My Words and I Need to Get a Room

I love words.

The way that you can put two or three completely unrelated words together and you can paint an entire backdrop of imagery, a feeling or even just a thought.

How putting something simply will tell a novel or how spilling words into a novel can say something simple.

I love how words fill me up like the Shoney's buffet when I see them, when I read them, and I can't get enough of them. The only difference is that no matter how many words I see or write, I am never full.

I love how words inspire me to write more words and how the words that are filled up inside me sometimes have to burst forth from my fingers at 12:30 in the morning and how they will even wake me up to do it.

I love how words swirl around my head for a long time like a tornado until what feels like the perfect combination of words is formed and I can finally write them down in an organized manner.

I love special words that sound so magical, like "elixir" and "potion" and I love using words in completely wrong ways, like describing a night out on the town as "frothy."

I love how words can express me and how the lack of words expresses me even more.

I love how there is a word to describe absolutely every thought or feeling or anything else in the great big world and I love how sometimes you have to go on a scavenger hunt for the perfect word and when you find it, it's like finding the perfect dress. It completes you.

I love other people's words and how the words that have burst forth from their fingers envelope me and I love how their words can make me feel comforted, like I am not alone in this world. I love how just words can do that.

I love the absolute profound effect of words on people, how even just changing the emphasis of a single word can change the entire meaning of the word.

I love how doing this will change a word's importance.

I guess that means I love fonts and typing words too, because I love how you can dress a word up, make it come alive, make it LOUD on the screen. (Or even soft.)

I love how three little tiny words mean the entire world. "I love you." And how you can't leave another person without saying words and if you do then you left, "without saying a word" and that can be devastating.

Even repeating the words "without saying a word" means just as much as the silence the other person left behind.

I love the power and the color of a single word.

Riot.

Anger.

Bliss.

I love descriptions like sheer and luxurious.

And I love that when people feel as if they've run out of words to describe what they're feeling, they just go and make up new words like ginormous and fugly and how the words express exactly the feeling they're going for.

I miss old words like "shan't" and "tither" and "henceforth" and "fortnight." And I wish they could be brought back into everyday writing and conversation because they make conversation sound regal and educated. I love our words now but I love how words once sounded and once were written. It was a different time but the words were still so very good.

I'm sad that there are words that make me feel old because I don't understand them like slizzard and sizzurp and how they make conversation sound exactly the opposite of regal and educated and I hope that in the future when people read those words, they don't judge our society based on those particular words and in fact, I do  hope those words don't make our society time capsule if we had one.

I love how I will sit down to write just a few words but two hours' worth of words will come out and then it will be time for lunch and to pick up the kids and I have done absolutely nothing else because I can't stop writing words which is exactly my predicament right now. And actually sometimes I don't love that at all because it means I haven't gotten anything else done and I know that even if I try to do something else, the words will just follow me around until eventually they make me sit down again to get them out of my system.

Sometimes I will not be able to extract myself no matter how hard I try because the words desperately want me to finish their thought and doing something like getting a glass of water or a cup of coffee or going to the loo will interrupt them and I think they find it rude.

And all they will do is follow me anyway and make me sit right back down.

I love the word "loo."

Sometimes all I want to do is be alone with my words and sometimes I feel like if you could see me with my words, an onlooker might tell me and my words to go "GET A ROOM!" Which to me is what Starbucks or anywhere with free wireless is for.

Sometimes words make me pull over to the side of the road in the car and grab at whatever receipt is in my center console or on the floor so I can jot them down before they are forgotten. They can be very pushy.

And if I know words, I know how much they hate to be forgotten.

I love words so much but sometimes I need to get away from words because they are loud in my head and they're angry and so that's when I have to put on music and dance or sing the words away. And then sometimes the words are so angry that they spill out of me in my other favorite form of communication, the strongly worded letter.

I am really good at those.

I could end this post about words but to be perfectly honest, the words don't really want to. They're making me continue to sit here and type about how much I love them. They're very vain that way.

But I am going to have to put a stop to this and do something else. Even though I know them very well and they will make me rethink the words in this post and return to editdeletewriteagain until they believe they have said exactly what they wanted to say.

Because the words will want to make sure they look ok before they go out on stage. So I will have fixed them at least 20 times before you get to read this.

I hope they look ok, because now I'm pressing "publish."

I love that word too.

I Do NOT Have a Lip-Hair Problem! (Or Do I?)

I am a like a hairless dog.

I rarely have to shave my legs.

I have about 4 hairs in each pit. I shave them, but only when they look freakish because until they're freakish, you can't tell I have any. (You're welcome.)

My eyebrows are nearly blonde and that's why I can almost pull off the blonde hair.

My arms are close to bald. It's the Native American, says my mom. We are a hairless people. I don't have documentation to back this up, but she tells me this so I believe her.

My eyebrows, however, must be the only thing on me that is not Native American because, though blonde, they can get like Peter Gallagher's. You know, (the dad from the O.C.?) bushy, sometimes separate as two eyebrows but sometimes they merge into one?

I hate plucking so I get them waxed. In the name of frugality, eyebrow waxing is one of the few services I now splurge on because I can no longer rationalize the cost of a mani-pedi. The 8 bucks for an eyebrow wax, now that I can do.

I don't have any loyalty to anywhere, I usually just go to this one nail place in the mall just because it's easy, it's right near to where I park normally and I just pop in, sit down, get waxed, then shimmy off to whereever else I'm going which usually has something to do with children's clothing or toys.

So right before vacation, I go to my normal place because I have now reached "eyebrow emergency" status which is like a Homeland Security code red, and they take me right away. I sit down, we exchange pleasantries although neither one of us understand what we are saying but that's ok, eyebrow waxing is like a universal language so we just launch into the series of nods and smiles and pretend we do.

At the end, she's wiping up my eyes with baby oil and my head rolls back because after the ripping and the tearing, the soft baby oil always feels so nice on my face (ahhhhhhh....) and I start to fall asleep not really but I am pretty darned relaxed at this point until she says, so sweetly, "Lip now?"

Silence.

Um.

No?

Whatchootalkingboutwillis?!

Whose lip? MY lip?

Wait a minute. Now I have a lip hair problem? When did this begin? Do I really have hair on my lip? Have I been walking around like this and no one has told me? Is this one of those things that you begin to find when you're past 30?

I really honestly don't recall ever having a lip hair problem (not that there's anything wrong with it, I have plenty of friends who have to pay some extra attention to their upper lip, I do not judge, you gotta embrace whatcha got, ya know?) but I feel slightly offended that she believes that I DO have a lip hair problem and it makes me feel self-conscious and unaware of my being that I might not ever have noticed a lip hair problem (and a little embarrassed, quite frankly -- it's like being the friend who smells but no one wants to say anything!) And then if I don't have a lip hair problem (which I suspect), I'm annoyed just because someone in the world thinks I DO!

Well I swore off that place and promptly returned home to drill my husband about my upper lip hair (to which he says I have none) and then called my best friend whom I had just seen a few days before that to drill her about my upper lip hair (to which she also says I have none) and I drill anyone else who can hear me and no one seems to think I have any hair on my lip whatsoever. Or at least they're not saying that I do.

Anyway, I returned to that place today (dummy) because I allowed my eyebrows to grow completely out of control again like wirey weeds taking over my face (sort of like my root problem because see? I RECOGNIZE when there's a problem!) and they (again) take me right away and (again) we exchange all pleasantries and I am not quite sure if this is the same lady or not and I'm feeling pretty good because I'm out of the house alone and I'm about to do some school shopping until she begins to look over my eyebrows and says, "Lip too?"

I mean, really. Is it really that bad????????!!!!!!!!!!!!! (And another few exclamation marks over here because I am dying inside over my lip situation!!!!!)

I say, "No, thank you," while obviously giving her the "stink eye" and she continues on to say, "You sure? You have A LOT!"

Of course now I want to crawl in a hole.

And leave without tipping.

After she tames my eyebrows, of course.

By the time I'm finished, there are at least three more ladies standing around me and I can't understand what they're saying but I just know in my heart that she has summoned them over to "get a look at this girl and her unsightly amount of lip hair!"

I tried even to pick up a few key words that maybe I could look up in some foreign language dictionary at a later date, but I eventually give it up.

Now, I suspect she just wanted to charge me for more than an eyebrow wax and that's why she's telling me there's A LOT! You know, to scare me. She's using scare tactics. She just wants more tip. But here's where I tell the rest of you: the good friend thing to do is to tell me I have a problem if there is one! Just in case you are reading and have noticed it but don't want to say anything! (You may leave an anonymous comment.)

As of this writing, my husband was on his way home and I told him on the phone that the lady gave me the business about my lip again. He was shocked and didn't believe me and then told me that if she asks me if I want my lip waxed again next time that I can ask her if she wants her eye blackened.

That made me happy inside.

But of course, I could just not go there again. That would be much more civil.

Unless of course, I truly do have a problem. In which case I'd go to someone else anyway because I'm too embarrassed to go back there. But of course I don't have an unsightly upper lip hair problem.

Or do I?