Try, Try, Try

Paw prints are almost as fashionably interesting as paisley or polka dots. Stick ’em on a jumbo Bow Tie o’ the Day and the dapper-ness is undeniable.

This morning, Bow Tie was yet another hit at the TMS clinic. I guess my neckwear has been the talk of the clinic. My treatment is at 7AM, and at 6:55 some of the nurses, technicians, and office assistants make a beeline to the waiting room to see what neckwear I’ve got going on. One technician told me I am not allowed to ever be finished with my TMS treatments, unless I promise to stop in daily to show off the neckwear I’m wearing that day. I’ve said it time and time again: Bow ties make people jolly up a bit. It’s my purpose in life to wear the neck happiness.

Bow Tie and I talked it over. We were so disappointed about the non-dying o’ the hairs yesterday, and we just couldn’t let it go. We got ourselves so worked up about the whole thing that we decided it was our obligation to try to color the hairs again. That’s what we did this morning after I got back from TMS. Let me just say this: The second time was not the charm.

It’s true that my sideburn hairs took a bit of the VIXEN VIOLET. But overall, our trying was for naught. I’m still glad I tried dying my hairs a second time though. Trying and failing, and then trying again– those are valuable actions. I recommend we all do more of that, with both bigly and insignificant things. Find your passions– bigly and small– and grab ’em. Hold on to your passions like they’re your children. They kind of are. You’ll succeed. You’ll fail. Again and again. But only if you keep trying.

Except for the dozen or so sorta purple hairs, I’m stuck with my stoopid hairs and their natural color. I don’t have an opinion about whether I like my natural hairs hues, but I like my patches and streaks of gray. I will honestly be pleased if/when I am all gray. I think gray hair is gorgeous. I think it’s quite becoming to most faces. I’ve earned my gray hairs anyway, and I’m not alone. Just sayin’.

BTW I don’t know why I’ve been sermon-ing lately. Has TMS turned me into a priestess whose goal is to pontificate? Well, I doubt that. I’m probably just in a bossy mood.

Hairs Thursday #13. Part 2.

I was chatting with yet another purple Bow Tie o’ the Day this afternoon, and we decided we’d try to snap a better photo of my stubborn, unviolet hairs. To stage the photo, we tried bigly to find lighting in which the hairs could best express whatever purple hues they might have accidentally held onto. Apparently, the VIOLET VIXEN hair coloring is visible mostly on my scalp. It’s to dye for!

Hairs Thursday #13

Sorry, I’m late posting on a Hairs Thursday, but I’ve been working on tweaking the color of my hair. Bow Tie o’ the Day and I decided to step it up with a popping purple hair color called VIOLET VIXEN. The results didn’t result in the result we were promised on the package. We should have known better, but we took advantage of our right to believe in an advertisement. I even did something I never do: I followed the directions, to the last detail. This is further proof of what I always tell you about my hair: It is the stoopidest, most useless hair on any planet. It won’t curl. It won’t take color. It just plain doesn’t cooperate.

The hair color isn’t the color I sought, but it is what I got. I’ll resolve to be pleased with it. Why choose to go around with a grumpy face and make myself and others miserable about it? It’s just hair that didn’t turn purple. No bigly deal. I admit I’m disappointed though.

We have to learn to be okay with the facts of our lives all the time. Sometimes we are conscious of doing it. Most times, we just do it. For example, I’d like peace on earth. The fact: It’s never gonna happen as long as human beings are involved. They are imperfect. Thus, I have learned to not lose sleep over the sickening fact there will always be a war somewhere or other.

I’d also like to sell a poem for a million dollars. Fact: Never gonna happen, cuz nobody gives a dang about serious, philosophical poetry. Oh, well. I’d like to have one whole, working pancreas. Fact: I’ve got 1/3 of a mostly healthy pancreas, which keeps me alive and thriving just fine. And on and on, I could regale you with examples of dealing with the “it is what it is.”

We decide to be happy. It really is a choice. It’s an attitude we sometimes have to work hard to attain. We have to choose to make the choice to be happy with who, what, and where we are. No matter how you look at it, where you are in your life is mostly where you put yourself. Good decisions, bad decisions– they were your choices.

We can can follow the directions we were taught about how to build a fulfilling life, but things over which we have no control happen to all of us. In reality, what’s out of your control accounts for only a small percentage of what put you where you are. Of course, the things beyond our control can be bigly things. People you love might leave you, or die. You might lose a job through no fault of your own. Your house might burn down. The list is endless.

But we all have the ability to adjust. Are you in a joyous place in your life? A bad place? You might as well be okay with it because you put you right where you are. And if you cannot possibly be okay with where you are, you are the only person who has the ability to change your circumstances.

You are the one who can choose to learn from tragedies and changes you don’t control. And you are the one who can choose to learn from your own mistakes. You are the one who chooses to roll with whatever it is–with a positive attitude OR focus on the negative and bring balloons to your own pity party. You are the only person who can control where you go next, and can control how you will face it. I suggest we all face what we’ve built of our lives as mature adults, not as petulant, spoiled children who blame everyone but themselves.

Also, if you want purple hair, don’t buy this product.

A Quickie Morning Post

Superb clash fashion. Unforgivable hairs. It’s not Hairs Thursday. I simply gave up on my hairs this morning. Threw on a hat to drive to my TMS treatment. Threw off the hat when I got home. Then snapped this selfie. 11 days until I can gradually chop off my head fur. Can’t wait. Miss Tiffany, my hair stylist, already has my permission to give me a few different hairdos (of her choosing) as she works her way to the short, short hairs cut I want.

Bow Tie o’ the Day is from my wood bow tie collection. It is made of cork, which is sorta wood, sorta not wood. But it is 100 percent the product of a tree. I’m thinking I might use cork Bow Tie as both neckwear AND a bulletin board. For example, tacking a grocery shopping list to cork Bow Tie is one way to not leave the list on the kitchen counter when I go to the store.

It’s Hairs Thursday #12 All Day Long

With the help of Tie o’ the Day, the bigly clash fashion is on. This unmatched match o’ dots was a go-together must. As I’ve mentioned before, I don’t usually “choose” my get-up: I grab the first shirt I find in the closet, and I take the first bow tie my eyes see from whichever bow tie drawer I open. Or I blindly nab a necktie from the closet, where they all hang in hibernation. Sometimes, on a special occasion, I will plan an outfit on purpose. Of course, for church I tone my outfits down a bit. Okay, I tone them down a lot. It is a humongous effort to lower the volume of my attire.

But when it comes to “doing” my hair, I don’t. And I never have. It’s not just that I can’t do anything with my scraggly, overgrown hair. I can’t do nothin’ with my hairs no matter how brilliantly they are cut. My hairs are against me. They are thin and straight beyond measure. And I personally have no talent for creating any kind of hairdo. Doing hair is a craft, an art. I can appreciate visual art of all kinds. However, I cannot create anything resembling any kind of visual art. Wash-‘n’-go is how I roll. That’s why I need masterful haircuts.

BTW For my Mormon readers: I am curious about something, and so far no one has been able to answer my question. Please help me out if you know the answer. Can men wear a white bow tie with LDS Temple clothes, or is only a white necktie allowed?

Hairs Thursday #12: Morning Has Broken

Last night, Bow Tie o’ the Sleep and I slept dandily on the mustache pillowcase Suzanne made me. But I woke up with my head surrounded by scissors! 7 pairs of scissors! I believe the message Suzanne is sending here is this: HELEN EILEEN WRIGHT, CUT YOUR ATROCIOUS HAIRS ASAP!!! Even my hairs are hard for her to live with.

23 TMS treatments down, 13 to go.

Hairs Thursday #11, Plus TMS Treatment #18

I don’t know what’s wrong with you people. Y’all seem to relish seeing my ugly hairs. You know how I can tell? Hairs Thursday tends to get the week’s highest number of hits from the website followers, and the number of Facebook responses are always robust. Get your fill of my horrendous hairs over the next few weeks, folks. They are doomed.

I can’t take it anymore. Even the ties and bow ties are tense about being around my coiffure. I can attest that it is horrifying to even sleep under my hairs. In fact, I noticed Suzanne is sick enough of the mop that she’s put her pruning shears on her nightstand. I think she’s trying to muster the courage to hack my hairs as I sleep. I’m smart enough to know that if she actually does the deed she will act completely innocent and claim she must have been sleep-haircutting. Suzanne’s a wily one, I tell you.

Anyhoo… Mustache Bow Tie o’ the Day got me thinking it’s about time to kinda have a neckwear theme, so I’m going to be wearing my mustache neckwear and accessories for the next week or so.

In one photo here, Bow Tie and I are simply showing you the clinic waiting room. Yeah, it’s not that exciting. I’m guessing there must be some kind of HGTV donation deal with the clinic though, cuz all of the televisions are always on HGTV. Plus, the waiting area has a zillion HGTV magazines. But I say, “Hey, if donations from HGTV help keep a mental health facility going, donate your little channel out.”

The other picture shows me and Bow Tie taking the purse for a walk and some sightseeing outside the Utah State Capitol building. We stopped there on our drive home from treatment this morning. My Diet Coke went along too, but it was too shy to be photographed.

FYI   This morning, I completed my 18th TMS session. I have 18 more ahead of me. It feels good to have half of the entire series behind me. 36 seemed like a zillion treatments at first.

After this many treatments, I’m a little discouraged that I am not feeling significant improvement in my mood-leveling. I am still stuck in a tar pit of depression, unable to swim out. Suzanne and I think we are seeing some small changes, but so far they are so tiny that we might just be seeing through our wishful thinking-colored glasses. I talked with my TMS doctor yesterday about my discouragement. He thinks I’m probably about where I should be, mid-TMS, but we decided to lengthen each treatment from 20 minutes of electromagnetic head-pecking to 25 minutes, for the duration of the remaining treatments.

I still have hope.

 

Hairs Thursday #10

Paisley Bow Tie o’ the Day is aghast at the state of my hairs! As am I. Something needs to be done, people. Even a baseball cap from Albuquerque can’t hide the hideousness of my overgrown mop. The very minute May ends, these hairs go! I might just get it all shaved off so I can forget about even having hair, if only for a couple of weeks. Oh, how I wish today were June 1st. But I will buck up. I will muster my courage and keep a proverbial stiff upper lip. I will fulfill this promise of growing my hair for one year, but I will not grow it out for even one minute beyond the 12 months you voted for. I must arrange for my cutter o’ hairs to have her scissors ready at 12:01 AM on the first day o’ June. I guess it’ll be a sleepover. I can already smell the late-night pizza being delivered.

But for now, in 5 minutes I’m headed to SLC for my 13th TMS session. After it’s completed, it’ll be 13 down, 23 to go.

Hairs Thursday #9

Mustache Bow Tie o’ the Day. Sasquatch Socks o’ the Day. And animal print Sloggers o’ the Day. The Hairs o’ the Day are doing the front-ponytail-through-a-backwards-baseball-cap thing.

[I haven’t quite finished writing the post I promised yesterday, about why TMS treatments are a good choice for me. It is coming.]

Hairs Thursday #7

We didn’t forget today is Hairs Thursday. We’ve simply had a P!NK hangover from last night’s concert (no alcohol involved). We slept in this morning and have been singing badly and dancing even more badly all day. I shall post about our P!NK adventures tomorrow. And yes! My saddle purse made it through Vivint Arena security and was able to see the show with us.

Anyhoo… This afternoon, billiard ball Bow Tie o’ the Day and I were thinking of an idea for my hairs, and Suzanne said, “I know what your hairs should do! Here’s what you do when you don’t have curlers.” She then cut the ends off a plastic Diet Coke bottle, grabbed some bobby pins, and gave me a bigly fat curl atop my noggin.’ It felt weightless. It felt like I had a curler of air in my hairs. But my hairs are too thin for even a curler o’ air to stay in its place very long. It was fun while it lasted.