i am not myself today. today, i am that cosmopolitan girl who shows up for a couple of days once every three months or so–right after i leave the gene juarez salon. yes, when I walk in there, i am a somewhat scattered, curly-haired girl, but when i leave the place, i’m as sophisticated as a girl can be with my silky smooth straight hair. ok, maybe it’s not so eliza dolittle, but it is a transformation. ask anyone who knows me.
once, i had an off day creatively when i had straight hair and the client i was working for at the time blamed it on the hair. after that, any time i showed up at the office with straight hair, he called me “the evil kim” and told me to go home and get my curly-haired sister and send her to work.
i can, of course, still work when i have straight hair. But i do get distracted by my hair. i can’t stop touching it. it’s so soft. i love to run my fingers through it. and, no, I am not some kind of freak or fetishist. you’ve got to understand: when I was young, i desperately wanted silky, straight hair. like my sister had. hers was blonde, to boot. mine was brown and usually frizzy. can you see why I’d want to trade? so one day a few years back, a hairdresser asked if i wanted my hair blown out straight. i had no idea this was an option. so i said, sure. and when she did, it was unbelievable. i mean, i figured they could get it straight, but i had NO IDEA my hair would be silky. wow! (i am touching it again just to make sure. still silky.)
now don’t get me wrong, i love my curly hair. i wouldn’t trade it for anything. now that i’ve come to terms with it, that is. we’ve gone through a lot of rough spots, my hair and i. i can remember trying to “feather” it. word to the wise: curls don’t feather. then there was the unfortunate close-cropped style which elicited refrains of the monchhichi song whenever I came near my friends. delightful. and i probably shouldn’t mention the time i highlighted it with stripes. yeah, I didn’t think so.
now that I’ve decided to leave my hair alone and pretty much let it do what it wants to do, we get along fine. even better now that i got one of those ionic hair dryers. i may be one of the last people in america to jump on this bandwagon. i mean, i called my sister to tell her about it and she said she’d had one for three years. anyhow, if there’s anyone out there with curly hair who hasn’t tried the ionic hair dryer, i highly recommend it. i’m not sure what the science is on the thing, and my boyfriend is dubious, but he does agree that it makes my hair much less frizzy and more curly. but what he noted about it was that it shortened the drying time. which is sometimes important when you live in a house with only one bathroom.
Tuesday, August 29, 2006
Friday, August 18, 2006
no, your other left...
ok, it has long been established that i have no sense of direction. one of my boyfriend's favorite things to do is ask me, which way is east? and take in my extremely confused expression as i try to decide which direction to point. when we are in the house, i can usually point the right way (now that he's told me which direction is which), but once we leave home, all bets are off.
I also know whether i'm headed toward vancouver or portland when i'm on the 5 or 99, but take me off the road and spin me around a few times and i couldn't tell you anything.
of course, my boyfriend has all these complicated methods involving putting a stick in the ground and observing the shadows and whatnot. or watching the sun at a certain point in the day and all such as that. not really very helpful when someone's directions tell you to go "east" and you have no idea which way east is and have no time for a scientific experiment.
why on earth do people who are giving directions tell you to go east or west? what is wrong with right or left? not that i am any better at those either, but still. oh, yes, i'm one of those people. i will tell my boyfriend to turn right when i mean to turn left. or i will turn left when he tells me to turn right. drives him crazy. (can't imagine why!)
so anyhow, my sister and i are in new york a couple of weeks ago and we go out to dinner at this restaurant that I thought was pretty close to the hotel. we're at the marriott marquis so we're at 6th and 45th. we start walking and we're looking for a place that's between 8th and 9th. so i get my sister to ask the cops which direction we should be going. she does and we start going that way. but one extremely long block later (what's the deal with the long blocks in new york?) i see that we've hit 5th. I say, we're going the wrong way! she says, you said it's between 4th and 5th! i said, no i didn't; i said it was between 8th and 9th! this goes back and forth more than i care to say as we make our way back down the extremely long block. peppered with, we're taking a cab back! from my sister. and me saying, it's only a few blocks! and further commentary from both of us about how the blocks are really long. (i should probably interject that by this point i had walked all over the natural history museum, the metropolitian musuem of art, and many other long new york blocks and had developed some nasty blisters. i wasn't just cranky; my feet hurt!)
so we finally get to "between 8th and 9th," and we're looking for the address where the restaurant is supposed to be, but...no restaurant. what the hell? my sister asks to see the listing that i have thoughtfully pulled out of the zagat's guide and brought along. she says, this is on 46th street!!! oops. so we walk another three blocks and finally get to the restaurant. i want to look at the menu before we go in, but jenna won't let me. if she's walked this far, she's eating at this restaurant. period. well, when she sees the menu, she wishes she'd let me look. i know she does, but she doesn't let on. it's an italian place, but there's not a pasta dish in sight. I've since learned that northern italian basically means "meat only. oh and the waiter asks would we like sparkling or still bottled water and jenna says "still" before i can say "neither." Apparently, she didn't understand that "neither" was one of the choices and that by not answering that, we got to share a $7 bottle of water. yum! well, it all worked out though. turns out the special was some three kinds of pasta deal which was ok. so after dinner we walk back to the hotel, which in case you haven't been plotting this on a map, is only a block and a half away from the restaurant. my sister says, if we'd only had to walk this far to the restaurant, i would have let you look at the menu and we could've gone somewhere else...
so fast forward to this week when i am back home and hungry for some chow-dah. i decide to go to duke's in greenlake. i was swayed because the website said they had a parking lot. what it neglected to mention was that the lot only has room for about five cars. so i have to drive around and around looking for a spot. by the time i finally find one, i've lost track of where i am in relation to duke's. i know the general direction of the street duke's is on, so i head that way. I make it to that street and indeed, duke's is one block down. I figured, two and a half blocks...not great parking, but could've been worse... well, then i get to duke's and see that the street running alongside it is the street i'm parked on. i make a mental note to walk up that street when i leave. well, i get my take-out and walk up that street about half a block and, yep, there's my car. I should have known. I don't want to jinx myself, but i have really good parking karma. i was thinking two and a half blocks seemed a little off for me...the worst part was, when i got back in the car, i thought to myself, i can SEE duke's from here! only i thought it was some other restaurant....well, i'd never been there before and there wasn't a sign in the BACK. still, i felt like a moron. such a stupid navigational faux pas in my own town.
and i can't even talk about how bad it is in when i go back to la. after living there 8 years, somehow i still manage to get on 10 east when i want to go west...
I also know whether i'm headed toward vancouver or portland when i'm on the 5 or 99, but take me off the road and spin me around a few times and i couldn't tell you anything.
of course, my boyfriend has all these complicated methods involving putting a stick in the ground and observing the shadows and whatnot. or watching the sun at a certain point in the day and all such as that. not really very helpful when someone's directions tell you to go "east" and you have no idea which way east is and have no time for a scientific experiment.
why on earth do people who are giving directions tell you to go east or west? what is wrong with right or left? not that i am any better at those either, but still. oh, yes, i'm one of those people. i will tell my boyfriend to turn right when i mean to turn left. or i will turn left when he tells me to turn right. drives him crazy. (can't imagine why!)
so anyhow, my sister and i are in new york a couple of weeks ago and we go out to dinner at this restaurant that I thought was pretty close to the hotel. we're at the marriott marquis so we're at 6th and 45th. we start walking and we're looking for a place that's between 8th and 9th. so i get my sister to ask the cops which direction we should be going. she does and we start going that way. but one extremely long block later (what's the deal with the long blocks in new york?) i see that we've hit 5th. I say, we're going the wrong way! she says, you said it's between 4th and 5th! i said, no i didn't; i said it was between 8th and 9th! this goes back and forth more than i care to say as we make our way back down the extremely long block. peppered with, we're taking a cab back! from my sister. and me saying, it's only a few blocks! and further commentary from both of us about how the blocks are really long. (i should probably interject that by this point i had walked all over the natural history museum, the metropolitian musuem of art, and many other long new york blocks and had developed some nasty blisters. i wasn't just cranky; my feet hurt!)
so we finally get to "between 8th and 9th," and we're looking for the address where the restaurant is supposed to be, but...no restaurant. what the hell? my sister asks to see the listing that i have thoughtfully pulled out of the zagat's guide and brought along. she says, this is on 46th street!!! oops. so we walk another three blocks and finally get to the restaurant. i want to look at the menu before we go in, but jenna won't let me. if she's walked this far, she's eating at this restaurant. period. well, when she sees the menu, she wishes she'd let me look. i know she does, but she doesn't let on. it's an italian place, but there's not a pasta dish in sight. I've since learned that northern italian basically means "meat only. oh and the waiter asks would we like sparkling or still bottled water and jenna says "still" before i can say "neither." Apparently, she didn't understand that "neither" was one of the choices and that by not answering that, we got to share a $7 bottle of water. yum! well, it all worked out though. turns out the special was some three kinds of pasta deal which was ok. so after dinner we walk back to the hotel, which in case you haven't been plotting this on a map, is only a block and a half away from the restaurant. my sister says, if we'd only had to walk this far to the restaurant, i would have let you look at the menu and we could've gone somewhere else...
so fast forward to this week when i am back home and hungry for some chow-dah. i decide to go to duke's in greenlake. i was swayed because the website said they had a parking lot. what it neglected to mention was that the lot only has room for about five cars. so i have to drive around and around looking for a spot. by the time i finally find one, i've lost track of where i am in relation to duke's. i know the general direction of the street duke's is on, so i head that way. I make it to that street and indeed, duke's is one block down. I figured, two and a half blocks...not great parking, but could've been worse... well, then i get to duke's and see that the street running alongside it is the street i'm parked on. i make a mental note to walk up that street when i leave. well, i get my take-out and walk up that street about half a block and, yep, there's my car. I should have known. I don't want to jinx myself, but i have really good parking karma. i was thinking two and a half blocks seemed a little off for me...the worst part was, when i got back in the car, i thought to myself, i can SEE duke's from here! only i thought it was some other restaurant....well, i'd never been there before and there wasn't a sign in the BACK. still, i felt like a moron. such a stupid navigational faux pas in my own town.
and i can't even talk about how bad it is in when i go back to la. after living there 8 years, somehow i still manage to get on 10 east when i want to go west...
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