Author: afthead

Is pole-dancing or writing a more embarrassing hobby?

On By aftheadIn Uncategorized18 Comments

The answer might surprise you.


Today my daughter, who wanted to be a doctor when she was three, announced that now she wanted to be a singer or an artist when she grew up: the singer part is new.  When she was out of earshot I asked my husband, “At what age do I tell her that under no circumstances will she be a singer or an artist?”

“When she’s a junior in high school and she still says that’s what she wants to be,” he replied.

I am a hypocrite.  I aspire to be a writer, but do not want my daughter to want to be an artist.  Somehow it’s okay that I want to be a writer in my spare time because I have a real job.  Since writing is just a hobby, it’s okay…except even then it’s not really.  When I was at a work meeting recently with 60 people we all had to go around the room and tell our “secret talent.”  One woman said she used to have a food blog with over 100,000 views.  One woman can herd goats.  A man explained his art – oil on hammered metal – and when my turn came I said, “I am a knitter.”  Others went on to reveal things like a competitive pole dancing talent and I wondered why I couldn’t bring myself to say that I am a writer or that I recently finished my first novel.  Why is writing more embarrassing than pole dancing or knitting?

One of my issues is that in all areas of life I am in a rut.  My real job isn’t going well and inevitably the place I spend 40 (+ or – 20) hours a week impacts the rest of my life.  When work goes down the toilet so does my general outlook on life, and as a result  work starts going even worse and the spiral continues downward.  Eventually I don’t want to work, parent, write or knit or do much of anything but sit in the parking lot at work and dread my day.

I’m bad at my job which means my whole outlook on me is a mess.  I’m obviously a crappy writer and mother and wife and child and knitter: you should see the mess I just made out of the blanket I am working on.  When things get like this nothing will convince me that I don’t suck and I’ll find endless examples to support my theory.  (My husband will tell you I am a joy to live with when I get in this place.) If I’m getting consistent external feedback that supports my crappiness vision then things go from bad to worse, and I’m getting that right now in vast quantities.  Ergo, I am not in a good place.

Then today I read this amazing article in the Washington Post that promises to fix my “negative self talk” problem.  I am supposed to write three things I liked about myself everyday before I go to bed and read the ever growing list when I wake up each morning.  I emailed the Washington Post article author to commit to the project, because I think accountability is important for me to stick with this.

So here I am at the end of the first rotten day and I need to start my list.  As much as I want to rant about my shortcomings I’ll do the assignment, mostly because I need a deadline to stop being miserable.  If things are not better in 30 days, either due to this exercise or some other reason, I can assess bigger changes.

My first list:

1. I like people even more for their quirkiness: for example my daughter’s friend who only eats ~6 foods.  It makes her parents crazy, but I just adore that uniqueness about her.

2. I said hello to my friend’s stepdaughter when I saw her at the garden store, even thought she was with her mom. It was a little awkward explaining the relationship to her mom, but worth it to see the joy in the girl’s eyes at being recognized by a grown up in an unexpected place.  I like that I think kids are people too.

3.  I asked a friend to recommend a recipe so I can make a dinner for a family friend whose dad died.  She is a very healthy eater, so my normal comfort food options are no good.  I like that when I comfort friends I try to do it in a way that is thoughtful.

Now I need to transcribe these into my notebook and read them tomorrow morning.  Hopefully in 30 days I’ll have a perspective that helps me realize my dreams, gets me out of my own way, and let’s me confidently claim my unique talents.

 

The hippest new blogging event

On By aftheadIn Uncategorized2 Comments

Hello all my blogging buddies!  Here is your formal invitation to join me at the hippest new blogging event in town.  Marquessa is hosting the 5 à 7 Blogging Event next Wednesday (March 16th, 2016) and all the cool cats will be there.

Wait, what is a  5 à 7 you ask?  I had no idea either, but I learned that it’s how they say “happy hour” in Montreal.  Never again will I settle for a lame American happy hour, once I learn how to pronounce 5 à 7.  (Can you hear it in your head with a bit of Fonzie American twang “five aay seven”?)

Go check out the event, then prepare yourself.  You’ll have two hours to:

  • Visit Marquessas’s amazing blog, Simply Marquessa, at the appointed time (5:00 – 7:00 EST)
  • Introduce yourself and your blog
  • Leave a link to your best, favorite, most amazing blog post in the comments, mentioning if your link contains MATURE/18+ content
  • shamelessly tell the other party-goers what is awesome about the post
  • Visit three other links that pique your interest to keep the party going, and comment shamelessly about how amazing they are

All the details are on Simply Marquessa, so make sure you read the whole invite so you don’t accidentally wear the wrong thing.  (Wait, is cocktail attire required?)  Myself, I’m going to buy some new shoes tomorrow and find a frock to wear, even if Marquessa says only grannies wear frocks.  Pshaw.

Oh, and if you want to add this event to your calendar, use the button below.  It will only work for a Google calendar, but really, you should have a Google calendar…all the cool kids do.

Can’t wait to mix and mingle with you all!

 

Help me pick my yarn

On By aftheadIn Uncategorized19 Comments

I’ve started a new knitting project and I am looking to the blogosphere to help me choose my yarn. The pattern is the Purl Soho stitch block cowl.  It’s a gorgeous cowl with three blocks of knitting:  one neutral section; one neutral and solid section; and one neutral, solid and variegated section.  the below image is from Purl Soho’s site.  Isn’t it beautiful?  The knitting is filled with techniques I’ve never used and amazing color, so there is so much fun to be had; I love this project.

stitch-block-cowl-600-10

The neutral block is on the needles, and that color is a done deal, but I’m torn about the solid (equivalent of the yellow in the Purl Soho picture) and the variegated (the equivalent of the gold/maize in the Purl Soho picture).  I’ve got three choices and would love to hear your thoughts about the relative beauty or not-beauty of each one.  I love them all, but they are so different, and I really don’t want to make three cowls (because I’d have to buy six more skeins of the neutral color and that would be a lot of money and time and cowls.)

Option 1 – The Hobbit Cowl – Earthy and dark, reminiscent of little underground homes.

Color 1: Purl Soho’s Worsted9832 Twist in Sea Salt

Color 2: Madelinetosh Tosh Merino in Shire

Color 3: Purl Soho’s Worsted Twist in Moody Green

Option 2 – The Sunset Cowl – White puffy clouds set afire by the setting sun

Color 1: Purl Soho’s Worsted Twist in Sea Salt

Color 2: Madelinetosh Tosh Merino in Spicewood

Color 3: Purl Soho’s Worsted Twist in Clementine Orange

Option 3: The Scottish Cowl – The variety of Highland greens enjoyed with a cup of tea.

Color 1: Purl Soho’s Worsted Twist in Sea Salt

Color 2: Madelinetosh Tosh Vintage in Earl Grey

Color 3: Purl Soho’s Worsted Twist in Cardamom Green

Which option calls to you, my blogging friends?  Leave your thoughts in the comments.  I’ve probably got a week until I need the other solid, so vote soon, and vote often.  Thanks for your help!

The troll mirror 

On By aftheadIn Uncategorized2 Comments

Remember the magic mirror at work?  The one that makes this aging wrinkling expanding lady feel a little bit pretty?  Well, I found its evil cousin this week.

Prior to the beginning of my two-day meeting I used the public restroom at the Residence Inn hosting us.  After washing my hands I went to check that my dress wasn’t tucked into my tights.  There before me was a fat squat version of myself.  I gasped and checked to see if I had an evil ugly twin sister standing behind me, but no, this reflected troll was me!  I raced out in horror, but did check to see if my troll underware was showing before I fled.

It was a scarring experience, but I am brave so immediately told a friend, “I am either a hideous troll person or the mirror in that bathroom is horrible.”  She is brave too and went to investigate.  Thankfully she also reflected a squat version of herself.  (Well, I was thankful anyway.  I don’t think she was.)

For two days I warned all the women at the meeting with whom I had even a passing relationship.  Why?  Because this was one of those dress-up meetings.  A meeting where you try on your outfits at home before you pack, and bring coordinated accessories.  A meeting where you check a bag because you want your full sized products.  It wasn’t a beauty pageant or a meeting about how we looked, but it was a business meeting with posturing and politics and one of our female weapons is looking good. Nothing can diminish that power like the fear that our carefully prepared shell is ugly.  No one else deserved the self-esteem hit I took.

Something magical happened with the sharing.  The mirror became a joke, “the troll mirror.”  A joke shared only between the women of the group.  The men heard about the horror, but claimed they had no portal to the bizarro world in their bathroom.  We would laugh with each other in the restroom as our features gently expanded, stretched and shrunk if we moved in front of the mirror.  We all celebrated that we didn’t really look like that.

In the sharing of our secret worries about how we look and our insecurities we grew closer. The inside joke will make us evaluate mirrors at future meetings.  The experience made me bolder at the meeting: more willing to ask hard questions and risk embarrassment.  The troll mirror had a different kind of magic then my office mirror.

In the end, it made me really brave.  Brave enough to take a troll picture of myself and post it on my blog.  In my hipster troll outfit of jeans and my winter coat the effect is diminished, but not entirely.  I am not this squat.

Oh, and the sunglasses I have on?  Those are my rose colored glasses.  So while I might look hideous, the colors were bright and beautiful to my eyes.  Tomorrow I’ve got to get a picture of myself in the work magic mirror in the magic sunglasses to heal my self image.

My parenting mantra?  Sit on your hands.

On By aftheadIn Uncategorized16 Comments

If you could hear inside my head you would hear the mantra repeated over and over.

Sit on your hands.  She’s doing fine.

Sit on your hands.  You already know how to sew.

Sit on your hands.  She is feeding herself and who cares if there is applesauce in her eyebrows?

It takes literal physical restraint for me to let my daughter do it herself sometimes. I see her struggling and I just want to reach out and help her, to get her past the hard part, to do it for her, but I don’t.  My hands start to move from my side toward her and I stop them.  It is the hardest, most important parenting lesson I teach myself over and over: she will only learn to do it for herself if I stay out of her way.


Friday night she decided she wanted to learn how to knit, again.  This will be the third time I have taught her.  Each time I have knit to show her, then sat behind her and knit with her hands over mine, then sat on my hands and let her knit, and by knit I mean drop stitches, make stitches with an accidental yarn over, created twisted stitches, knit the same stitch twice and finally give up in frustration.  So we put the knitting away for another time.

This time we started the same way, but at the end of the night when she had eight stitches, instead of the twelve I cast on, and a couple of large holes in her work, she didn’t get frustrated.  She just said, “That’s okay.  This one is just practice.”

Then she put her work down, kissed it, and said “I’ll see you in the morning knitting!”

I didn’t pick it up for her.  I did not go back and fix the mistakes.  I walked past the five rows on her needles and saw what I might be able to teach her to make her work better but I did not do it for her.  I sat on my hands, because I already know how to knit.

Saturday she picked it up again.  Now she has three holes and fifteen stitches, but five inches of something that looks like knitting.  She’s so proud.  She wants to take it to our friend’s house today, because that mom is a knitter too, and she wants to show off.


We hauled out my first knitting project, a lovely burnt orange…thing, and looked at my holes and my wonky first attempts next to hers and talked about why they were different and how they were the same.  As she watches me finish my first adult size sweater she understands that I started, twelve years ago, with something that looks just like what she’s making now.

“Mom, you’ve only been knitting for twelve years.  If I start now, imagine how good I’ll be when I’m your age!”

It’s true, but she’ll only get that good if she does it for herself and I keep sitting on my hands.

It’s beginning to look a lot like springtime!

On By aftheadIn Uncategorized4 Comments

Here in Aftheadville we’ve had a few weekends of 70 degree weather and just enough moisture to convince our spring bulbs that it’s time to pop out of the ground and look pretty.  Thank goodness for these random spring days in February, or I might not make it to May when spring finally decides to settle in and stay.  Here’s hoping you are getting a break from winter wherever you are!
 

I am a Stalkerish Blogging Friend

On By aftheadIn Uncategorized13 Comments

Don’t think I’m not paying attention to you, blogging friends.  Don’t think that I don’t walk the aisles of Target thinking about you and your blog posts about your childhood dreams and your strange obsessions, because I do.  I think about you all the time.

@whereshappy, You remember your post about the Barbie head?  I commented on it, because like you, I never got the disembodied Barbie head as a child. I confessed that I can also can’t do hair now, and shared my deep dark secret that my mother dared to buy my daughter the toy she wouldn’t buy me.  Maybe that just seemed like a normal comment to you, an innocent exchange, but it wasn’t.  Months later when I was at Target I saw this doll, complete with “Cut & Restyle EXTENSIONS!” and hands with fingernails and I took a picture just for you, so that you would know I was thinking about you.  I didn’t send it to you, but I took the picture…just…for…you.

@amiewrites74, I know you haven’t been able to find Cadbury mini-eggs until just recently.  You’ve been blogging about them over and over and over and over.  I’m not as good a friend as your friend Violet – see I even know your friends names and how nice they are – so I didn’t send you a box of them, but I did take a picture of the monster display in the aisles of Target for you.  You can’t really tell, but there are normal mini-eggs, white chocolate mini-eggs and dark chocolate mini-eggs.  You’ve never talked about the dark chocolate ones, so I told you in the comments of your most recent post.  I hope my news offsets the creepiness of my actions.  (I don’t want to let you know that I really don’t like Cadbury mini-eggs for fear I’ll chase you away as my blogging friend.)  #Minieggsallyearlong

So blogging friends, don’t worry, I’m paying attention, and maybe the next time I’m at Target I’ll be thinking of you…

Flataloes of Happiness sculpture on 16th Street Mall in Denver CO

The Flataloes of Happiness

On By aftheadIn Uncategorized4 Comments

Last week I had a meeting in Denver.  Having worked for years downtown, but now working in Golden, I always enjoy the opportunity to spend time in the city, especially when it is 70 degrees in February.  All my old parking lots have been turned into buildings, so I grabbed an expensive underground spot – when did parking start costing $20?  Thankfully I was rewarded by the beautiful weather and The Flataloes of Happiness when I emerged from my subterranean price gouging.

The Flataloes, so called only by me, are an outdoor public art exhibit that has been in Denver for as long as I can remember.  The colorful two dimensional herd currently roams down 16th street.  I never miss a chance to mosey among them, petting their thin backs and admiring their calves while anyone with me rolls their eyes in impatience.  I love them!

One of the things I love about blogging is being able to delve into random research about things that have always fascinated me but I’ve never bothered to learn about, so time to tell you what I learned about the Flataloes.

Nothing.

In this crazy Internet age my searches turned up nothing about my beloved sculptures…or basically nothing:

  1. I learned that Bill Gian created the Flataloes, if Getty Image captions are trustworthy.
  2. Some angry guy who hates Denver’s public art gave them a slight mention at the end of a ranting blog post, but has less information about the artist or the work than I do, because I learned the artist’s first name.

Therefore I take this opportunity to claim the Internet space for the Flataloes of Happiness sculpture by Bill Gian on the 16th street mall in Denver, Colorado which has been delighting my afthead since I was a wee child.  Let the urban legend propagate until I learn the truth.

Long live the Flataloes.

No one cares that I’m sick

On By aftheadIn Uncategorized10 Comments

Oh man, I have been so sick.  I’ve had this nasty cough and cold for 10 days and haven’t been able to write or blog anything.  My mind, a haze of sleep deprivation and germiness, just couldn’t come up with anything anyone would want to read.

At 2:30 a.m. I’d lie awake in a stupor and think, “I’m going to blog about how much this cough syrup I bought sucks.  I’m going to tell my readers about how it’s left me stuck between sleep and awake and hasn’t even calmed my cough as it promised.”  Thankfully I had enough awareness to know that no one wants to read that.  Also the cough syrup had caused my fingers to become detached from my body floating lazily near my hands, but immovable.

Standing in the shower using the gross NeilMed sinus wash bottle to rinse out my nose – must avoid a sinus infection – I ponder how much money this peddler of squishy bottles and salt packets is worth.  Maybe he’s one of those people who makes $99,000 every two weeks.  My mind wanders to why so many salt packets come with each bottle I purchase, because I know I have an entire shoebox of salt packets in my linen closet: enough to rinse my nose out every day for years.  I’m distracted from my revery by the green snot crab that has just landed in the bathtub and squiggles down the drain.  After I dry off I realize that I should not blog about rinsing out my nose, because no one wants to read that.

This morning I woke up and knew I was feeling better because the words and stories returned to my brain.  Soap day, my pretty fingernails, the flat-aloes I saw yesterday and the beautiful weather all poured into my head as likely blog topics I needed to write.  Then my mind jumped to the critique I received on my novel from an agent and I longed to go downstairs and start removing the piles of “He smiled, he walked, he looked” worthless phrases from my novel.  She said it made my story plod, and I don’t want to plod, I want to fly.

It’s such a relief to have the story gates open again and be able to step away from the sickness induced drivel that was drifting through my head the past ten days.  I can’t wait to get started, but first I’m going to post publish on this post.  I hope it doesn’t go viral.

Ba dum bum, ching!

The $99,763.68 Mistake

On By aftheadIn Uncategorized6 Comments

Something strange happened in my bank account last week.  In addition to my normal paycheck, a much larger, more significant deposit was made: $99,763.68 showed up in my account.  Before I even noticed the hugely increased balance I was notified by my employer that there had been an error and that they were fixing the problem.  I was not going to get to keep this unexpected windfall.

It got me wondering though.  How much would I need to make to get regular paychecks of $99,763.68?  I get paid 26 times a year, so that would be an annual net income of  $2,593,855.68.  Assuming that puts me in the top tax bracket, and assuming that tax bracket is 36%, that means I would have a gross pay of  $4,052,899.50.  That doesn’t include things like saving for retirement or dental insurance, but I think if I made this much those types of payments become negligible.

So who makes $4.05M?  The obvious place to start is athletes.

If this was my regular paycheck I would make about the same as:

The 170th top paid NBA player,  Lavoy Allen from the Indiana Pacers

The 321st top paid NFL players, Kory Lichtensteiger from the Washington Redskins and Brandon Fusco from the Minnesota Vikings

The 194th top paid NHL player, Jake Gardiner from the Toronto Maple Leafs

All of these players have an annual salary of $4,050,000

The MLB 279th highest players are Jeurys Familia from the New York Mets and
Ivan Nova from the New York Yankees with an annual salary of $4,100,000

Now, I’m not a huge sports fan, but I live with a huge sports fan and I watch shows on ESPN at least weekly and I’ve never heard of any of these players.  Maybe they are big names, and I’m just ignorant, but it makes me wonder where a $4.05M annual salary is in the rankings for each of the pro sports.

In the 2014-2015 season, Business Insider reported

NBA average annual salary: $4.58M

NFL average annual salary: $2.11M

NHL average annual salary: $2.62M

MLB average annual salary: $4.17M

So I’m going to put this in perspective.  The epic, mammoth mistake of a check that I received this week is about the size of an average MLB player’s paycheck and less than the average NBA player’s paycheck.

The average MLB and NBA player takes home over $99,000 every other week.

It’s staggering to think about.  It makes me understand, a little bit, why professional sports players are draped in gold, put diamonds the size of marbles in their ears, have huge mansions and drive amazing cars.  They make a staggering amount of money.  So much, that it’s almost hard to conceptualize.  So here are things you could do with that much money.

You could buy a new Tesla 90D, my dream car, every other week at a cash price of $97,500.  That’s twenty-six new Teslas a year.

Mortgage calculators show me that buying a $5M house, and putting down one bi-weekly paycheck as a down payment would lead to a $31,000 monthly payment, easily doable with a $198,000 monthly salary.  Heck, you could probably swing two $5M houses and still have plenty left over for groceries.

Your daily paycheck would be $7,106.  You couldn’t quite afford to buy a new 65″ OLED TV every day – the  most expensive I could find on Best Buy – but you could come close.

Every single hour of your year you would be making $296.  Even while you were sleeping.  That’s a 32 GB iPod Touch and a $50 iTunes gift card to go with it every hour.  (Okay, maybe only a $25 gift card if you include tax.)

Now if you ever find yourself in a lucrative career, say as an average MLB player, and are offered $4M annually I hope you find my analysis helpful as you decide how to spend your new found wealth.  Sadly my windfall disappeared from my bank account, but we’ll see if the mistake shows up again next pay day!  If so, I’ll be better prepared.