I got bored this weekend and attempted to give myself a shag haircut, and BOY, was that a mistake and a half. I mean just woooooooooow. Did I mention that I’m also in the middle of moving right now? In other words, I didn’t have access to the necessary tools I needed when I began this foolish endeavor, even running over to the other house mid cut only to discover my sheers were packed away in some unknown location. Luckily, 99% of shags look like they were done in the recesses of a garage by someone’s half-blind grandmother. I can also hide most of my mistake with a ponytail, but I already went ahead and booked an appointment to see a stylist in early December. Oh the irony. Had I waited in the first place, none of this would’ve happened. But alas, my overly impulsive ADHD butt lost any trace of patience that day.
All of my fellow ADHD peeps know the struggle of jumping straight into a project without the benefit or deterrent of executive function as well as I do. It’s great for creative pursuits like writing but little else. What’s sad is that this isn’t the first time I’ve done this or the second or the third or the forth, and I doubt it will be the last. Although in all honestly I cannot wait to see the stylists reaction to this mess. One thing I’m an expert at is laughing at my blunders. I mean, what else can you really do?
This also reminds me of how I became known in college for dropping my cell phones in public toilets and equally known for saving them from certain death every single time. Although I never wanted to touch them again let alone hold them up to my face. Poverty was obviously a huge incentive for sticking my hands in used toilet water (*gags*). I couldn’t afford to buy another phone so I did what I had to do. But what’s mind blowing is that I never seemed to learn to avoid keeping my phone in my back pocket whenever I went to the restroom. It seems that very little has changed. I’m just grateful that all of the new iPhones are water resistant now.
One of the last times I brought a water-damaged phone into the Apple store, I lied straight to the guy’s face about it only to have a single, traitorous grain of rice fall out onto the counter top when he took the case off in front of me. God, I wanted to die of embarrassment right then and there. In my panic, I somehow thought it better to tell him I blacked out during a night out on the town and threw the phone in rice just to cover my bases but didn’t remember dropping the phone in water (it was actually a solo cup full of champagne, lol). I could’ve saved the phone too had one of my best friends not asked to see it and turned it back on, immediately frying the damn thing. I wanted to ring his neck for that.
That was the only phone I was unable to save, well that and the first ever water-resistant iPhone I managed to kill during a foam party in Gulf Shores. Believing the foam would act as a cushion, I took an impulsive nosedive onto the ground, which hurt something awful, not realizing my phone had slipped out of my pocket at some point. I paid a group of small children to search through the piles of suds for it, but the screen had cracked and water had seeped in. By the time it made its way back to me back, it was already fried. I could probably write a manual on how not to treat an iPhone if I really wanted to.
When my husband returned Sunday night from the Renaissance Faire in Hammond, Louisiana, where he works on the weekends as a cast member, a Spanish count to be exact (he’s also featured in this costume popping out of a wormhole in Bill & Ted 3), he kissed the top of my head and told me he liked my hair, which was still mostly up in a ponytail. I warned him the day before via text that I’d accidentally given myself a mullet and wanted him to be prepared. Bless him for always supporting me no matter what wild shenanigans I get into, lol. Maybe he deserves that PS5 for X-mas after all.
I hate moving, but our new place is superior in every way. Same square footage, but the ceilings are so high that it makes the space feel infinite. Now he has his own gamer room, and I have my own reading/writing space. I’ve lived in New Orleans-style shotgun homes ever since I moved back here 4 or 5 years ago, and they’ve all come with their own list of individual issues (no central A/C, broken gas heaters, mold, weird smells, fighting neighbors, car break-ins). Issues that became harder and harder to ignore as the pandemic forced me indoors damn near constantly. I’ve actually been working from home since July, when I first tested positive for COVID-19 antibodies. But I find myself having more success working from home and writing in my free time now that I don’t hate my surroundings with a fiery passion. Flooding was also a huge issue at our last place. I mean, people were kayaking in the streets every other weekend at one point when we lived there. I don’t know how many times I woke up in the middle of the night to move the cars to higher ground during random torrential downpours that would pop up without warning. It was also a terrifying place to ride out Hurricane Zeta. There’s something to be said for change though.
One of my friends and I have decided to start our writing workshop back up on the weekends, which I’m excited about. It’s so much easier to write when you have some level of accountability. Lately, I find myself feeling burnt out and stagnant on the page. I recently had a burst of writing where I wrote my novel non-stop outside of work. Now I hate all of it and can’t seem to get back into it. I think this workshop will help with that thought. This is definitely one area of my life I feel confident performing DIY in.
liz mcgehee 