soror mystica

I had the greatest compliment in the world yesterday.  My son Sebastian, who will be 16 in a couple of months, had a buddy (17  y/o) over.  Seb kept telling him:

"My mom is so awesome, my parents are so awesome!"
"I have the best parents in the world."

And he would constantly come up to me and throw his arms around me and tell me he loves me.  The two of them were mostly on the computer, talking about all sorts of wacky things that teen boys talk about.. I would butt in the conversation at times.  At one point, Seb showed me some lyrics he had written and I talked to him about it.. and then his buddy looked at Seb with this amazed look on his face and said, "Geez, your mom is like your friend!" Seb said, "I TOLD you, my parents are great!"  His buddy said, "I just annoy my mom." 

Now, just a few days ago, Seb was upset because his father and I refused to allow him to go to CA with his friends for spring break. We figured at his age, no way is he going on a 4 day road trip with no supervision. He wouldn’t even kiss me goodnight that night.  But he apologized the next day.  What’s truly awesome about this is that, we can have such a great relationship with our kids,  but we also exercise our parental authority, and while my kids don’t always agree and get upset about it at times, they always respect our decisions. 

They say that parents should be parents to their kids, not try to be their "friends."  Well, I’ve never tried to be my kids’ friends.. but they view me that way anyway.  I’ve had many compliments about them, how respectful they are, what great kids they are.  In my opinion, it’s about treating children with respect.  Even though they know who’s in charge, I’ve always treated them as equals, from birth.  Just because they are younger, doesn’t mean they are "lesser." By my actions and words, I’ve tried to convey to them that they are just as important and valuable as anyone else, adult or not.  But that they still have to respect their elders.  I guess it paid off! 

Why is it that, for women anyway, bad hair is a fate worse than a 20-pukes-a-day stomach flu?  It’s like, we’ll take the damn flu, as long as our hair looks good.  We could be lying writhing in bed, with a fever of 104.3, too weak and shaky to even get up to drag ourselves to the bathroom to hurl up more water (that’s all that’s left in our stomachs, you see), moaning and shivering in agony, but hey, if our hair looks good? We feel better, emotionally anyway.

But give a woman a bad hair day, and everything else could be coming up roses and she won’t even know the difference.  All she can focus on is her hideousness.  She could have gotten a promotion (including a much-coveted and envied corner office), won a $10,000 shopping spree at Trail’s (she was the 7th caller at KUPD - and she got the answer right when they asked her what Marilyn Manson uses in lieu of toilet paper), AND gotten asked out by the totally shag-worthy, tattoo-infested DJ.  But no matter.  These things mean nothing in the great scheme of things: good hair does. 

Perhaps you are wondering why I am writing about bad hair?  You guessed it.  Except that it’s not just a bad hair DAY.  It’s going to be a bad hair week, at the very least.  I went to get my hair cut and highlighted today, by a wonderful lady whom my nail tech recommended.  She did a great job with the cut, and even the spacing I wanted in between streaks. Except that I feel like a photo negative. My hair used to be 90% blonde. Now it’s 90% mahogany.  Ewww.  I cried hysterically when I got home. I called my new hairdresser after calming down some, and explained the tragedy.  "Oh, don’t WORRY about it," she said. "I told you, your hair is very porous because of the blonde, and it will lighten up so much that you won’t even believe it. You’ll wonder where all the color went!  But call me if you have a problem!" Gee, and I thought that’s what I was doing in the first place.  But I decided to give it a try and wait and see.  She said it would be about 4 washes.  So, between now (Saturday night) and Monday morning, I am going to attempt to wash and dry my hair 4 times.  Good thing I don’t have a date or anything.