It’s not that my hair is impossible, per se. From what I’ve been told, my hair is thick and has a lot of body and, with the right tools, can look rather lovely.

The problem is me. Not only do I have very little idea how to style my hair, I have a lethal lack of inclination to do so. I’m a stay at home mom who does housework most of every day, why would I bother to do my hair and try to keep it out of my face every day when I could just throw it up in a ponytail and be done with it?

Even though this remains true, I’ve decided to conquer this particular shortcoming of mine. 2012 is going to be the year I learn how to do my hair.

Why? Well, that’s a complicated question. Why does any woman learn how to make herself look prettier? Because she likes the end result, because she likes the way others feel about the end result, because it self actualizes some inner expectation she has for herself. Sometimes the answer is a combination of all three.

For me, I suppose the answer is that I’m tired of not being able to do this for myself. That and I might be carrying around a teeny tiny daughter, and I want to be able to teach her girly stuff someday if she wants to learn.

I don’t want to be intimidated by doing her hair, or feel like I’m all thumbs when she asks me how to put on foundation or straighten her hair.

I want to feel confident that I can be a resource to her, and help her avoid unfortunate hair mistakes. That is, of course, if she’ll listen to me.

Then again, I could be carrying another boy, in which case this endeavor is somewhat less altruistic and more self indulgent. I mean, I’ll be happier when I feel like I can make myself look as nice as possible, and I think my hair is the last piece of the puzzle.

So. 2012. This will be the year I learn to do my hair. And possibly publish another novel. And finish my zombie apocalypse novel. And have another baby.

It’s gonna be a good year.

You see, I had pretty pictures on my camera after the opera, but I only download pictures to my computer about once a month, so the pictures stayed there long after they were relevant. I didn’t really want to write a post about going to the opera without including a picture, so I waited.

And then a week passed.

And then two weeks passed.

When three weeks had passed and my pictures were finally on my computer but too old to be any good to me, I decided to just wait a month and call it good.

So, that’s what I did. Or, rather, what I am doing.

Let me take you back. At the beginning of October, Wes said to me, out of the blue, “Anticipation.”

“Uh, what?” was my response.

He repeated himself, without any explanation save telling me he had a surprise for me but wouldn’t tell me what it was.

He really should have known better.

Picture a fly trapped in a jar. Ok, now give that fly a sugar high. And a full bladder that he’s unwilling to relieve in the confines of the jar.

That was me. I was FREAKING OUT trying to figure out what the surprise was. I LOVE surprises in that I hate them. I like surprises so long as I know what they are. All Wes would tell me was that he was planning a special evening for us, but that was it.

INFURIATING.

After three days of literally losing sleep over the whole thing, I gave up. I decided to try acting like an adult and just let me husband surprise me. Which was, of course, when he decided to relent and tell me.

He bought us opera tickets. To go see Carmen.

Carmen by Georges Bizet is my all-time favorite opera. It’s a dark story but my GOODNESS the music is incredible. I could listen to the music all day every day and if you have the right woman playing Carmen? PERFECTION.

Going to see it live has been on my bucket list for years. Wes, knowing that, heard that the Seattle Opera would be performing it and scooped up tickets for the show, with which he then surprised me.

He had the whole evening planned. First? Dinner at Benihana (I saw the restaurant on Mad Men and wanted to try it).

(Those are sampler glasses of Sake, for the record. Not photographic proof of how wasted I got. I didn’t get wasted.)

Next stop? The opera!

My sister in law straightened my hair for me, which is why I look like an entirely different person. I wore really high heels and a classic little black dress and I painted my nails and looked Oh So Stylish.

Though in Seattle you almost shouldn’t bother because no matter how classic your styling may be, odds are pretty good you’ll get seated next to some smart-aleck drama student who came to the opera dressed as a frigging bird. True story.

In sum, the opera was absolutely transcendent. The music was flawless, the acting and singing superb, and it was everything I’d always dreamed it would be. A night well worth waiting for.

I’m a tall girl, but my feet have always been a manageable size 10.  Sure, my pants are consistently too short, but my feet were still a nice, normal size, and shoe shopping was one of the few kinds of shopping I enjoyed.

Until I had an adorable, squishy little baby (incidentally, who was called Squishy).

Now I have size 11 feet.  I have an adorable baby and feet that are too large to fit comfortably into any of my shoes.  After getting fed up with my toes rubbing against the inside of my ancient tennis shoes while I walked, I decided to find some new shoes.

I got my feet remeasured, and was aghast to learn my feet had grown to an unruly size.  Not to be deterred, I figured that surely I’d be able to find size 11 tennis shoes.  I mean, how hard could it be?  There are taller women than me running around all over the place, I doubted they all get their shoes custom made.

That was when I ate my humble pie with a side of ice cream.

You guys, no one makes shoes in size 11.  You get to size 10 and then you get nothing.  We looked everywhere, and my despair grew with each successive store where sales people made horrified faces and told me they had nothing for me in-store but could always order something (which, dude, how not helpful is that?  Like I’m just going to guess about how my feet will feel by trying on shoes that are too small?  Or, worse yet, just ordering without trying them on?).

Every time I walked by rows and rows of shoes that were off-limits to me and my giant freak feet, I cried.  I mean, I can deal with being tall, with the short pants and no leg room in cars or on planes, but to be deprived of shoes now too?

After watching me dissolve into tears for the fifth time, Wes decided I needed to go shoe shopping at Nordstrom.  Nordstrom, where they sell pretty shoes to pretty people and make you feel like spending twice as much is a good deal because of the famous excellent customer service.

On Saturday, I got all dolled up (putting on eye shadow and eye liner counts as getting dolled up) and we strolled into Nordstrom fully expecting to leave there with shoes and self esteem.  That the shoe salesman botched the sale boggles the mind.  Perhaps it’s because he:

1. Told me he’d rather be watching the World Cup than helping me find shoes.
2. Brought out only one freaking pair of shoes for me to try on, then told me he had nothing else in my size (which, seeing as he was so enthusiastic to be doing his job right then, was probably a great big lie).
3. Tried to convince me that, even though I told him the shoes he brought out didn’t feel good on my feet, I should wear them around for a week because he was sure I’d grow to like them.
4. After I assured him, in no uncertain terms, that I disliked the shoes, he brought out another pair.  When I slipped them on and told him they felt tight, he looked at me like I was stupid and said, “Yeah, they’re 10′s”.  I suppose when you taunt big-footed women with shoes they can’t have because of their giant feet, they’re unwilling to buy things from you.

With nap time for Aidan fast approaching, we ran over to Lady Foot Locker, where the saleslady (named Jazzy) brought out ten different boxes of shoes for me to try on.  She enumerated the features and strengths of each pair, and was patient as I tried them all on and walked around the store.

I finally settled on a pair of Nike shoes that feel like heaven on my feet.  So the shoe problem has been resolved.  I remain in shock over the abysmal customer service I received at Nordstrom, but I’m so happy with my new (very purple!) shoes that I’m willing to stop complaining about it.  Now that I’ve written about it on my blog, of course.

After a whirlwind shopping adventure that ransacked five different stores, I ended up with the following:

• A very cute pair of maternity capris
• A pair of maternity jeans
• Six cotton t-shirts, all of which are very long and perfect for layering
• A bacon Whopper with cheese

The cost for this shopping FUNANZA?  $38.  Because the world is a very good place.  The only down side to my little shopping trip is that the maternity pants, which were such a very good steal at $5, are a tad too short.  In fact, all maternity jeans I tried on were too short.

It appears that the manufacturers of maternity pants are cruel, and unusual, because they make maternity pants in the following sizes: S, M, L, XL.  This means that if you’re someone like me who’s leggy and has junk in the trunk but not enough to justify hopping up a size, you’re out of luck.  It’s either swim around in pants that are too big or wear cute socks.

I’m going to throw myself on the mercy of my sewing-whiz mother in law and see if she wouldn’t mind sewing a cute inch or two of fabric around the cuffs of the pants to give them some extra length.  I’ll look like a That 70′s Show cast-off, but at least my ankles won’t freeze.

Wes says I impressed him with my frugality this weekend.  We’re determined to do the whole baby thing as economically as possible, as we figure this little buddy’s going to outgrow most of the things we buy right now anyway, so what’s the point in going hogwild over brand new super-awesome stuff?

We’re going used baby furniture (I refuse to look at shiny new cribs in catalogs and instead browse Craigslist), used stroller, used baby clothes, used toys, etc. all within the realm of safety and recalls.  The only new things we’re getting new are a carseat and crib mattress, because those are the things experts say you should never buy used.

Good thing those are the only two though, because those suckers are expensive!

True to form, I’ve left my blogging until late at night and now I’m tired and soft, like cheese left out on the counter too long.  You can try to scrape me onto a cracker if you want, but I can’t guarantee I won’t give you salmonella.

Was that enough suspense building?  I hope so, because I present to you with the utmost shame and cringe…My 5th grade portrait:

Oh look at me, just casually hanging out on this stair railing.

You’re welcome.  I hope you all feel better about yourselves today.

Wes and I had the pleasure of a lot of spare time this weekend, which we put to good use by investigating.  First, we went to our local Farmer’s Market to discern whether it would be less expensive to buy our produce there or to continue patronizing Safeway’s produce section.  We strolled around and sampled nectarines (which were amazing) ice cream (which was over-priced), and fresh cheese (which was precisely as incredible as it sounds).

As it turns out, the prices for produce at the Farmer’s Market were  much better than the prices at Safeway, and the produce looked yummier.  The only problem was availability.  Not all veggies are available every week at the Market, so we’ll probably just stick to buying a few things there.  The onions sure as heck looked better, and I’m betting that farmers don’t often get confused about whether their onions are yellow or white.

After that journey, we headed to Costco.  Oodles of people keep telling us that Costco will save us so much money, so we decided to see for ourselves.  I gotta say, strolling Costco is a cheap way to get some lunch.  I scarfed so many random samples that I wasn’t even hungry for a real meal afterward.  The prices were better on some items, worse on others.  We’ll probably hold off on purchasing a membership until we have to buy diapers in bulk someday.

But neither of those has to do with my hair.  After our journey, we got haircuts.  At SuperCuts.  Now, you may remember that I used to get my hair cut by a very talented lady at a very lovely salon who served me wine while I waited and let me read as many trashy celebrity magazines as I wanted to.  It was awesome.  Wes also had his hair cut by her, though I doubt he enjoyed the magazines quite so much.

Well, as y’all know, times are a little lean over here at Casa de Mitchell.  I’m hardly in a position to justify spending $200 on my hair right now, especially considering I wear my hair in a ponytail except when I’m sleeping.  I actually hadn’t gotten my hair done since January, so by the time we stumbled into SuperCuts I looked like a bedraggled Flowbie-loving  hippie.  My hair was so long it was actually giving me headaches, so I knew it time to take care of business.

I watched as my head was not lovingly shampooed but rather unceremoniously sprayed with water from a spray bottle until I was shivering a little.  I shuddered as my layers were hacked to roughly the same length, and died a little on the inside when I left the salon with my hair still dripping wet.  Yes, it was a cheap haircut, and yes, it looks just fine all pulled up into a ponytail.  But man, is there ever a disparity between our life a year ago and our life now.

Wes and I left the salon holding hands and smiling.  Not because we loved our haircuts so very much, but because at least we still have enough money to go to SuperCuts and we’re not so vain that we can’t think the other looks broke but hot.  This recession’s done a lot of things, but it hasn’t taken away our ability to laugh where necessary, and appreciate free lunches.

I think piercings, when done artfully, are beautiful.  I’m not saying I want my ears gauged large enough to stick a fist through or anything, but I’ve seen some people do beautiful things with their piercings.  I once met a girl who’d woven silver wire through a bunch of holes in her ear and it was gorgeous.  It can be a real art, in my opinion.

My parents consented to let me pierce my ears for the first time when I was 12, and I did my darndest to keep the piercings clean.  I was plagued by miserable infections, but still I doggedly kept them in and cleaned them twice a day like I was supposed to.  Eventually (as in four years later) they stopped hurting so dang much so I figured the time was ripe for another set of piercings.  My best friend and I went in and got a second set of holes put in right above the ones we already had.

Those seemed to heal quicker, so I got a third set of earrings, these ones high up in my cartilege.  I’ll never forget how they crunched when they were put in!  I thought I was looking pretty cool with my piercings, and had always wanted to try a belly-button ring, so right after high school graduation I laid down on a table and watched as some random piercing person put a huge freaking needle through my stomach.  Very weird, I must admit.

Now I was looking pretty cool, though not nearly hard-core.  I merely looked like a girl who liked earrings.  I loved my new look, and thought it was decidedly at ease with the person I thought I was my freshmen year of college.

Then the honeymoon ended.  I started having a hard time sleeping, and I realized that it was because my cartilage piercings were painful to sleep on at night.  I tried taking them out one night but, when I woke the next morning, found I couldn’t get them back in my ears.  Trying to re-pierce cartilage at 6AM is so not worth the effort so I shambled off to work and bid a solemn farewell to one set of piercings.

Next to go was my belly-button ring.  It started hurting.  A lot.  About five months after I got it I started feeling this terrible burning pain all the time, and I was never able to change the piercing without problems.  It simply wasn’t healing, and to add weirdness to it, it also started migrating out.  The reason, it turns out, is that my skin was rejecting it.  My skin literally pushed my belly-button ring out, and I now have a fantastic scar there from the two months it took me to get what was going on.  So, goodbye to that one as well.

I removed my second set of earrings for my wedding and forgot to put them in again after the honeymoon.  When I finally remembered, the holes were long gone.  Four years of healing, gone just like that after one week.  I’m left with one measly set of piercings.  How very tame.

The reason I bring all this up is that I tried to put earrings into my ears for church on Sunday.  And couldn’t get them in.  I had to re-pierce my ears for the millionth time, and it occurred to me that I will never have problem-free piercings.  Ever.  Do you know why?  Because I’ve had these piercings since I was 12, which, in two weeks, will officially be half my life.  If half my lifetime is not enough time for my ears to heal properly, they’re never going to do it until I’m 100 years old and my earlobes are situated somewhere around my ankles and the holes are large enough to use as football goalposts.

Do you have any idea what would have happened if I’d liked tattoos instead?  I’d probably have started off with a pretty butterfly or something and ended up with some ugly sailor flipping me the bird.

You see, I can look at shoes for hours without feeling bad about my life or my finances.  Clothes?  Not so much.  I was tempted into browsing Old Navy’s site the other day and looking at all the reasonably priced clothing made me despair.  Jeans for $10!  Shirts for $7!  The cuuuutest summer dresses for a pittance!  All around me these affordable clothes swirled, enrapturing me with their so-close-and-yet-so-far accessibility.

You see, I buy clothes once per year.  I spend the first six months enjoying my new clothes, loving them, giving them preferential treatment over the other clothes.  As they fade or fray, I start the grim cycle that is my decision to buy new clothes.  I’ll set benchmarks for myself: I’ll buy new clothes if I see a good sale in October.  Sales will drift by and a new benchmark will be set, met, and overrun.

On and on until my clothes are in tatters a year later and I force myself to set aside a tiny amount of money to buy the essentials: a new pair of jeans to replace the one with the holes, three new pairs of shirts to take the place of the ones that are either too frayed or too faded to wear in public anymore, maybe a package of socks so that I’ll own socks that don’t have holes in them.

Then, because I only buy enough clothes to last me for half the week, I end up wearing my new clothes twice a week and they’re all worn to bits come one year later.  Every year I tell myself I’ll buy more clothes for myself next year, and every year I’m proven a liar.  Browsing through clothes is like a thousand tiny reminders that my wardrobe is less than half as adequate as I’d like it to be.

Shoes, though.  Shoes are different.  I can browse through shoes without feeling avarice because looking at shoes feels more like admiring art than shopping.  Shoes, in all their myriad styles, heights, colors, fabrics, and decorations are beautiful to me.  I like them on my feet obviously, but I like them nearly as well just about anywhere.

I ran into these shoes the other day and knew I had to share them, if for no other reason than they match the daffodils from yesterday:

Oh yum. Yes please, and thank you.

They’re Christian Louboutin.  I love Christian’s shoes but I could pay a mortgage payment with two pairs of these beauties.  He has a way of crafting shoes that do the same thing everyone else has been doing for centuries, just better.  Some girls have a thing for Manolo Blahnik (thanks, Sex and the City), other ladies prefer Franco Sarto or Prada or Nine West.  For me, it’s Christian Louboutin.  His shoes, and these shoes in particular, are this week’s Thing That Does Not Suck because you don’t have to be able to afford them to admire them.

For two exhausted people, we manage to clean up pretty nicely. If I do say so myself.