun rose, I checked to see if my stretch-marks still cut a path across my abdomen, and I became an expert on cultivating creativity in phantom children.

I won’t bore you with the details, but I took inspiration from my cow.  Now you can’t wait to read it, right?  I know.

Despite teetering on the brink of pneumonia, I feel accomplished this Friday.  I may only have a rejection email to show for my blurry-eyed efforts, but at least I did something.

Now it’s past noon, my house is filled with four children that sound like forty, and I’m making maccaroni and cheese.  I have high hopes for this weekend.  My son’s birthday is tomorrow, we have a road trip to an Awana competition tomorrow, and I am expecting a house full of boys on Sunday.

Maybe I’ll wear a party hat and become an expert on kid’s birthday parties.  Who knows.  The possibilities are as endless as my stretch marks.

What will you do this weekend?

Your Cow Is In The Mail

I was just about to take my cup of sugary tea, curl up in a corner, and succumb to the battle of the bugs waging a war in my body, when I got my very first request for an autographed cow.

SAD to BAD to GLAD

Sarah Cannell  email me your address.  The cow is in the mail.  You’ve made my Thursday worth living.

I wonder if Picasso is jealous of me now?

I just realized the FringeFamily is deep in the throw of the great potato famine of 2012.  I know it’s 2011, but ‘famine of 2011’ doesn’t have the same ring.  Besides, if there happens to be a potato famine in 2012, I will be rocketed into the limelight for my spud prediction.  Autographed cows will be flying off the shelf.

You wait and see.

Because of the potato famine, I find myself cooking meals with rice and pasta; however, I need potassium.  I am low, so naturally I assume my children and husband are also low.

No potatoes = No potassium

Bad me.

Not only am I reeling from no potatoes, but I also have no bananas.

Apparently if one wants to raise their potassium levels, they must grocery shop at regularly scheduled intervals.  Right now I’d rather eat the two year-old bag of dried beans over Ramen than go grocery shopping.

It’s one of those days.

I’m sure you’ve all seen this photo, but I think it’s hysterical considering we are buried under several feet of snow in the northeast.  We have also sustained temperatures only Eskimos wrapped in seal skins can survive.

If I’ve offended you by mentioning seal skins, try being an Eskimo.  That’s all I have to say.

For a slightly higher fee, you can persuade me to assemble your snowman.

Here’s hoping your evening is warm.

Inspiration in a Horrific Stephen King Sort of Way

Every day I struggle to balance the desire to write with my lack of raw talent.

Back in the days of pigtails and knee socks, my grandmother handed me a few sheets of paper or even, during desperate times, a paper plate.  She told me to write a story.

I now realize little me writing a story for twenty minutes was so much better than little me talking for twenty minutes.  Nonstop.

My family is smarter than they first appear.

Like most children, I dreamed up crazy professions for adulthood.

My doctor phase didn’t last long.  I realized I could self-diagnose without twenty years of school.  My private investigator phase lasted a little longer.  It peaked when after declaring the corner house on my street a money laundering hotspot, the police swarmed and knocked down their doors.  I deserved a junior citizen’s medal of spying honor, even if they laundered drugs instead of money.

By the time I packed my bags and headed to college, I wanted to write for a newspaper.  I doubted my ability to write anything as long as a book, but surely I could scribble out a single page story.  After all, reporting is merely recounting facts.   I thought.

Two years into a Commercial Writing major, I not only doubted my ability to write a one page article,  but I doubted my ability to write my name and address.  I wasn’t failing, but none of my teachers loved my writing

I am average.

Since average writers don’t get paid, I changed my major to straight English.  Sadly my faculty adviser still lacked confidence in my ability, but I was half-way through the tunnel.  Light shone through the other side.  My father would kill me if I quit.

I graduated.

I still wanted to write, but fear stopped me.

Then I began blogging.  After telling a few stories, I forgot my teachers only gave me B’s.  I wrote.  You laughed.  You encouraged me in the comments, and I wrote some more.

Blogging is great, but my dream is to see a book with my name on the spine sitting on a shelf in Barnes & Noble.

I want that book.

I know two things for certain – 1.) I must write in my voice.  The voice I found by blogging.  2.) I must write what I know, but more importantly what I love.

Those rules may sound good, but they are vague, idealistic, and they lack inspiration.

I’ve sorta known what I want, but I didn’t know how to get it, and more importantly, how to get it on paper.

Until yesterday.

I’ve been reading Stephen King’s book, On Writing.  Whether you love or hate Stephen King makes no difference, the man knows how to write.  Well.  On Writing isn’t a novel, but a book on the craft of writing.

In short, I’m inspired.  I know what I want to write.  I am writing.

I’m tempted to share some snippets with you, but are sneak peeks taboo?

What do you think?

Either way, I am sharing my inspiration today.

If you want to do something, do it.  Ignore the voices saying you can’t or you’re not good enough.  Don’t worry about failure.  That may or may not come   You’ll never find out unless you try.  I don’t even think success or failure is as important as trying and actually completing the task.

If it’s running a marathon, run.

If you want to write a book, write.

If you want to create original art, paint.

Or sew. Or draw. Or photograph.

Whatever.

Just get it done.

I am writing.  When I am eighty, I want to give my grandchildren a book with my name on the spine.  If they don’t read it until after I’m dead, who cares!  If nobody likes it, their loss.  If it never gets published, I’ll have it bound myself and I’ll get an extra copy to give to my grandkids.

If it does get published, I’ll send a copy to my faculty advisor from college.

What’s important is that I write.

What are you going to do?

A Tale of Two Soups

Once upon a time in the charming land of domestication, there lived a fair maiden who was troubled all the day long.  You see, one  morning when the wind howled a story through her window panes and icicles threatened to kill, she ignored the cries of the laundry.

“Wash me!  Wash Me!”

She shut up her ears to the groans of the floorboards.

“Scrub me!  Scrub Me!”

She ignored the pleas of her children.

“Play with me!  Play with me!”

And she made a pot of soup.

Her garden was withered and dry, so she turned to the freezer, and with a small cry of delight, pulled out a bag of mixed frozen vegetables.  Then the fair maiden of domestication gathered two boxes of chicken broth, a can of black beans, one can of diced tomatoes with chilis, and she ran to her stove.

With a soup pot in hand and ladle to stir, she chopped up an onion and simmered it olive oil.  The children cried out.  The onions permeated the very walls of the castle.  The maiden added the broth, tomatoes, beans, mixed veggies, and a dash of salt and pepper. Later she mixed in about a quarter cup of the tiniest pasta stars in the countryside.

While the soup simmered, the fair maiden whipped up a batch of these dinner rolls.  Then she sprinkled some Italian seasoning into her soup, and her culinary masterpiece was complete.

Prince Charming applauded her efforts.

The children clapped.

The wash waited, and the floor shrank into the backdrop as the sun set.

The fair maiden, prince charming, and the children lived happily ever after eating soup all their days.

Until…

Dum, dum, dum, DUM…

The fair maiden awoke to frostbitten toes and puffs of smoke billowing from her royal carriage.  As temperatures plummeted into negative numbers, the royal carriage gave up her ghost.

At times her rattle and clunks can still be heard haunting the garage.

The fair maiden scrambled for warmth.

By the fire she thought.

The soup was no more!

She rushed to her cupboard and what did she find?

A little can of French Onion soup was only an arm’s length away.

The prince was chilled to his core.  After all, he arose to the clamour and clatter of the royal carriage’s ghost.

“I’ll fix you my love!  I’ll warm your heart with my breath, and your soul with my glance.  Your stomach will I fill with my soup.”

Memories of the star soup danced through his imagination as the fair maiden pried open her can.  While the microwave worked to warm the soup, his fair maiden gathered garnishes of garlic croutons and shredded mozzarella cheese.  Bad breathe hovered near.

As her prince slurped his last mouthful of soup, he gazed into her honest eyes and asked for a refill.

“Why I have no more!”  She blurted in fright.

With a smirk on his lips and warmth in his girth, the charming prince looked to his fair maiden and asked, “Did you add a can of water?”

Oh, no!

It cannot be.

Campbell thwarted the kingdom.

The princess of domestication hung her apron on the peg.

“It may have been condensed, but it was Mmmm-Mmmm good!”

And that loyal subjects is the tale of two soups.

Although elusive, there’s a moral to be found, maybe even a recipe or two.

Perhaps it’s haunting the neighbor’s along with the ghost of my royal carriage.

The End.

She’s Such A Nerd

I’ve given way to my inner nerd.  At least that’s what FringeMan thought when I padded up the stairs, computer in hand, to spend the evening browsing through books.

It all started the other day when I read this post and  discovered Goodreads.  Masterminds from all corners of the earth converge in cyberspace to discuss books they’ve read, books they want to read, and well, books they’ll probably never read.  Basically if it’s in print, you can have an opinion about it.

To me a good book is like a little cloud of heaven bound in a neat 265 pages.

I’d be a fabulous candidate for a Nook or Kindle, but I am not sure I can live without book covers.  Do they show book covers?

I admit without a smidgen of shame that I judge books by their covers.  I can’t help it.  I’ve had a real fondness for pictures ever since I was in kindergarten.  Some things never leave you, you know.

So now that I’m in good standing with my library (I found the box of cd’s on their shelf, thank you), I am equipped with a stack of books and a canister of Swiss Miss.

A perfect cup of hot cocoa requires 4 tsp. of Swiss Miss and a shot of vanilla & caramel creamer, the real cream creamer.  If nothing else, I make a mean cup of instant cocoa.

Don’t be jealous, some of us just have extra culinary gifts.

I also wanted to chat about my new blog layout.  Have you noticed?

I know the change is about as subtle as the Fourth of July at 9 p.m.  This lovely lady sent me a tweet asking if one of my kids made the artwork in my header.

No, that would be me.  Yes, that’s right.  I took off my nerd hat, put on my artist hat and Wal-lah!

I’ve created a blog design that is udderly fantastic.  Requests for cows are pouring in from every region of this green earth.  It’s moo-velous.

Ok, I’ll stop.

On a serious note, I even added a flicker photo-stream on my sidebar.  It was a nightmare, but I summoned the strength of my inner blog designer who paints cows and makes hot cocoa, and pictures appeared.  Who knows, I may even get fain-cy with my extra pages.  We’ll see what happens.

Here are my questions:

Do you love it?

Like it?

Hate it?

Are you blinded by the colors?

Did you want to spit coffee at your screen when it popped up a weird blue-ish color?

Would you like to see something on my blog that’s not here?

Tell me what you love about the layout of your favorite blog.  I doubt I can incorporate your favorite feature, but what the heck, tell me anyway.

One more thing…I promise to wrap this up soon.  Really.

It’s just that I’m practically famous now.  I wanted to tell you that if you’d like an autographed cow, I’ll be signing them in a town near you.  Or not so near you.  Well, maybe I’ll just have to mail the cow.  Either way, the domestic fringe was featured as one of the Top Evangelical Blogs.  You can read about it here.  (Update: The link is no longer available.)  Yes, I’m as surprised and delighted as you!

Now in the words of one of histories great pigs…

That’s all folks!

Have a Happy Weekend.  I’m going out tonight!

Insert Happy Dance here.