Don't hate me because I'm beautiful

That's a line from a commercial from the 70's, I believe. A supermodel would be posing for pictures, look at the camera, and say "Don't hate me because I'm beautiful"
However, after working in the beauty industry, I can attest that you should hate her not because she's beautiful, but because she has the extra 45 minutes to 1 hour that it takes to style her hair.
I have been blessed (or cursed) with hair that is straight as a stick. I couldn't hold a curl if I put it in a bucket. And it is baby fine, and limp to boot. So, in order to combat this problem, I asked a hairdresser friend of mine if she had any suggestions for a hair style that looked natural, and would give me some body.
Big mistake. The key word here was look natural. There are a myriad of steps to accomplish that tossled that everyone loves. First, a good shampoo and conditioner. Lather, rinse, repeat. Condition--and leave on for 5 minutes, rinse. Towel dry. Then come the styling products which are applied with the precision of a research chemist......1--a spray on sunscreen to protect the hair from damaging effects of the sun. 2--a product to give your hair shine 3--a volumizing cream, 4--a root lifting product which when sprayed at the scalp of the hair will poof your hair.
The next step is to dry......And please bear in mind that with baby fine hair, if too much product is used, the hair becomes weighed down, flat, and must be re-shampooed and the whole process starts all over again....
After drying the hair, a heat shield product is applied to protect the hair from damaging effects of a curling iron. Then, optomist that I am, I curl my hair--just a soft loose curl, again to impart some body to my hair. And then the finishing touch is to apply a soft wax to my hair. Rub this wax on your fingers, then take small bits of your hair and gently pull them away from your head, and drop them back down. This wax gives just a hint of tossle to those soft curls that I just finished putting in.
I checked the clock and the whole procedure takes 45 to 50 minutes. Breathing a sigh of relief, I walk out of the bathroom to see what my spouse thinks of such a natural and hip hairstyle on his middle aged wife.
"Looks like you just got out of bed" he says.....

Deeds

I'm not talking good deeds--or even bad deeds. But the deeds that are involved in a property transfer. Gads, this is a nightmare. If you have never been fortunate (or unfortunate, as the case may be) to read an old deed, you are really missing out.
Recently, we have been doing some updating of Mom's farm records, and it's the biggest mess that ever was. Gives me a headache just thinking about it. Starting at a beech tree on the old mill road and running thence N58 W48 Poles to a stone and thense S54 1/2 E to a stone in the center of the road.......
Well, you get the idea. And come to find out some of the directions were left out of Mom's deed when she and Daddy bought their farm lo those many years ago (typo that no one caught before) Is there any wonder that it gives me a headache?
The lawyer took one look at it and said just re-survey the whole farm. It may come to that, but we're trying to avoid that. With 216 acres of "goat country" lots of hills and hollars, straight up and down, gullys and cliffs, the expense alone would probably put one of my children through college.
The beech tree is gone, the mill road is gone, the stone in the middle of the road is gone, and one tract is unable to be plotted--until we do some more research on earlier deeds to find where this little hunk of ground is.
Oh well, such is life in the country.

My son, the poet

My son, began creative writing when he was in 5th or 6th grade. Some of his poetry, I think, is quite good, and will post a bit of it here for your enjoyment.

Check All That Apply
I stare down the page
At the desolation before me.
A single sentence stares back at me.
Choose your fields of interest. (Check all that apply)

How do I tell someone I'll never see
About all the dreams inside of me
And what it is I want to be
At some school I'll never see inside of. (Check all that apply)

Square boxes make an even row
Lining up the left side of the page.
Find one that'll do, stretch it to fit you,
Or till you fit it. (Check all that apply)

How do you explain to a piece of paper
That you want to tweak life's nose,
Shake his hand, ruffle his hair,
Pat his back and send him on his way. (Check all that apply)

Suddenly it came to me,
An idea to set me free,
My pen moved feverishly
From agriculture to zoology. (I checked all that apply)

Clean your room

http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/africa/08/05/congo.gorillas/?imw=Y&iref=mpstoryemail


Having had children, I can attest that they can misplace a myriad of things in their rooms. After my older children left home, I cleaned out from under the bed, cleaned out closets and dressers and found things that I had forgotten I even owned.
Jewelry, clothes, shoes, underwear (that was in my daughter's room) And from my son's room, were books, movies, games, and over the counter medicines (bandaids, tylenol, tums, et al)
That is pretty much par for the course if you ask any mother that has ever cleaned up after her children have left home. And I will admit that there were occasions that I opened their bedroom doors when they were teenagers, that I was tempted to firebomb the whole house, just because rebuilding would have been easier than to get those kids to clean up the mess they called bedrooms.
And I have seen lots of odd things get misplaced in the black hole which are teenager's bedrooms. Everything from shoes and backpacks to clothes and homework. But I have never seen anything messy enough where you would lose 125,000 gorillas. And, yes, I've read the reports.....the numbers were underestimated. These gorillas were hiding. Whatever the reason is, I can just see the mother of the head researcher--hands on hips, looking at him with that look that parents use oh so well. "Well young man--I told you that room was messy. I went in there to clean up and LOOK what I found!!! 125,000 Gorillas. "