Sweet Skin Fade

Yesterday was gloomy weather again, and the first time this year I had to put on my base layer of wool leggings. Fortunately, there are only six or seven months to go before spring. (I have a friend who hates summer who said on about June first that, fortunately, summer was almost over!) I got up at 11 a.m. yesterday even though I had gotten only 7.5 hours of sleep. Seven and a half hours is for some reason sometimes a sweet spot when it comes to sleep even though it’s way less than I usually need. I got up at 11 a.m. because it feels gross to sleep any later. Also, sleeping as much as needed might take until 2 or 3 p.m., and that decisively throws off the next day and the next.

Seven and half hours of sleep was not the sweet spot yesterday. I felt draggy and decided to take a nap after breakfast, but then I began organizing a couple of closets, with satisfying results, and the nap never happened.

In the evening, I looked online to see how people survive moving from California to the Midwest and came upon a post from someone saying how miserable she is living here, and how she tried to move to a sunny area of the country but it didn’t work out. Her words were drenched in negativity and self-pity and I suspected there was some slight overstatement here and there for dramatic effect: Did she really cry the whole entire way to work and the whole entire way home? I thought, this chick sounds just like me! The kicker was when she mentioned wanting to kill her adorable kitten. Did I actually post that post while in some sort of fugue state?

My meditation teacher, Howie, said once that when he is making a decision, he takes happiness out of the equation because he knows he does not require particular circumstances in order to be happy. In theory, eating a tasty bowl of Szechuan chicken at Ricewood on Packard is no better or worse than seeing one’s mother ax murdered, if indeed it is our attitude that determines our experience. Yet those somehow do not seem equally delightful. I imagine there are people who are not profoundly mentally ill who could maintain perfect equanimity in either situation, but I think approximately 100 percent of us would feel that one of those was better than the other.

I guess there is quite a stretch of territory between “All things are exactly the same if you don’t let the mind choose” and “I cannot possibly be happy in this situation of [whatever].” I do notice that I feel more relaxed in this slower-paced area; it seems to happen by itself. I don’t know that I could ever feel as relaxed in San Francisco; by the same token, I don’t know that I could feel cheery quite as often in the grey as I do in the sun.

But I think I can have a good-enough and even a perfectly delightful life here. After all, other people live here. After reading that person’s post, I decided to man up. I read a little about how to cope with cold, grey winters. Light boxes were mentioned, and so was exercise, including enjoying winter sports. I have not ever done it, but I am going to go snowshoeing! And maybe even sledding, which I of course did as a child; I think it would be very fun and something a senior citizen could totally do. I asked three people if they’d like to go snowshoeing. No response so far from two of them, but the third said, “Sounds fun!” I also ice skated as a child, but I think that might be out at this point. The number of broken ankles I need is zero. Or heck, maybe I will ice skate.

I also looked yesterday on Yelp for a suitable barbershop for a lady to obtain a sweet skin fade. (I have been told in at least one establishment that they only cut men’s hair.) I ended up feeling a little overwhelmed, but today asked on Reddit and immediately got four or five suggestions. I went over to one of them this afternoon and the fellow there did a very conscientious job. The Redditor assured me that women are welcome at this barbershop, the place says over the front door that it is a unisex salon, and when I walked in, sure enough, a woman was getting a cut that involved a lot of bald skin. Minus those three things, I would have thought this was entirely a place for men. There was a football game on TV, football helmets everywhere as décor, and a pool table in the middle of the room. Besides the woman who was getting her hair cut when I came in, every other patron was a man (going by my eyeballs, Black, White, Middle Eastern).

This place had more product displayed for sale than I have ever seen in any other salon or barbershop. There were many, many square feet of one particular line I had never heard of, a small display of a second brand, and an even smaller display of a third thing. There was a giant gumball machine, and two vending machines featuring three kinds of candy apiece. There was a large monitor on the wall opposite the TV showing a restful video of underwater life (maybe that is for the ladies). There were ten barber stations, but only one in use.

It was another gloomy day today, but I have decided to prevail: to act as constructively as possible and to find ways to enjoy myself.

My sister said to text her when I got home so she could come over to measure the basement fireplace, which she plans to cover to keep Marvin out. She did a beautiful job on the fireplace in the living room. I told her I would text her after I took a shower, but by the time I had lovingly burnished every square inch, it was getting to be too late in the day for her to come over. It takes me a long time to take a shower. That’s why I don’t do it very often.

I invited Duckworth to sleep over again last night. He immediately draped himself over one of my ankles and fell asleep. He ended up staying in my room for several hours, later sleeping on my chest. When meowing woke me up, I let him out.