Touching base

 My mother has recently started noticing when I touch things to steady myself.

I often have a slight balance issue or a few seconds of dizziness, where I just lilt sideways for a moment. It's usually something that happens a few minutes after I get up and start moving around after sitting down for a while or getting up from lying on the couch.

It's normally something that just lasts a second or two, and I just touch the furniture, or the wall, or lean on the door frame for a moment so I don't fall into it. If I can't touch something, I right myself well enough without any worries in a couple of steps – I don't actually fall – I just find it easier to touch something briefly to regain balance and I move on.

The thing is, I've been doing this for as long as I can remember – at least since I was a teenager – but my mother has only recently started to comment on it, like she's suddenly noticed something that's a new development.

I know why: it's because she's having trouble with her balance now, so she's starting to do it herself, so now she recognises it when she sees it happen. But it's still weird. 

You know, I've been tripping over my own feet, bumping into furniture and knocking against walls and doors for decades. For decades, it has gone without comment. Now, suddenly, she's noticed.

To give this a little extra context, my mother has this thing where she always (*always*) assumes something is wrong. She will watch you like an absolute hawk and analyse every unexplained movement or noise to see if something is wrong – which is an absolute blast if you are the kind of person who fidgets, cracks your joints and makes little humming noises to yourself when you let your mind wander.

I'll probably write a whole 'nother post delving into "I'm a natural fidgeter who pulls random facial expressions when I relax, but I get asked to account for every single one of them when I'm with my mother so I feel like I can never fully relax". But that's another ramble. 

The point is, I've spend literal decades of my life begging my mother to stop asking "what's wrong?" every time I twitch to relieve some muscle stiffness ("what's wrong?" - "Nothing, I'm just stretching." "What's wrong?" - "Nothing, I'm just cracking my fingers." "What's wrong?" - "Nothing, I'm just letting my mind wander." "What's wrong?" - "FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, STOP ASSUMING SOMETHING'S WRONG!") but she's only just started noticing the touching thing.

I get asked "what's wrong?" if I so much as frown slightly (btw., I frown when I'm tired, and I'm always tired), but I've been falling into walls for decades and she's only just noticed?

What did you think was happening before? That I was just a clumsy oaf clown? Can you go back to that, please? It's way better than having someone suddenly ask "are you alright?" all the time (just a variation of "what's wrong?") when I'm just doing something that has been normal for as long as I can remember

Hair

 

Photo by Taylor Smith on Unsplash

I was looking through some photos if misguided haircuts recently... which is pretty much all of them.

All of my haircuts have been misguided.

Well, that's not entirely true. I have two haircuts that don't look completely ludicrous. One is to have my hair so long that all I can do is pull it back and it doesn't look like it's meant to be anything other than the wild locks of a Highland Barbarian. In theory I could braid that and it would look semi-decent, but I have the fine motor skills of a walrus, so I don't really braid. Just a basic plait every now and then.

The other haircut that doesn't look completely ludicrous is a pixie cut – so little hair that no styling is possible and all I can do is throw in some product to spike it up a bit when I'm feeling fancy.

Every other haircut falls prey to the fact that I my hair is, in fact, the Rum Tum Tugger: it will do as it do do and there's no doing anything about it.

I'll think of a haircut that might look pretty cool. I'll go to a hairdresser and they'll say "sure!" and then it will look kind of okay for approximately 2 hours. Then it looks ridiculous.

Once my hair starts getting its bearings, it turns whatever haircut I have (that isn't "wild woman" or "pixie") into "what the hell were you thinking?"

To be honest, I don't think the wild woman or pixie cuts were particularly good either, they were just not as terrible as all the others.

I had the wild woman hair for most of my teens and early twenties, and then cut it shorter in my late twenties and regretted it. Every single iteration of it. Until I hit on the pixie in my thirties, which works until I decide I want to grow it out. Then I have the challenge of trying to force my way through a dozen terrible iterations of my hair until I can get back to wild woman... and I inevitably lose patience and get it all cut back into a pixie again.

The thing is, I've tried to do the thing where I embrace the fact that my hair is always going to be a bit daft, assuming that, if I do it on purpose, it will actually be kind of cool and funky. It never is.

I've had the same approach to my clothes over the years – I don't look particularly good in anything except "uber-corporate", and I find "uber-corporate" clothing impractical and uncomfortable, so I still manage to look like I'm dressed poorly. I tried embracing my "I dress like someone who doesn't know how clothes work" aesthetic to aim for "quirky" and "eclectic". It never looks quirky and eclectic – it just looks like I dress poorly.

No matter how hard I try, it never looks like I did whatever daft thing I'm doing "on purpose" – it just looks like I'm unintentionally unfashionable/untidy/unattractive, which is twice as bad as just being all of those things intentionally because you're bucking the system. I'm not bucking the system, I'm just incapable of making it work... and you can tell.

My hair is super annoying right now, but it's not yet at wild woman stage (and probably never will be), so I can't just pull it back without it looking super silly. I've pulled it back. It looks super silly. I'm going to have to go back to the pixie...

They call me "Bucket"

 That's not even remotely true: no one calls me "Bucket".

But I called myself "Bucket" the other night, which was a bit weird. I think I meant it as an encouraging endearment, as I said something like "Come on, Bucket, you've got this!"

And then I immediately thought, "Bucket? Where the hell did that come from?"

But it's a step up from what I usually call myself, which is "you idiot."