Well, I decided to grow them out. And I think they are growing. I know they are fucking annoying.

I started out doing this.

(Oh, and also recently got it cut and colored dark again. This is my perfect and favorite shade.)

And that seemed to work well at the beginning when there was no humidity and it was cooler in Chicago. But then it’s not been arid here. Add into that when I move and sweat and then my “bangs” end up curling at the ends and they look like ass.

(This is me and my friend Teri at the wedding. She wasn’t driving, which is why she’s so drunk she’s not even looking at the person taking the photo.) (Hi Teri!)

So now I’m doing this:

And for the most part, I like it. It’s easy and I spend less time doing my hair. But I also think I look ridiculous. And also, 12.

So, people of the internet, please tell me I don’t look stupid. Even if you’re lying.

Also, I need other options because I feel like I look the exact same every day and it’s starting to annoy me. Can I pull them to one side? Pull them back to either side? WHAT?

I am currently at the phase where I am deciding whether or not to grow out my bangs. I’ve had them for like three years? And I’m wondering if I need a change.

Do you think I should go from this:

Back to this?

I know that growing out bangs is a pain in the ass. But I am not super aware because the last time I did it was my senior year of college, when I could wear hats and not wash my hair for days on end and it was no big deal. Also, I was just starting my first full-time job out of college and had NO CLUE about hair and wardrobe and make-up. (My God, you should have seen the crap I used to wear. It was a good thing I started off in the NFL where half the building was walking around in shorts and no shoes.) (Also, I never wore any kind of make-up until my first day at the 49ers. Because I figured I was an adult now and that was the right thing to do.) (Silly 21 year old me.)

So my trepidation with growing them out is that I don’t know what to DO with them while I’m growing them out. And here is where I need your help, internet! How do you manage the bangs in that grow-out stage? Lots of bobby pins, I’d imagine. But WHAT exactly am I doing with the bobby pins? I need some sort of Whoorl Hair Tutorial or something!

Also, headbands? I would imagine those would help. Where do I buy headbands? What kind of headbands do I need?

I’m figuring if I want to do this, now is the best time. Summer (AND HUMIDITY) is coming to a close, so I don’t have to worry about them curling up at the ends as they get longer. And hopefully, maybe with taking some pre-natal vitamins to help with the growth, I can get them all grown out before the start of next summer. Or close enough where I’m not worried about the humidity making me look like Farrah Fawcett.

What say you? Should I or shouldn’t I? And if I do, PLEASE HELP ME NOT TO LOOK LIKE A FOOL! Well, at least no more of a fool than I look like on a normal day.

So here’s a breakdown of what I could post about, but am too lazy to write all the words out. Therefore, you get bullets:

• Kitty Kitty is much better. She’s back to being annoying, which means all is right in the world. I gave her a bath last week to wash the stench off her and it didn’t go as badly as I thought it would. Although, she’s probably put on about 17 pounds from all the treats I keep bribing her with. I just kept telling her that really, a bath is not even as bad as having a thermometer stuck up your ass.
• She’s still puked a couple of times and has some pooping issues, but really, she’s doing so much better so I don’t mind that she puked on my shoes. Again. For the 100th time in the last week.
• I got my hair done on Saturday. My stylist talked me into going lighter. At first, I didn’t care for it because while I was blonde for almost 30 years, I thought this was too light. But the more I stared at myself in the mirror, the more I loved it. What say you, Internet?

• Please to be ignoring my very large man hands.
• Most of you probably weren’t reading way back in the day, but I was blonde forever. I didn’t dye my hair darker until a month before my 30th birthday. If you don’t believe me, you can check out the before and after photos in this post.
• Saturday night I went out with my friend Melissa. We started at her place and drank a barrel of wine and then decided to head out to the bar. Details of the evening are fuzzy, but all I remember is that we stopped for a burrito and told our cab driver to wait. When we came out, there were like three cabs in the parking lot and we didn’t know which one was ours. I vaguely remember walking towards a white car and then hearing some man with an accent start shouting expletives at us. Because we were going to the wrong cab. And he thought we would stiff him? I’m not sure, but I made it home safe and the burrito was muy tasty.
• I ended up passing out on the couch. I woke up about 7 AM and my hip was killing me from lying on it in the same position all night on an apparently unsupportive couch. Or maybe it was that I was using my purse as a pillow. Regardless, my hip still hurts and getting old really sucks.
• Speaking of my purse, back when I was out a few weeks ago bringing visitors back to my place who don’t know how to lock doors, my purse had a bit of an accident. See, I was sitting at the bar, with my purse on the bar when I smelled something funny. I then laughed to myself because “hahahahaha! Someone accidentally burnt something in the candles on the table! DUMBASS! HAHAHAHA!” Until I realized that I was the dumbass and it was my PURSE that was burning.

• This is why I can’t have nice things.
• Remember I went to Houston? Well Puke Gate 2010 disrupted my plan to recap the trip here on my blog. So because I’ll probably never get around to it, you can check out the photos here.

And with that, I’m going to get my ass to bed. Because I stayed up last night way too late watching that HUGELY PREDICTABLE movie on ABC Family. And if I’m saying it is predictable, it must have irritated normal people. Since episodes of Scooby Doo still surprise me.

Well, I would get free bang trims. If my hair salon wasn’t like 50 miles from my house. See, it is cheaper out in suburbia and I love, love, love the girl who does my hair. So yeah, what I spend in gas, I could probably use to get my hair cut at a salon in the city that I could walk to, but then my hair wouldn’t be awesome. And I would be mad. Because I like to be all “it’s only hair, it will grow back.” But I only say that because my stylist doesn’t fuck up my hair.

Anyway, so about a week and a half ago, I went for my eyebrow wax. And since I get them done in a salon, and since my bangs were poking me in the eye and having daily fights with my contacts, I thought I’d get them trimmed. Since I’m such a good customer there, I figured they would trim them for like $10. Which they did. Problem is I ended up looking like Janeane Garofalo in Reality Bites.

OK, I exaggerate. Just a little.

Here is what they look like:

Not too bad, I know. But also TOO SHORT! And shorter bangs make my face look fatter. And I know what you’re saying “no, the box of cookies you jammed into your pie hole makes your face look fat.” To which I say “touche, my friend! But I like the illusion!”

See the problem is, when I sat in the chair she asked, “do you want them at brow level?” And I said yes. And since I had just had my eyebrows waxed, there was no missing the RED UNIBROW that was my brow level.

When she asked, it wasn’t like I looked like this:

Because that would be at brow level. But sadly I’m not constantly walking around in a surprised state. I’d get a headache.

So lesson learned. My eyebrow wax salon might be good at just that. And next time, I’ll trim them myself. Or wear a damn headband until my next hair appointment.

(So I just looked at my old post from when I first got bangs, and they are like the same, short length. So apparently this was a post about nothing at all. But I still love my stylist best!)

I had a bit of a busy weekend. Saturday morning I drove up to my brother’s house so he could fix my brakes. And because we had some snow and wind chill of epic proportions (see?), I stayed over there on Saturday night. Which meant I had to rush to get all the things done on Sunday that I had planned, which included a hair appointment and three weeks of laundry. Which, I learned is exactly the number of pairs of underwear and socks that I own, if you were wondering.

I left my brother’s house this morning leaving just enough time to come home, shower, change, brush my teeth and grab my tower of laundry and head out to the salon. I had a total of 20 minutes to do this. I got it done, but there was a lot of rushing and a lot of swearing. I made it to my hair appointment with plenty of time. As my stylist came to get me, I realized I didn’t have my phone in my purse. Which meant I couldn’t show her this post so I could show her BANGS! It wasn’t the end of the world because she cuts hair for a living so she knows how to cut BANGS! And I figured that my phone was sitting on my passenger seat.

Except it wasn’t. When I got out to the car, I SEARCHED for that thing in the car, in my purse some more, outside of the car, under the car. I couldn’t find it anywhere. I figured that I must have had it on my lap in the car and it fell into the snow when I got up and someone stole it. Because people are assholes.

There was a slight possibility that I left it at home. But that was slight. I was pretty sure I looked at the phone on my way to getting my hair done. But since I drove 100 miles (50 from my brother’s and 50 to the salon), I couldn’t be totally sure. All that time in the car ran together.

The plan after my hair appointment was to go to my mom/grandma’s house, since it is close, and they have a washer and a dryer. And I can do my laundry for free. And I was out of clean underwear. So I drove to my mom’s, cursing the whole way at how STUPID and CARELESS I was with an EXPENSIVE phone. I was pissed. And I was also like “this is why I must have had that dream about someone stealing my wallet last night!” I figured I was cursed.

I pulled up on the street by my mom’s/grandma’s house and attempted to drive over the icy snow to park. It wasn’t a ton of snow, but apparently with the temperature -3 degrees and wind chills of -30, the snow was frozen SOLID. I know this because as I tried to straighten my car, it wouldn’t move. It was stuck. No amount of gunning it or turning the wheels would get it out. So then I threw a FULL-ON hissy fit. Big, fat, sobbing tears that froze to my face the minute they left my eyeballs.

As a Chicagoan who parks on the street, I keep a shovel in my trunk at all times. I don’t really need it in the summer, but it is a pain to carry upstairs. Plus you look kind of silly carrying a shovel in June. So I got out my shovel and then proceeded to try and unstick my car. All while cursing so loud that the people flying overhead out of the airport HEARD ME!

It did not budge. The neighbor guy came over to help. We worked on getting that mother fucking car out for 30 minutes. I swear, if he wasn’t there, I’d still be there. He got behind the car and pushed and I finally got out and pulled into the garage through the alley. Which probably would have been a good idea at the beginning, but I really didn’t think I’d have any trouble parking. Because I’m an asshole.

Once I got inside after the ordeal, I was SO MAD and still so pissed about my phone and WOE IS ME! MY LIFE IS IN SHAMBLES! And the tears! Oh so many tears!

I started my laundry and my brother called my Mom to tell her that the people at the hair salon had found my phone (huzzah!) and had been calling people in my contact list! My faith in humanity had been restored, 100 fold. (Seriously, between the neighbor helping and someone turning in my phone, I definitely need to pay it forward.) I quickly got in the car and drove down there right before they were closing up shop. It was a Christmas miracle! I did not have to buy another phone less than 2 months after getting the first!

On the drive to and from to pick up the phone, I really started hating myself and my obvious OVER-REACTION to the whole thing. I was mad at MYSELF for losing my phone. And the car getting stuck was just more ammunition. And I went fucking ballistic. I snapped. And I hate that I had such an over-the-top reaction. And lashed out at anyone around me (or on the phone with me).

After I got my phone, I called my brother to apologize for snapping at him. I apologized profusely to my mom and grandma for being such a whore. I knew I was wrong and I tried to make it better. As I called my brother, I passed a guy on the side of the road, sitting in his stalled car. It hit me then that things could be worse. I was PISSED about losing something so superficial like a phone. Something I don’t NEED. And this dude was stalled in his car on a busy street, on a Sunday, on one of the coldest days I can ever remember. That made me dry my tears and just suck it up and get the fuck over myself. My life is NOT bad. And I had no one but myself to blame for my carelessness.

I hate that I get so upset and overworked about things like that. Obviously it is a stressful time of year and that doesn’t help matters. But it does NOT excuse the way I acted. I’m hoping the next time a situation like that arises, I’ll be able to handle it much better. Because I hate that me.

But I do love the new me with bangs.

There were some other bonuses to it too. One, it is better for the Earth and two, it forced me to actually move my fat ass more steps than just leaving the couch to go fill up my wine glass or stuff my face with cheese because I had to walk to the bus stop.

My bus ride is interesting, to say the least. I start on the Western bus up near my house on the north side of Chicago and take it deep into the heart of the south side of Chicago in one of the not better neighborhoods of the city.

The first few times I took it, I would look at all the different passengers – the kids riding the bus to school, the people heading to their jobs, the homeless people you can smell before you get on the bus. I am a nosy son of a bitch and I like to look at people and judge and figure out their story.

I stopped doing this rather quickly. People don’t like when the white girl stares at them. They stare right back because what the fuck is she doing on this bus in this neighborhood anyway? And then I get frightened.

So I learned to just keep my nose in my book, whether or not I’m actually reading. In fact now I wear my sunglasses at all times as to not make eye contact with anyone.

It has been fine. I take it during rush hour with other people from my office and generally it is just people trying to get from one place to another.

There was the one time when I was deep into reading Jess Riley’s Driving Sideways (if you haven’t read it yet, go read it now! It is SO good!) and was engrossed in the book, but would be pulled out of my concentration every now and then by the conversation going on in the back of the bus. Two really ugly women were going on and on about their babies’ daddies. And then they were talking about their C-sections, which prompted one MAN to stand up and say “I don’t know how you do it. I could never have babies.” Exactly. You have no uterus.

I go back to my book. A few stops later, I’m trying so hard not to pay attention. But I hear “there’s a lot of hot white guys in thie neighborhood. I’d fuck ‘em. I wouldn’t marry ‘em. I’d fuck ‘em though.” As if someone was asking.

At this point I stopped reading and glanced over my shoulder at these two rather obese women, one missing a few of her front teeth, the other wearing black socks with flip flops, creating a camel toe effect, and wondered silently to myself the kind of men that slept with these women.

Thankfully they got off soon after that because I really wanted to read (seriously it took THAT stuff to stop me from paying attention to the book).

My only other weird encounter was this week. A normal looking, albeit possibly drunk or stoned, man got on at a stop after mine on the way home from work. He was dressed in khakis and a polo and had the paper with him to read. He sat in the seat in front of me that just happened to be perpendicular to my seat, so he was half-looking at me.

I was just sitting there, minding my own business, engrossed in my book (Jennifer Weiner’s Certain Girls), when I feel penetrating eyes burning a hole in my soul. I glance up, not moving my head, and look at this man who just got on. He has half-turned his torso so he is full on staring at me with his mouth half open. STARING. MOUTH AGAPE. Like for a good few minutes. It was creepy.

He finally turned back. Then, a few minutes later, SAME THING. Was he checking to make sure I didn’t go anywhere? Was he wondering when God sent this angel down from heaven to sit next to him on a bus? Was he a closet fan of Jennifer Weiner?

And then he passed out. About 20 minutes later the bus stopped at Fullerton and he got off. I watched him as he got off and stood on the street corner looking like he didn’t remember how he got there, like he forgot the past 20 seconds of his legs moving and propelling him off a Chicago bus. I was just thankful he was far enough from my neighborhood. And that there was no more OPEN MOUTHED STARING.

We’ll see how tomorrow’s ride goes.

:::

In other news, I got my hair did tonight. I asked for something a little different, a little red in my hair since Jodifur just did it and I want to be like her.

Close up for the color. What do you think?

It’s a different cut, a little, kind of shorter, but I like it.

This is my “I shall ask you using an eyebrow raise if you like my sexy new hair, even though the humidity has fucked it up already and I’m additionally trying to conceal my double chin” pose.

And now looking at these photos it probably looks no different to any of you.

Bacon says he likes it. But he’s just trying to butter me up for more Bacon-centric posts.

But that would be quite a party trick.

I shall make you wait no longer! Here, finally! Photos of my new hair.

Ooooh. Shiny!

From the other side

Close Up. Of my eyebrows that need a waxing.

My lip is fine. Thanks for asking. Even though I bit it at lunch this afternoon and thought I would pass out from the pain.

So, viola! There it is. I think I like it. I’m about 95 percent sold on the cut. It looked better as I styled it for this photo shoot. (Yes, I had to REDO my hair for these photos. Do you see how much I care that you have an unrealistic image of me?) I used the flat iron, which I think is kind of essential with this cut. Even with my mostly-stright hair. Especially if it is foggy and humid in early February in Chicago.

In other news, I gave blood tonight. It’s for Manic Mom’s contest. Have you heard about it? I probably should have publicized it more, but I forget things easily. It’s one of the side effects of mass quantities of alcohol.

You have until Feb. 14 to get out and donate! You! NOW! And you can win wonderful cash prizes! And they give you COOKIES!

And! You get a sticker! And people have to be nice to you!

So get out there and donate! Help save lives! And possibly win money!

And as a final public service announcement, for those of you in Super Tuesday states, be sure to get out and vote on Tuesday! I hear they give out stickers too. And who doesn’t love stickers? Stickers = freedom, people.

This was the first Super Bowl in a long time (maybe ever) where I couldn’t care less. I hated both teams so much, that I wished both could lose. And that both quarterbacks could have their legs snapped in half. Because Tom Brady dumped his hot pregnant girlfriend for a model. All the while forgetting that he is gay and that Gisele is just a beard.

But then I found myself rooting for the Giants and Eli. Well, not Eli. Just the Giants. Otherwise I’d spend half the night vomiting my chili back up into my toilet. And that is no way to spend Super Bowl Sunday.

And now football is over until the fall. And that is always a sad time for me. Well, at least until April when baseball season starts. And I can consume beer again under some sort of sports/social veil rather than just being a damn alcoholic.

~~~~~

So I ended up having a snow day on Friday. I don’t know if it was necessarily a snow day. I was told I didn’t have to come in. Not that I was planning on it anyway. We got about 10 inches and most of that came down in the early morning and continued on until the afternoon. It was a wet, sloppy mess in Chicago on Friday. And by the time I would have shoveled my car out of its parking spot, it would have been time to leave work anyway.

And it is currently snowing right now. So Monday morning should be fun times.

~~~~~

I made it to the doctor. And I got that bump thing taken out of my lip. So now I’ve got a few stitches and look like I went a few rounds with Lennox Lewis. Or like I got some lip injections. And my doctor is also a plastic surgeon, so maybe I just convinced him that while I was there…

No. Just a plugged mucus seal was removed. And a salivary gland or something. He was all proud of it and kept showing it to me. And since he was just the cutest thing, and I needed him to sew up the gash in my lip, I amused him. Plus I couldn’t stop staring dreamily into his eyes. He was so cute. It was like my own version of McSteamy.

He also told me that I have a deviated septum. My nose is crooked or something. So I was all “now I can get a nose job and just tell everyone I didn’t get a nose job, that I just had a deviated septum. You know, like all the celebrities do.” And then I laughed like a crazed hyena.

I learned this is not the right thing to say to an actual plastic surgeon. He said that all his nose job patients tell everyone that they had a deviated septum and that was what required surgery. But this was after he touched my nose and was all “you don’t need a nose job.”

I was waiting for him to add “because your nose is just cute as a button. It’s so cute that if you were a few years younger, I’d play the whole ‘got your nose’ game with you.”

He didn’t add that. I was a tad disappointed.

This was no way to get this cute plastic surgeon to marry me.

Which was a moot point when later, as he was making fun of my book, his nurse mentioned something about his wife.

But I was still sweet as pie to him because he was sticking a needle in my gum and cutting open my lip.

So I’m all good. I’m hoping my lip looks a little better tomorrow.

~~~~~

I got my hair done this weekend. I had her darken up the color since it was starting to fade. And then I told her that I maybe wanted a new cut. Maybe something shorter.

She gave me the Katie Holmes bob. Minus Suri’s bangs. I loved it when I left the salon. But now I’m not liking it so much. I think it makes my face look fat.

I’ll take some photos when I charge the batteries in my camera. But it seriously looks like this. It’s like a longer version of Posh’s bob. It’s like a reverse mullet. It’s longer in the front, shorter in the back.

Now I just need big sunglasses.

Pictures tomorrow. I promise. Because I’m sure you won’t sleep a wink until see my new haircut.

~~~~~ 

At what time is it appropriate to go downstairs and yell at the pot smokers that their band practice has to come to an end? Because the cats can’t even lay on the floor without being bounced up and down from all the bass. It’s nearly 10 PM and I’m about to brandish my broom handle at them like the crazy cat lady that I am.