My Grand Illusions

It was bound to happen

I really like grey hair. It think it looks distinguished and worldly on most people if they care for it properly. My dad has had grey hair since he was in his early 20's. A few months ago he tinted it a shade of brown to lessen the grey and I just didn't like it. He looks sophisticated and handsome with his grey hair that's dashed with some white and black in the mix. My grandma also has grey hair and she keeps it short and nice styled and it looks nice on her, too. I think most of my friends have had a few grey hairs here and there and I think we've mostly accepted it as a sign of age. It's bound to happen, right?

I discovered my first grey hair when I was about 25. It was just sitting on my head mocking me and basically giving me the finger. So I did the only logical thing, I plucked it right on out and laughed manically while doing it. I don't believe in the whole "pluck on grey hair and 100 will grow in it's place". That seems ridiculous to me so I had no issues with plucking that one stray grey hair.

I've also colored my hair since the beginning of time, basically. I can't remember the last time I didn't have an alternate to my own hair color on my head, 1994, perhaps? It's just what I do and what my mother does and what most women seem to do that I know. It's a way to enhance my natural color or sometimes just make it something different completely. It also serves the purpose of covering up the pesky greys that started coming in more and more frequently as time has gone on. Whatevs, I thought. I'll just color my hair, cover the few errant grey hairs and go on with life.

UNTIL LAST WEEK.

You see, last week I colored my hair. It was definitely time. you could see enough shiny silver strands to warrant a trip to Target to get a new hair color. I choose a dark, dark brown. The same shade I've been drawn to lately. I used to be on a red-hair phase and although I'd kill for red hair it never looked right on me. So, I picked up my box of color, came home, mixed all the lovely chemicals together and applied them to each strand of hair as I've done a thousand times before. I waited the appropriate amount of time, washed my hair and proceeded with my day. The next day I saw grey hairs. LOTS OF THEM. The color didn't cover my grey hair. I may have broken out into a dry-heave and a rash just thinking about it. I'm only 32, I'm not supposed to have grey hair that people can see yet. I'm supposed to be able to cover it up and be done with it.

That's when I realized I needed the extra-super-dooper-double-strength-long-lasting-pays-my-mortgage(ahem)-kicks-ass-and-takes-names-later grey cover up hair dye. I assume this exists and now I just have to find it. So, if you see me in Target and I'm frantically looking at hair dyeing options with a look of terror on my face, you know why. I'm looking for hair dye that kicks ass and takes names.

Losing pets

In two weeks I've lost two of my pets and let me tell you, it sucks hardcore. In both instances I feel like I could have or should have done things differently. I don't live my life with much regret but I do analyze how and why I did things and what the outcome was. In the case of my cats that I lost within two weeks of each other, I am going to have to come to terms with the fact that there just wasn't a whole lot I could do even though my heart tells me otherwise.

Raven was my little runner cat. I found her outside my oldest son's daycare around 6 years ago. She was just a small black kitten with a dirty yellow collar and bright yellow eyes. She was sitting under the awning to protect herself from the cold and the rain so of course I couldn't leave her there. I ended up adopting her after trying to find her family with no luck. She was obviously a cat that wanted to be outside, she practically craved it. She got out a handful of times but always, always came back. 

Two weeks ago I thought my dog escaped from the backyard so I went out the front door to see if I could catch her before she went too far and in the confusion Raven escaped. I knew she'd be fine so I didn't stress about her getting out too much, I was more worried about the dog because she will run and run and run just for the fun of it. Jackson and I got in the car and canvased the neighborhood trying to find our dog with no luck. We ended up finding her in the neighbors yard behind us. After all that I forgot about Raven until the next afternoon. I wasn't too worried about her until that night. I must have gone outside a half-dozen times trying to find her with no luck. The very next day I drove down one of the main roads to get to my house and I saw a black cat with the exact same unmistakable fluffy tail on the side of the road. I lived in denial for a few days until I couldn't ignore it anymore. I was obviously distraught and kicking myself that I forgot she was outside, who forgets their cat is outside?! I only hope she had fun on her jaunt outside where she really wanted to be. Maybe now she's roaming cat heaven outside. I sadly don't have any pictures of Raven that I can find. I know I have some but there are tucked away in a scrapbook.

After losing Raven less than a week before I noticed that my other cat, Sugar, was acting different. She was relieving herself right outside of the litter box, which is not like her. She'd done it a few times over the last few months but now it was an every day event. I'd also noticed that she'd lost weight. Sugar was a very, very fluffy and a very, very large cat and she wasn't particularly a lap cat so I didn't think much of her losing a few pounds. She wasn't acting sick so I wasn't particularly worried. When I got the diagnosis of liver failure I was a bit floored. We were trying a round of medication that seemed to be working. She was eating and drinking and acting mostly normal for the last 4 days.

Then yesterday she took a dramatic turn for the worse. Sugar spent most of the day at the vet's office getting fluids and some rest but by about 4 PM the doctor called to tell me she probably wouldn't make it through the night. Fortunately I was able to go say my goodbyes and spend some time holding her. I wasn't prepared to say goodbye, who ever is ready for something like that, but I was grateful that I had a good doctor who cared about my cat like she was her own.

I had forgotten how much it hurts to lose a pet. My defense mechanism is to shut all that stuff out until something happens. I just kept thinking that I had lost 50% of my animals in the short span of two weeks and how much it just really, really sucks.

I'm going to miss Raven and her fierce determination to be outside where she knew she belonged. I'll miss her shiny, black coat and those gorgeous piercing yellow eyes. I'm going to miss Sugar and her tail that was as fluffy as a feather duster. I'll miss her weaving her way through my legs while I walked. I'm just going to miss them both. This just sucks.

Hug your kitties and dogs and other animals extra hard today, please.

That one time my Mom was right*

Teenagers are basically stupid. They do things that their adult selves absolutely cringe at doing. Recently I had been lamenting about my horrible taste in men and how the majority of them suck ass and I'm doomed to be single forever. It was then that I remembered, or rather was reminded, about the boy I met as a teenager who murdered someone and I kept on talking to him as if he was my one and only true love. See? Stupid.

My best friend and I used to be mall rats in every sense of the word. Her Mother worked a store in the mall so she'd bring us with her and we'd literally hang out, buying nothing, for hours upon hours. We met a slew of characters that I just really need to chronicle here for the sake of all Mother's who let their teenage daughters hang out in the mall. IT'S A DON'T, if you hadn't guessed where I was going.

I met a boy named Jeff one day at the mall. He was scruffy and the epitome of the "bad boy". I wasn't necessarily into boys like that but he paid attention to me and that was all it took. He was with his friends and they were obnoxious, annoying and had a car they could drive. I remember driving around the mall in the bed of a truck with Jeff. We never went anywhere but the thrill of being with a boy and leaving the mall and obviously disobeying our parents was so exciting. I never saw Jeff away from the mall that I recall. He was there all the time and so was I. It was our place.

I'd known him about a month I would guess and I'd seen him a handful of times and talked to him on the phone plenty. He was my mall boyfriend. All I did was talk about him and how cute he was. One evening I got my first ever collect call from the local jail and it was Jeff. Despite the collect call charges I was told I'd have to pay, I accepted the call. Jeff told me he was in trouble for stealing a motorcycle that he had actually paid for and it was just a big misunderstanding. Of course that's what happened and I felt just awful for him. What a tragic set of circumstances he was in.

We wrote back and forth for about a month and he called a few more times, collect of course. I had a friend drive me down to the jail at one point to collect his personal belongings. I got his wallet with his driver's license and, oddly enough, his birth certificate. I was Jeff's rock, the only person he could turn to in his time of need and OH MAN that was all I needed to hear.

After some time had passed and my Mom got a few phone bills with these collect charges she asked me what was going on so I told her and I expected her to be just like me, supportive and trusting. Turns out she was the total opposite and I was angry with her when she said I needed to stop talking to this boy. Whatever, I thought, she doesn't know what she's talking about. I made sure, from then on, to check the mail before she got home so I could hide my letters from him.

Well, my Mother's no dummy, even though I could have sworn she was at the time. She found out about the letters and hauled my ass down to the District Attorney's office to talk with the investigator on Jeff's case. I knew I'd be proving my Mother wrong and the DA would tell me Mother to calm down and get a grip. Turns out that I was the one who was about to be proven wrong.

Jeff was accused of murdering a young man who'd just gotten a motorcycle and then he and his friend stole the motorcycle. They hog-tied this young man and left him in the woods for some random lady riding her horse to find. I saw the pictures of this young man. I remember exactly what he was wearing. His hair was that orange-red color, he had pale skin and freckles. He wore the quintessential cowboy outfit of Wranglers jeans, brown worn-in cowboy boots and a plaid western-style shirt. Minus the being hog-tied and being dead part, he was someone I could picture seeing at a local downtown Fort Worth bar.

This was my first experience of seeing a dead body and it affected me like you can probably imagine. My little teenage bubble was shattered. The boy I thought was really into me, wasn't. The trust I extended to another human being was shattered. The realization that someone took another person's life for something as trivial as a motorcycle was just too much for me to understand, still is actually. The whole situation was just so surreal.

I never talked to Jeff again. He called a few times, collect of course, but I declined each call. He wrote a few times and then the letters stopped coming. I had to turn over the letters to the DA even though there was nothing in them that could be used. To this day I've still got his wallet with his license and birth certificate in a box somewhere on a high shelf. I still remember the photos of that man, they are in my brain forever. Those images, unfortunately, those I can't put those in a box on a high shelf. But I really wish I could.

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*My Mom has been right about much more than this. Obviously. Mom's are right more often than not.