Random thoughts, little wishes

I wish I had curly hair. Big, soft curls without frizz. I've wanted this most of my life. My grandmother had a talent for twisting my hair up with strips of old cotton sheets, a careful process done just before bedtime. In the morning, I had my Shirley Temple curls, if only for a day.

My hair has a natural wave, but now that I live in a high-altitude, semi-arid plain, a climate so dry parts of my body have been known to crack, curls are just out of the question. Most people with naturally curly hair just have frizz when they live here. If the dry air doesn't inhibit curl formation, the wind will whip the curl into frenzy of frizz in no time.

Deep, glossy red hair. My hair is no particular color. It changes according to the light. It's mostly a mousy ash brown that has flecks of gray in it. Given enough sun exposure, my hair gets natural highlights of blonde and red. I like red. I like red best of all, so for about 15 years, I colored my hair many different shades of red. And I permed. Alas, hair color and perms are not compatible. The color relaxes the perm and the perm strips the color. Talk about a dysfunctional relationship that has such promise on paper.

I stopped coloring my hair a few years ago. I was wildly bipolar and anything hair related was definitely not on my agenda of things to care about. My natural color hadn't changed much in all those years. There is more gray, more ash, and darker brown. In L'Oreal terms, I went from a 7.5 to a 4.0. At the depths of my bipolar suicidal despair, I dyed my hair 2.5. I looked pale and haggard and it was perfect.

It would be so wonderful to wake up with soft, auburn curls brushing my shoulders. I'm too lazy to deal with color and for quite awhile now, I've abandoned any pretense of using product, a blowdryer, rollers, flat iron, curling iron, and some days, a comb. I don't even like to wash my hair. How ironic, then, that I own enough hair styling tools and products--from mainstream to obscure--to outfit a salon. My dog's wavy auburn coat gets more style time than my head does.

Taller. Oddly, people who know me by phone are often taken aback to find out that I am short and fat in person. Countless people have said, "I pictured you as being tall with long, dark hair." Hmm. It must be something about my voice.

I wish I could turn off the anxiety generator that churns relentlessly deep in my core. It seems to me I'll never understand how to feel happy, how to embrace bliss or feel joy at all as long as that undercurrent of anxiety is always nibbling away at my confidence. It makes me driven to excel and I overachieve as a habit. No matter how real my successes, though, there is always the nagging worry that I didn't do quite as well as I could have. Surely, something had been overlooked, something hadn't been all it could have been.

A real vacation. That would be, well, I can't even think of an adjective.

Neat and tidy. What is it like to live clutter free? My father was a hoarder and I'm nowhere near that bad, but I am easily flummoxed by clutter, especially paper. I find it's easiest just to walk away until some later date. I have been steadily purging clutter for about three years, but I haven't come close to winning any battle, let alone the war.

365 sunny days a year with steady temperatures of about 83 degrees.

To know I am loved. I mean, I know Frank loves me, but that's not what I mean. Apart from him and Jolie, not even my family is very convincing on this point. Actually, they might be the least convincing.

To go through life never again saying another dorky thing.

An attention span would be really swell. I miss reading. Frank and I didn't see one movie in the past year, except for on TV. I got up, walked around, flipped through magazines, surfed the 'Net. We didn't bother to watch the Academy Awards. It seemed irrelevant, considering. It's true, though. I can't sit in a movie theater for two hours and pay attention to a movie. Me. The woman who would watch almost any movie that flickered my way. We even canceled our Netflix subscription this week. I haven't read an entire book since, well, I can't say. Years, probably.

I don't feel so bad about the Discover Card thing. Frank has been getting letters about all of his credit limits being drastically lowered. His FICO score is like, 800 something, so if he's getting these stupid letters, then I know they're being sent to everyone. I haven't been singled out.

Will reality TV ever die?

I wonder what my brain would do if I just stopped taking all eight medications abruptly and permanently. Watch for the weightloss and cue theme from Incredible Hulk.

I have every side-effect mentioned in the Lyrica TV ads.