Three little things

One. I finally found the perfect vase for the cactus clipping my friend Joanne gave me before she died. It’s small in size but huge in personality, with a beautiful color and a vibrant shine. I think she’d appreciate the metaphor. (I'd been holding out on repotting the clipping from its sad little cardboard vase because doing so made everything seem so final. But once I saw this vase smiling up at me from its display shelf I knew I was ready to celebrate her memory in glazed terra cotta. And it looks fabulous in my kitchen. Besides, it's nice to have her keep me company when I do the dishes.)

Two. My new running shoes have all but stopped giving me ankle and shin troubles—I ran 12 miles on Saturday with no problem, but last night’s 5-mile jaunt quickly devolved into a 2-mile walk of pain. And now one of the shoes has given me two blisters, one on each side of my right Achilles tendon. And for being so little, the damn blisters sure can cause a lot of pain. And blood. And they can quickly force you to realize how hard it is to take a picture of the back of your ankle. Especially a flattering picture of the back of your ankle.

Three. One of the curses that come with having a head of thick, luxurious hair is the fact that your hair is big enough and strong enough that it can do pretty much whatever it wants. Normal styling products are no match for my thick, luxurious mane, but I have found that Crew® Fiber™ Pliable Molding Creme holds it in place reasonably well. And since my hair is so short, it takes me a good six months to go through a container of the stuff.

Imagine my horror, then, when the last tub of Crew® Fiber™ Pliable Molding Creme available at my discount high-end hair salon last week had a label that wasn’t centered. As if I really have the emotional fortitude to spend the next six months performing my morning ablutions without the calming benefits of concentric circles.

Fortunately, I am a clever little kitty. And just as I was about to resign myself to living in the ghetto for the remainder of 2006, I realized I could put the concentric-circled lid from my old container of Crew® Fiber™ Pliable Molding Creme onto my new tub of Crew® Fiber™ Pliable Molding Creme. Check out the attached illustrated diagram for further clarification of this process.

And one big thing:
With the purchase of my dining room table last fall, I finally have all adult furniture in my house … except for my childhood desk, which I still use for storing stationery and pencils and other desky things and for playing on my computer. The desk doesn’t have rocket ships or bunnies on it, so there’s nothing that necessarily screams childhood about it, but it’s smallish in scale and a little precious in its 1970s neo-colonial detailing. It does everything I’d expect from a desk and it’s the perfect size for the space I have, though, so it seems silly to spend the money to replace it.

The desk includes a matching 1970s neo-colonial chair that has been slowly falling apart for the last decade. I’ve nailed and screwed and glued its broken parts back together repeatedly, but last night one of the legs snapped off (actually it wasn’t even that dramatic—the leg basically shrugged its little leg shoulders to show its complete indifference and quietly let go of the seat above it) in a way that just can’t be repaired. So now my precious 1970s neo-colonial desk has a mousy-gray folding chair in front of it, meaning I’m one tattoo and a meth habit away from marrying Britney Spears.

And the chair that’s cradled my butt through algebra problems, college applications, countless résumés and cover letters, endless free-lance projects, and four computers is now resting in peace at the bottom of the dumpster behind my building. But not before taking one last wobbly bow at my front door: