Surveys Are Like Sock Drawers.

So I really hope I’m not making this up, but I’m puh-retty sure I heard this one saying one time about how you can tell a lot about a person by the state of their sock drawer..?  (Confession: this might have been on Veggie Tales.)

I really like it when bloggers take or make surveys.  Yeah, you can learn a lot about someone through their regularly scheduled (or, in my case, wonderfully erratic) posting, but surveys pose the deep questions, man; they probe people for all these little delicious bits and pieces you would have never known about them otherwise.

So surveys are like sock drawers.  Just for all y’all, since I love ya so much, I took a trip into the dank abyss and snapped a photo.  Any psychologists in the audience?  I’m sure this is a veritable peep into my soul.  Let’s see, we have…a massive bag of leftover Halloween candy…socks that haven’t fit since I was 6…old bottles of nail polish, a beanbag, dirt, grime, pine needles, miscellaneous hodgepodge…a baby doll bottle…several dead spiders…

*clears throat nervously*

I’m really in the survey-taking kinda mood right now, but incidentally…I’m not, actually.  No pre-existing surveys, at any rate.  I just want to tell you guys random facts about myself, so I think I’ll pass it off under the guise of creating my own survey! and you guys can participate as well, either in the comments (answer your favorite questions!) or on your own blogs!  Link up!  Let’s have a party!

Favorite type of workout?  Oh, gosh and golly.  Why do I pick such hard questions?  I guess if I’m being totally honest, I like a leisurely but looong bike ride.  Walks are nice too.  Pretty scenic, none too aerobic.

Favorite type of cheese (or cheeze)?  Parmigiano reggiano, definitely.  It does contain rennet :(, but…I make the exception because…it’s delicious.

You’re on death row but they have allowed you to choose a most extravagant last meal.  What is it?  A hot fudge brownie sundae the size of my torso.

Favorite variable to use in an algebra problem?  I must confess I’m pretty traditional.  I love x.  In fact it always really bugs me when a variable is t or y or something if there’s not already an x in the problem.  Please just stick with x.

Favorite outfit?  I’m mainly just including this question because I just got a really cute outfit from ModCloth with a pretty yellow cardigan, a typewriter-patterend tee, and wedges.  Look.

Hashtag selfie swag.  We’ll try to ignore how atrocious I am at taking selfies.  Also, from this rather awkward angle, you can’t tell that the paper coming out of the typewriter ironically says “laptop”, which is one of the best parts of the shirt.  Alas.

This is literally my only outfit that looks like…an outfit, and I normally haven’t got an ounce of fashion sense, so I’m really hoping someone else will take this survey and give me some inspiration.  Pretty please?

Favorite caffeinated beverage?  For me it really depends.  If I need a lot of caffeine then I’ll drink some coffee (black, I don’t mind), and I do like coffee, but tea offers so much more variety! I really like chai spice in the morning.

oooh tea is so dramatic

One of your favorite fictional characters has shown up on your doorstep, ready to take you on the adventure of a lifetime.  Who are they, and where do you go?  It’s the Doctor.  Preferably the tenth incarnation, though I wouldn’t say no to 9.  I suppose we go to Barcelona. 🙂

Any tattoos you’d like?  I feel like this says a lot about a person.  I am actually DYING to come of age and have full autonomy over my body and write sompin’ pretty on it.  (Please do not suddenly go into cardiac arrest, grandparents reading this.)  I’d like a few, actually, probably on my back, literary ones; lines from poems that speak to me and that come back to me a lot or inside references to favorite works.  After reading Good Omens, I really want “ineffability and all that” somewhere, like along a collarbone.  Some Sarah Kay lines, too, like “this world is made of sugar” (from one of my favorite spoken word poems of all time, B.)  And I absolutely PROMISE to the adults in my life that I won’t be rash about this; I think my rule will be that if I still love a line or a quote as much as I did when I first read it 1-2 years later, then it can go somewhere on my person. 🙂 I hope to gradually amass a little collection of my favorite words.  I’ve given this a good deal of thought, and yes I KNOW they will be with me forever and I KNOW I will become elderly and they will sag and spot but HOPEFULLY only people I really trust are going to be seeing my back when I’m in my 70s-80s and onwards.  ALSO, if I get really fit and well-toned before getting said tattoos, it will be a good incentive to keep the muscle definition, since if I let it turn back into flab the tattoos will warp. 😉

(I’m not a huge fan of needles or blood [gah, blood especially], so this is an odd little yearning on my part, but incidentally I am a fan of meaningful and beautiful body art.  Huh.  Who woulda thought…)

Hair color?  Would you ever dye it?  Chop it all off?  Brown.  Some people say it’s blonde but then I look at them funny.I have chopped it all off before!  Well, not all off, but, you know, most of it.

I don’t know about dyeing it.  I’m really envious of those lovely ladies who are rockin’ blue or red locks, but, deep down, I know I’m not meant to be one of them.  It would be cool to have orange hair but not very socially acceptable and I am not deep enough into don’t-give-a-crap mode to go for it.  I am thinking about getting highlights once it gets longer, though.

Favorite smell?  Just-baked brownies, vanilla extract, old books.  (That was three.  Whoopsies.)

Favorite sound?  Laughter (certain people’s especially), Citrus whistling (as long as it’s not the middle of the night), little kids with adorable lisps reading aloud, pages of a book turning, pens scratching paper, marbles rolling across a hardwood floor, meadowlark song.  That was too many.  Whoopsies.

For anyone interested in taking the survey themselves, here are the questions, in order:

1. Favorite type of workout?
2. Favorite type of cheese (or cheeze)?
3. Last meal.
4. Favorite variable to use in an algebra problem?
5. Favorite outfit?
6. Favorite caffeinated beverage?
7. One of your favorite fictional characters has shown up on your doorstep ready to take you on the adventure of a lifetime. Who are they, and where do you go?
8. Any tattoos you’d like?
9. Hair color? Would you ever dye it? Chop it all off?
10. Favorite smell?
11. Favorite sound?

Also, you gotta show us your sock drawer.  😉  No straightening up beforehand, that’s cheating.

A good breakaway from the monotony of “what’s your dream vacation?”-type surveys, methinks.  🙂  I’m really dying to know what everyone’s favorite variable is.

SURPRISE

Sorry.

Sorry.

Sorry.Sorry.Sorry.Sorry.Sorry.Sorry.Sorry.Sorry.Sorry.  Sorry.Sorry.Sorry.Sorry.Sorry.Sorry.Sorry.Sorry.Sorry.  Sorry.Sorry.Sorry.Sorry.Sorry.Sorry.Sorry.Sorry.Sorry.  Sorry.Sorry.Sorry.Sorry.Sorry.Sorry.Sorry.Sorry.Sorry.  Sorry.Sorry.Sorry.Sorry.Sorry.Sorry.Sorry.Sorry.Sorry.  Sorry.Sorry.Sorry.Sorry.Sorry.Sorry.Sorry.Sorry.Sorry.  Sorry.Sorry.Sorry.Sorry.Sorry.  Sorry.Sorry.Sorry.Sorry.   Sorry.Sorry.Sorry.Sorry.Sorry.  Sorry.Sorry.  Sorry.Sorry. Sorry.Sorry.Sorry.Sorry.Sorry.Sorry.Sorry.Sorry.Sorry.  Sorry.Sorry.  Sorry.Sorry.Sorry.Sorry.Sorry.Sorry.Sorry.Sorry.Sorry.  Sorry.Sorry.Sorry.Sorry.Sorry.Sorry.Sorry.Sorry.

I think that’s exactly 100 sorry’s–not counting that last one just there–but, well, there’s no way I’m going back and checking.  If you count and come up with another number, prize* for you!

So, ergh.  I know this thing died went into hibernation, and I know that was a bad move on many accounts and I also know that it was entirely my fault.  I HAVE NOT POSTED SINCE SEPTEMBER 15TH LAST YEEAAR I MEAN THERE IS OBVIOUSLY SOMETHING WRONG WITH THIS.

The abbreviated version of the story is this: I actually did have a lot of ideas for posts and such that I would sit on, and then try to go about compiling, but something about the last few months (new school? insecurity?) let my inner perfectionist take an extreme hold and really start to stifle my…everything.  I couldn’t write a post or snap pictures to put up here without them being absolutely perfect, and obviously that was never going to happen, no matter how many hours I spent slaving over writing and photo and video editing.  Hence, no posts.

I’m going to do something insane here and not edit this draft once I finish typing it up.  It’s kind of nerve-wracking to think about, actually (ugh, I am so completely Type A), but it’ll probably be good for me.  Actually, if I want to jump back into this whole blogging thing, which I do, this is probably going to be the only way I’ll have time to do it–maybe I can type up a few posts per week, but I’m certainly not going to pour as much time into tweaking and nitpicking as I’m used to.

THERE IS TOO MUCH HOMEWORK.

(If you can count up the number of times I’ve ever complained of that on here, I will actually legitimately send you a $15 gift card or something.  We can work something out.)

Actually, I’m on winter break right now, and it’s New Year’s Eve, so it feels like a good time to jump back into this.

I know running TGITO was A Good Thing.  It gave me writing and social marketing and photography practice, it probably made me A Better Person, and it definitely helped me Feel Better About Myself.  (This is hard for perfectionists, you’ll have to understand.)  I let it bottom out, and that was A Bad Thing.  I don’t really have a constant in my life, something that always makes me smile and that I do just for me, anymore.  I needed to cut off blogging for a few months because it was ceasing to be that thing, instead becoming very stressful and anxiety-inducing and altogether just too much effort.

Once you hit high school you turn into a lazy sack of caffeine and societal angst.

I wasn’t warned.

Anyway, though, in spite of it all, I’m back.  I took a long enough hiatus that it feels a bit nostalgic to open up WordPress again, and also utterly terrifying.  My inner perfectionist is wringing her hands over the fact that this post serves really no point except to make a dramatic reentrance, but I suppose she’ll have to learn to be okay with that.  I definitely want to continue to blog!  I’m not exactly sure what I’ll start posting about from now on, but we’ll get into that later. 🙂

It’s the new year.  (Speaking of, Happy New Year, everybody!!)  365 blank pages that I’ll really try hard not to let whoosh by unfilled like 2013.  I don’t want to proclaim any grand resolutions here, for obvious reasons (namely the flaws of human nature), but I do want to keep writing and posting and I do want to approach the coming year with some sort of achievable goal, instead of just waking up every day and winging it (which as it turns out doesn’t really work for me).

2014 promises to be magical.  Justin Bieber is retiring from music.  Peter Capaldi has already argued with Steven Moffat over the sexism in Doctor Who scripts.  I’m sportin’ some pretty awesomesauce new glasses.  The little ponytail in my hair doesn’t look quite so awkward now.  I’m learning how to navigate the murky waters of the high school social scene, and hellyes I’m flubbing up a lot along the way, but learning is never a bad thing.  Plus my birthday was 22 days ago, so I’m rocking a brand-spankin’-new age to take for a spin and mess it up as much as possible in what is hopefully a joyous and eclectic explosion of orange.

Also I’m back.

Have a lovely day! 😀

(You should leave a comment on this post if you’re reading it, just cuz I feel kinda lonely and hope everyone didn’t forget about me. 🙂  I don’t care at all what it says.  Resolutions, the color of your pinky toenail, your favorite liquid to consume, your innermost secrets, musings on the Novikov Self-Consistency Principle.  Really.  Just write a thing.  I love you.  Thanks bunches.  Best wishes.)

*prize may or may not be only my eternal adoration and gracious admission of defeat

The Pixie Cut Chronology

Pura vida, amigas!  If you’re reading this and if WordPress is being its own efficient beastlike self, then I should be either on a plane or in Costa Rica right now!  I didn’t want to leave you hanging, though, so I’ve prepared a little stack of posts to be published in my absence.  (No, we’re not going to have internet in Costa Rica, so everything you will read in the next 12 days [which may not be a lot] shall be scheduled  Don’t be offended if I don’t reply to any commenty things!).

While in my last beast-related post,  I did talk about how much I was loving the pixie and all that it’s done for me, a few months back I felt ready for a change; ever since then, the Beast has been slowly and steadily allowed more leash, delicately creeping its tendrils down over my ears and spiraling out around the back.   I’ve been wanting to do a chronology post like this for quite some time, looking back on the good, the bad, and the ugly phases of my pixie cut as it grew out–and also probably help others considering going for the chop figure out what the growing-out process was going to be like!  I honestly think this is the scariest part of the cut…the dreaded awkward stage is NOT a mere myth to dissuade you from going for the chop!

But why did I choose to write up such a post now, you ask?  Well, something prolific in my journey has just occurred…

I CAN HAZ PONYTAIL!!

Granted, it’s the kind of ponytail that is so puny it makes me uncomfortable and not one that could be worn in public, but now all that scruff at the nape can finally be gathered into something concrete and you guys, they grow up so fast.

(Also, just a fair warning here:  For obvious reasons, the following post will be a whole lot of mah face.  Prepare yourselves.)

Let’s flash back in time to September 1st, 2012…

It had just been chopped.  It lay flat and shiny and everything and I loved it.

This is what it originally looked like from the back and-yes-don’t-worry-I-shaved-my-neck-after-this.

I was trying to take a satisfactory profile pic for the bloggity once–it was up here for about ten minutes and then I tore it down.  Anyway, there ya go.  It still looked pretty dude-ish at this point.
Oh look, lovelies!  It’s my oh-so-stylish hair (and post-stage-crying-raccoon-eyes) from after my school play!

In March, it was still rather short, but the back was beginning to “flip out” and develop a mind of its own (I still can’t figure out how to tame this).Yes, I take pictures of myself whenever I catch my hair on a good day night.  Sometimes this just happens to be when I’m wearing fuzzy pink monkey pajamas.  Don’t judge?  K thx!  (Also, please ignore my overly sullen expression in this picture!)

Oh look, fierce face.

I know, Mother Dearest.  You’re feeling uncomfortable because of how friggin attractive I look in this picture, right?

You can’t even see my hair in this picture.  I just threw it in here for pride purposes.

And here is where the shag begins in earnest.  About 3.5 months after officially starting to grow it out, my bangs have become really too long to call bangs anymore and I’ve got these spiraly-tendrily things in front of my ears.  (You can tell I’m really educated in technical hair vocabulary, right?)  At best (in this picture) it looks windswept and cool, at worst it looks like the locks of some sort of hippie surfer dude.  (Not that that’s a bad look–it’s just, I am not surfer dude…)

And, finally, here is a little thumbnail still from a vlog I have filmed but have yet to publish.  As you can see, the general shape of everything is changing–the sections over my ears are beginning to flip out, the “bangs” are “waving” more, and the fringe is continuing to bush.  This is the phase of growing out the pixie that’s hard on one’s self-esteem–sometimes you just have to live with the fact that you look like a surfer dude dork.  Or wear a hat.  Yeah, I would recommend picking out an arsenal of killer-ass hats before you embark on the journey of the growing out.  I don’t follow my own advice.  I either throw a scarf on or burn in shame as strangers interacting with me mess up my gender.

I hope this helped answer some of the common questions about the growing-out stages, and whether or not I would still recommend going for the chop!  (In answer to that:  Yes.  Yes, I still heartily recommend it.)  Keep in mind that my hair is VERY thick (think Hermione Granger) and wavy (downright curly when it’s short–it also refuses to obey even the most intense flat iron), so your purty lil’ pixie will by no means look like mine as it struggles its way toward a bob.  *Cue husky surfer dude voice*  Just have fun, and enjoy the journey, man!  It ain’t so bad.  (Just get some hats.)

***************************************************************************************

Hope y’all are havin’ a lovely weekend!  Right now the stress of batch-posting is leaving me too burnt out to come up with a sufficient conclusion to this post.  Perhaps I shall edit it and wrap things up more tidily when I get back and I’m all blissed out on UV rays and coconut milk.  Adios!

The Killing of the Beast, Part 4: What Getting My Hair Cut Off Has Done For Me

Waaaybackwhen, in late summer, before the school year even started, I had a blog mini-series called The Killing of the Beast, dedicated to my journey towards chopping off the foot of thick massive hair I’ve toted around with me for all my life.

It looked like this.  Or, at least, it kind of did; those are highly pixelated images and my physical appearance has changed a lot since then, due to growing and braces and yesh.

I hated it.

On a good day, my appearance was satisfactory to me–on a bad day I absolutely loathed it.  This sounds extremely vain to admit, but there you are.  In short (hah), there was a lot of it, there was a lot of frizz and flyaways and there was very little motivation to do fancy girlish things with it.  And so it stayed down.  Every day.

I’d taken to calling it “The Beast” because of its abhorrent and untameable nature, and joked around with my friends about it.  “I’m wearing a hat because The Beast wasn’t cooperating today,” or “You know, sometimes I think I might be almost pretty were it not for The Beast.”  We all laughed about it; in truth, all through last year I suffered through seriously low self-esteem (not just because of my hair, but that was certainly a contributing factor) and developed disordered eating habits, compulsive exercising habits, and did a lot of hiding behind hats and headscarves.  I feel sick to my stomach writing about this; I’m aware these are really new world teen girl problems, but I do think they’re serious problems nonetheless.  If something had enough power to degrade my confidence in every aspect of my life and make a whole year a hell of hiding behind a mask, it’s by my definition a serious problem.

I recovered.  Obviously there was a much longer backstory involved, but to avoid making this post too long I’ll just say I did a lot of thinking and healthy exercising and eating, and eventually came to a place where I’m okay with myself.  Not narcissistic by any means, but friends with myself.  I accept my faults and forgive myself if I screw something up, much the same way I would with my best friends.  It was a long, excruciating process, but I like to think I’m back now.

Ever since that process began, I’d toyed with the idea of chopping off The Beast–the great majority of it.  It wasn’t just a haircut for me, but something very symbolic.  I was quite literally cutting that toxic era out of my life and welcoming in the new Girl in the Orange, someone who wouldn’t be ashamed of herself and wouldn’t be afraid to know herself.

At the end of the summer, I went out on a limb…and just did it.  (Allow me to add: BAAH THAT PICTURE DOES NOT LOOK LIKE ME;  MY FACE SHAPE HAS CHANGED SO MUCH IN THE PAST SEVEN MONTHS.)  I remember the night exactly–I’d made beef-less stroganoff because beef stroganoff had been my favorite meal as an omnivorous wee young sprite, and I served it over egg noodles, but we were running late to the hair stylist’s so I couldn’t eat it until after the appointment, which ended up being about 7 o’ clock, which is usually SO LATE of a dining time for me.  (It takes A LOTTA TIME to whack that much of a girl’s hair off.)  But adrenaline and endorphins kept me running throughout the appointment and I probably could have gone to bed without supper…which would have been a big first. 🙂  As it was, I didn’t eat right upon getting home–I zoomed into the bathroom and promptly snapped about a bajillion pictures of myself, something I’d NEVER done before–and, yes, most of them turned out dorky, but I was so happy feeling like a normal girl and feeling pretty and taking pictures of myself.

I felt pretty.

Girls aren’t supposed to admit this because it sounds shallow or something, but feeling pretty is important to us, mmmkay?  Maybe it’s shallow and vain or whatever, but I don’t really care.  Personally, I am a firm believer that a gal can be empathetic AND passionate AND intelligent AND a great person WHILE STILL caring about her appearance and wanting to feel beautiful.  Some biological instinct, some characteristic of estrogen, who knows…it’s important to us, so it better be important to everyone else.  Whether it’s getting a haircut, wearing a favorite color, wearing heels or makeup or jewelry–I’m a big supporter in anything that helps a girl feel more beautiful and confident and more like herself–and that’s exactly what this haircut did for me.

More than anything, killing the beast gave me confidence.  This is the kicker, people.  More than anything else–shiny hair or fancy dresses or a nice figure or sparkling eyes–the thing that makes a girl seem beautiful is confidence.  No one is attracted to a girl who believes she’s worth less than someone else or doesn’t respect herself.  Don’t get me wrong, you don’t have to go full-out diva–you can still be kind to others, considerate, and responsible while treating yourself like the prize you are!  Making the conscious decision to realize you have EVERY RIGHT TO BE ON THIS EARTH and are worth just as much as any other girl, any other person on this planet, will transform your life.

Not only did my life take a positive U-turn with the Beast’s death, I participate in life more now–I suspect it’s a combination of a new self-image and starting this positive creative outlet of a blog, but I now feel like I deserve respect and am less likely to waste my time with people who won’t give me that.  Additionally, I feel way more confident jumping into activities or passions that I would definitely have been too scared to try previously, thinking that people would judge or belittle me (*coughcough* food blog *coughcough*) or that I would judge or belittle myself.  (I was really good at doing that.)  Getting my hair cut off, starting this blog, making a conscious decision to get my life back on track and gain killer confidence with it–that’s when The Girl in the Orange was born.

On that note, I want to thank all TGITO followers who have supported me through this journey through your simple presence and your feedback!  This sounds like a farewell–I promise, I won’t be leaving the blogosphere anytime soon 🙂 so don’t worry; this post has just got me feeling sentimental.  I love and appreciate you guys so, so much.  Thanks for reading my ramblings and putting up with me. 😀 (*snifflesniffle*)

The face of a gal when she realizes her life just started.

Now whenever I see a girl who’s so obviously hiding behind her hair, I just want to reach out and chop it all off and tell her she’s beautiful!–too bad that, I assume, such an act would not be met with positive reception. 😉  Ah, propriety schmopriety.

2012; hey, that was fun

Happy New Year!!!

So, did you guys stay up until midnight last night?

…I…went to bed at 8:30 didn’t.

Let’s just say I’m a striking example of what sufficient beauty sleep will do to a gal, mmkay? 😉

And now for something massive: for the first time in The Girl in the Orange history, I get to do a YEARLY recap!  (As opposed to my plethora of regular Monthly Recaps.)  Granted, I’ve only blogged for five months in 2012–but I lived through all of it, and as it is now 2013, I think it deserves a little soft reminiscing.

Here it is!:

One YEAR of The Girl in the Orange in terms of…

…food:

Um, I think I “developed” four “recipes” this year??  And they all had to do with oats…what does this say about my character? 😉 (Don’t answer that; it says nothing.  Nothing, apart form the fact that I love oats.)  I think I’m most proud of my Birthday Cake Baked Oatmeal, but that may be because it’s the most recent and because I got to use my new orange camera to photograph it.  It feels strangely independent.

In other foodie realms, I had some mishaps

(ForgottenBeast’s Lentil Flatbread–you need a nonstick pan to make this! D’oh!)

(“Dessert Fruit Calzones”…they didn’t seal well.)

as well as some mind-blowing successes.

(I Know I Said I was Liking Fall, But…)

(PBF’s Peanut Butter Pancakes on the morning of my first 5k!)

What can I say?  I’m blessed enough to eat three five square meals a day and the eatin’s good.  I’ve been cooking on my own since March 2011; but when my food became public by means of this blog, 2012 became more of a year to stretch my wings and gather skills and confidence in the kitchen.  (I even finally mastered pancakes!! 😀  Everyone else says they’re so easy…:(.  They lie!)

…photography:

My favorite food photos of the year.  (You knew my chocolate header one would be in there, didn’t you?) ;P

You guys didn’t see this one; but over the holiday break I was having mucho fun playing with the “selective coloring” feature of my new camera!  This is a mug of blueberry tea, slowly brewing…it’s quite dramatic, non?

Smile, Stitch!

Dog photos as well.  Don’t tell me you can look at that last one without cracking a grin.

…writing and poetry:

That’s right; since this is a YEARLY recap, you get a BONUS category!

I’m in a MUCH better place emotionally this year than I was last year; consequentially, my poetry went waaay downhill this year!  You know what they say: bad times make for good writing.  I found this to be true.  Now that I’m happy I can’t write anything.

But I HAVE started making things I wrote last year more public–I started a Figment account this month (user The Girl in the Orange), for one thing.  As I near (or, just, you know, kind of generally approach) the end of my novel, I’m really focusing on making my work more public–according to literary attorney publishing saint, establishing a formidable online presence is a very good way to attract the attention of potential publishers.

(To any potential publishers reading this: Hi!  I am working on a “Novel” page for this blog with a detailed summary of my work-in-progress, so check back soon!)

AND, I wrote a grand total of over 110,000 words on my novel this year (mostly all in the course of the last five months), and of that I am proud.  It’s not STAGGERINGLY EXCESSIVE, but considering all the other things I was doing (cough cough private school homework, cough cough), I still think that’s acceptable.

…things that made me smile:

Well, I got my hair chopped off.

Big leap, that I’m so glad I took.  (And don’t worry–I shaved the back of my neck after these pictures were taken!) 😉

AAND, I ran my first 5k!  While not a major distance compared to the insane lengths other people run (ultramarathoners, I’m alookin’ at you), it was a big accomplishment for me.

There was one other HUGE lovely in the past year for me, but I’m not quite emotionally ready to post about that yet. 🙂  Let me just say that 2012 was an emotional renewal, of sorts, and I am so much better off now.

And The Girl in the Orange 2012 report is here!  Click below and see all the awesomeness that was the past year (why on earth did I bother to recap it all?).  I find it funny that one of the search engine terms that led people to me most was “mickey mouse pancake mold”… 😉  Here, I’ll humor you.  One more picture.

2012 blog report (compiled by “WordPress stats helper monkeys” ): Here’s an excerpt:

The new Boeing 787 Dreamliner can carry about 250 passengers. This blog was viewed about 1,300 times in 2012. If it were a Dreamliner, it would take about 5 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

Ahh, sweet 2012.  Such nice reminiscences.  I imagine I’ll do a resolution post later on the week, but for now it’s pretty nice to enjoy soft fuzzies, and eat cake for breakfast.  Scratch that, that’s always nice, right?

The Killing of the Beast: Part 3 (The Aftermath)

I drifted to sleep last night on Cloud 9, but, to be honest, I was dreading waking up.  Why, you ask?  Because I’m chronically lazy because when I had long hair, it always looked like I had used it as a bicycle chain in the morning (the oil factor was pretty similar), and I figured that with the combination of my insanely thick wavy hair and its new length, I would be sporting my own miniature afro when I got out of bed.  So imagine my pleasure when it looks pretty much the same as last night even now, save slightly puffier!  Score two for the pixie cut.

I had three major concerns going into this, the only ones that hampered my otherwise blatant enthusiasm:

1.  That the cut would just look weird with my face. That my forehead would look to blocky or my jaw would look too angular.  It doesn’t–if I comb it just right.

2.  That I would end up looking like Justin Bieber.  Can you even imagine that horrific prospect?  Luckily, this was avoided–though I still can do “the flip”.

3.  That my bird wouldn’t recognize me.  I don’t know what I would do with myself if my cockatiel and I weren’t thisclose after my haircut as well.  I have to admit, I was pretty worried at first, when Citrus shied away to the opposite side of his cage when I approached.  After about ten minutes, though, he warmed up and flew over for his favorite thing–kisses on his tummy.  Can I get an ‘awwww!’?

My amazing hairstylist craftily sidestepped all of these pitfalls, leaving me with a haircut I couldn’t be happier with.  I really couldn’t stop smiling as it was getting cut, thinking about what it will be like to walk into school like this on the first day.

And since I like making lists, here’s the top three somewhat-weird factoids about my new hair the next day:

1.  Phantom hair!  This is so bizarre!!  I’ve heard of amputees having an odd feeling, as though their limb was still there, from time to time, but I never imagined it could happen to my hair.  But it’s so true!  And freaky!  Whenever I look in a mirror I feel like the rest of my hair is just behind my neck in a ponytail…and I keep reaching up to tuck it behind my ear.  Which I can’t.  I reach up to smooth the back down, and when my fingers meet my neck instead…that’s just so creepy.

2.  My neck is freezing.  I am rocking the scarf-and-earrings look today.  My poor neck–all its life it has been sheltered with something probably warmer than an alpaca blanket, and now I’m harshly exposing it to the crisp fall air.  My poor baby, I’m sorry.

3.  I thought I would be thinking about my short hair ALL THE TIME after I got it cut, but surprisingly, it only crosses my mind when someone brings it up (or when I’m blogging about it). In fact, I think I was more conscious of the decision before I got it cut, going through yesterday thinking–my last morning with long hair; my last run with long hair.  Now it just feels natural, like it’s been this way all along.

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While there may be more installments in this series, I would like to conclude this particular post with a “disclaimer” of sorts:  I really hope these didn’t come across as the ho-hum, arrogant drawlings of a teenage girl futzing with her hair.  Because for me, at its heart, this haircut marks something much bigger.  I’ve been changing so much on the inside that I needed something to finalize the transition on the outside, to show the world that yes, now I’m different than I was when I lived in Wyoming, but I’m The Girl in the Orange–loud, confident, bold, optimistic, content, kind, free, intelligent.  I strongly hope that those adjectives will be the ones my friends use to describe me whenever I pop into their heads or their vicinities.  I haven’t felt more like myself in a long while.  And as cliche as it sounds, being yourself is the most natural, most empowering feeling in the world.

 

 

The Killing of the Beast: Part 2 (…it’s dead)

 

Let me ask you guys, can you spot the difference?

‘Cuz I sure can.  (Hint: it’s not my outfit!)

Now, you tell me what’s freakier: the fact that I can now hold my hair in one hand a good two feet away from my body…

…or the fact that it looks ominously like a giant fuzzy tarantula from this angle.

The Beast…is coming to ge-e-et you…

12 inches lopped off and in the mail.  A very cold neck.  A smiling girl.  It’s been a tumultuous day and I’m exhausted, so I’ll go more in depth tomorrow.  The main point of this post is: I did it!!  I really am so glad I went through with it.  I danced a little happy jig after “getting it gone”, and was singing Sexy and I Know It practically the entire drive home–so, that should tell you something about my endorphin levels right now. 😉  The Beast looks so much better now that it’s dead..!

The Killing of the Beast: Part 1 (The Night Before)

Let me tell ya, I am PSYCHED to debut my new hair (or lack thereof).  When I tell people about my grand plans (mwoohahaha), I usually get one of two reactions:

Reaction #1:  “WHAT??!  You’re chopping off…all of it?  Like, boy-short??!!”  Why do people always just assume you’re going to look like a boy with short hair?

Reaction #2:  “Awesome!  Good for you!  I’m excited to see what that will look like!”  Thank you!  So am I!

I know there’s most likely scads of people out there who are looking to start fresh, and now I am of the opinion that you definitely do not need to wait until New Year’s to do it.  For me, the perfect refresher was to start this blog, chronicling my crazy moodlings, and whack my hair all off.  It seemed like such a daring thing to do, so taboo in this society that praises women with long, soft, flowing locks, that I knew I had to take the plunge.  Just to see what it felt like.  To kind of stick my tongue out at society, as it were.  I decided to go into detail about the process of massacring the hair that I’ve worn since kindergarten in this “The Killing of the Beast” series here on The Girl in the Orange, for all you lovely ladies out there to decide whether it’s something you’d be interested in doing or not.

First, just a little background: I started jokingly referring to my hair as ‘The Beast’ two years ago, because that’s how I always thought of it.  Out-of-control, exasperating, mind-of-its-own, downright terrifying, that kind of thing.  People always told me they wished they could have my thick hair, and I really would have gladly traded with them.  I am very low-maintenance about my hair.  My daily philosophy was to just sort of ignore it, wishing that it would magically slick itself down and bounce around in flirty little ringlets.  In fact, one of my most prominent memories of elementary school (and it’s so random!) was in third grade, when I was eating pizza in the cafeteria and a girl named Ashley, who was gorgeous and had a long brown braid swinging down at about hip length, came up to me, wrinkled her nose, and asked, “Do you ever brush your hair?”

Maybe if I was blessed with a type that didn’t require so much wrangling and tears in the morning, it would have looked better on a daily basis.  But instead, I gave up.  I brushed it through in the morning, then just left it down or threw a hat on and tried not to look into mirrors all that much.  (In fact, I think my self-esteem may have squeaked through the last three years of my life on sheer ignorance alone.  It’s bliss.)

And so, when my overrated but oh-so-true-to-life teenage identity crisis kicked in, along with a rather unfortunate set of circumstances that I shall be quite vague about on purpose, I decided that the only natural thing to do was to chop all my hair off.  Thereby escaping from it all and completing my “journey” to fully becoming The Girl in the Orange.

We scheduled the appointment at the salon in early August.  I complained when it happened to fall on the 31st.  It seemed so faaaar away then, such a l-o-o-o-o-o-o-ng wait.

And now it’s tomorrow.

I’m not going to lie, I’m freaking out.

I normally don’t really give a $#&! to how my hair looks, but I’m used to it and therefore I am kinda sorta partial to it.  I can’t back out on my appointment now.  I don’t want to back out, really…well, somewhat.  I just still can’t imagine what it’s going to be like…  But I know afterward I’ll kill myself if I chicken out.

In a word, I am apprehensive.  Very.

But also crazy excited.

I feel like I’m standing in line for the Cyclone at Coney Island.

Deep breath…

I’ll see you tomorrow.