Bad Hair Day

Let’s say a guy gets a haircut just like he always does every three or four weeks, and also just like always, after this particular haircut his girlfriend combs some color into his hair. She does this to mask the fact that he no longer has any natural color of his own to speak of. This process has gone on for months, even years, with no problems. Then, out of no where, something BAD happens.


The Way the hair is SUPPOSED to Look (Cute grandson, right?)

After the prescribed time the guy’s girlfriend tells him to go wash out the color creamer. He does so and towels off in front of the mirror. To his shock he sees that his hair color is now Crayola yellow. He looks like a human canary, a tweety bird man, a living cartoon.

“Hey! What the heck did you do to my hair!” he yells coming out of the bathroom.

His girlfriend is equally flabbergasted and defensively explains, “The store didn’t have the same brand, but it says it’s the same color on the box—golden blonde! I don’t understand!”

“Well, there’s no way I can go out looking like this. Get the scissors. I’m going to take it all off and start over.”

“No way!" She objects. "I like you with hair. I’ll call my hairdresser friend and see if she’s got something we can use at her house."

She makes a call and out the door she goes. In 30 minutes she returns with a premixed bowl of what she calls coffee brown hair color. “Sit down, I’ll put this in,” she orders.

He shrugs sitting, “Okay, well I guess it can’t get any worse than the way it looks now.” (Oh yeah, you think so, eh? heh heh)

As she applies the brownish cream, now the problem is that the guy’s scalp feels like its on fire. The chemicals in the mix are meant for a single application, not two doses in two hours. He can barely sit still as she combs on the caustic cream. He’s a man, a tough guy, so he tries to keep the groans down to a dull roar (with only the occasional whimper).

To take his mind off the pain he attempts to get lost in a game of Bookworm, and it works because soon she tells him it’s time to shampoo again. The warm shower water reactivates the pain in his scalp. Once again he barely contains the groans. His hair is now stiff with chemicals, so he tries a couple applications of his girlfriend’s cream rinse. It doesn’t seem to do much except to make a big thick puddle of white foam all over the shower floor. With a combination of hope and dread he finishes toweling off and takes a look in the bathroom mirror.

“Oh HELL NO!” he yells.

His hair is now a stunningly bright strawberry red. A red that would make Conan Obrien proud, however pride was the last thing that this guy felt.

“Oh my God! Look at it! It’s RED! It’s not just red, it’s doll hair RED!”

XXXXXXXXX From Canary Yellow to Strawberry Red!

His girlfriend, feeling that all this is her fault, moans, jumps into bed, pulls the covers over her head, and cries out how sorry she is.

The guy begins to see the humor in all this and laughingly declares, “Okay, that’s it; where’s the scissors? I’m taking it off!”

Jumping out of the bed she proclaims loudly and insistently, “No WAY! I’ll take you first thing tomorrow to the salon at Robinson’s and get them to fix it.”

“But I’ve got appointments lined up tomorrow morning. I can’t wait around all morning while they mess with my hair. Come on, let me cut it off. It’ll grow back in a couple months.”

She insists that bald is out of the question, so the guy texts his counterpart and explains the ridiculous details. His cohort is mildly amused and agrees to hold the fort.

The next morning, before the place is even open for business the guy and his girlfriend show up and become the salon’s first customers of the day. A male hairdresser has a card display with all the color possibilities. It looks promising. The guy points out the color he’d like—it’s a shade of brownish blonde, the color he normally goes for.

The attendant says it should only take 30 to 45 minutes and soon is applying the chemicals. The burning is almost more than he can bare. After a while the pain mostly recedes and he settles in for a wait. After 15 minutes it looks promising. In the mirror he can see that the doll hair red is now turning to brown with blond highlights.
“Hey, this might work after all!” he remarks to his girlfriend now taking the opportunity to get a manicure. She smiles and nods back happily.

However, more minutes tick by and the guy can see that his hair is now turning almost black before his eyes. He gulps in consternation. “Hey, you guys, its getting too dark. I don’t want it dark. Do you hear? NOT TOO DARK, okay?”

The young fellow managing the color treatment takes a look, “But Sir, the roots are still red; it needs more time.” He adds more color and more minutes go by.

Its been well over an hour and the guy is sick to his stomach at what he now sees. He knows his hair is now going to be an unnatural dark brown and there’s nothing that can be done about it. He grits his teeth and shakes his head.

The shampoo process is every bit as agonizing as the initial application. Back in the chair the hair color attendant examines the finished product and in Tagalog remarks to the guy's girlfriend about the “sugat” all over the guy’s scalp. (sugat means bleeding sores or wounds) The three doses of acid like chemicals in the space of half a day have caused areas on the guy’s scalp to split open and seep blood, not to mention that the entire scalp is red with irritation.

But the real agony for the guy begins the moment he sees his hair. It’s atrocious. The color doesn’t come close to that promised from the sample card. It is now a blackish brownish shade from salon hell. He slams his cap back on and stalks out of the salon.

Xx Can You Believe I PAID for that color? Now what?

xxx xxxXXxxxxx The "Fix" is "On" that's What!

“Well, it’s barely better than that nasty red, but I’m still wearing this cap everywhere I go,” he tells his girlfriend irritably. “I just hope you didn’t pay too much for that, because they SUCK!”

Yup, all that happened to "that guy" .... the poor bastard.

XXXXXXXNothing he can do about the face though! Ugh!

Beauty is where you Make it

You've heard the saying "Beauty is where you find it?" Well, sometimes its no where to be found. In that case, it's where you make it, or in my case, where I had it made. Check out the first few photos below. They show a progression of the back of my yard.

I don't have a "back yard" per se, instead, its more of a "side yard," but bit by bit, I've made it somewhat beautiful. Look at the pics showing the current state of the back side of my side yard and you be the judge.

I posted this pic before. It shows the beginning stages of my porch. Notice the dusty muddy dirt. It definitely wasn't someplace you'd want to hang out. In a word, "Yuck."

That's Eddy pointing instructions to his boys on what to do next. That little building behind them at the time was a utility room used for storage, washing clothes, food preparation and other such unsightly (or smelly) household chores. Now, that building is my bedroom, the room in which I now type this post.

This spot is completely unrecognizable from the way it looks now. Where he's squatting is now covered by a large rock garden. Most of that dusty grassless area is now covered in growing things.

This shot shows the completed porch and nearly completed tower. Notice the little banana tree against the far fence. It was there only temporarily until I could transplant it directly in the middle of the tower base. This was taken only about 6 months ago; the banana tree is now about 4 or 5 times the size it is in this photo.

Here's the same banana today. Every ten days or so, a giant new leaf seems to spring out of no where. I love the sight of it. There's something about a banana tree that makes one think "tropical paradise," and that's exactly what I've created in my yard.

That's another shot of the banana looking down from the second level of the tower into the corner of the yard. On this spot I manufactured a natural looking landscape feature that I call my "sunken rock garden."

Here's the sunken garden from almost the same aspect as the photo above. Doesn't look at all like the same spot.

The sunken rock garden a few days after we finished it.

A close up of the sunken feature. Also shown above are the walking step stones that allow access to the top side. The idea is to make it look as "natural" as possible. Once all the plants and vines grew out, natural is pretty much what I got.

My sweety sitting in front of the sunken garden enjoying the shade, the restful peace and quiet, and especially the view. Of course, when she sits there she becomes part of the view, a special part for me. grin.

I like this shot because it shows the backside of the yard just before we began the rock garden landscaping.

This shows almost the same scene as above, only after the landscaping has completely changed it. For the better don't you think?

Now, its a place where we can just hang out, enjoy the view, and simply relax.

This was taken from the bench against the back wall and the sunken garden.

Another shot from the bench, only looking forward toward the street. Notice how the raised rock features and matured foliage now provide a "green screen" from people who might try to look into the yard. From the bench, you can see them but they cannot see you.

We added the step stones to give us a place to walk while we water our precious "beauties"growing amongst the rocks. My nephew got all these rocks from the nearby Abacan River bed in his trusty trike. He was able to get 15 or 20 good sized rocks per trip. He ended up making 5 or 6 trips before we had enough to finish what you see here.

See the little banana tree in the foreground? It came up as a secondary shoot from its mama, the one we planted in the center of the tower base.

xxx

I think I mostly accomplished my original goal with this ongoing project, to be able to see natural beauty no matter where one's gaze settles. So far so good, but there's always something else that comes to mind to make it that much better. I think I got that side of me from my old man. He also never stopped having ideas for new improvement projects up his sleeve.

New Years View from My Tower; Not Bad...

What a show! I knew it was going to be loud, but the level of snap, crack, pow, boom, bang, pop, whistle, whizzz, and crump was even more than I expected.

I'm trying to upload the first video I've ever tried to load to my blog. Once I get it loaded, if I do, if you watch the three minutes of it you'll hear more of what's going on than see it. The sheer volume of fireworks going off at once for miles around was stunning. We must have seen tens of millions of pesos worth of "kaboom boom" go off tonight. Incredible! There are definitely some folks around here with some disposable income. I'll watch 'em fire it off, but I'll be danged if I'm going to spend my money on that stuff. (Ok, got it on YouTube; click on the pic or right here and watch and HEAR the Angeles City 2009 "New Years firefight").

I grabbed a drink and headed up into the tree tops a little after 11 pm. Fireworks had been going off sporadically since before sundown; heck, even throughout the day for that matter.

I don't know, I outgrew my fascination for blowing things up with firecrackers sometime back, when I was about 12. I don't think anyone outgrows it out here; they absolutely adore the booms, whistles, cracks and bangs. I'm told its a Chinese tradition where all the noise and flash is supposed to frighten off evil spirits. Of course I don't buy any of that malarkey, and I don't think anybody else around here does either. Nope, they just like the racket. For the last ten days I've been wishing that they liked it ONLY for the hour or two leading up to New Years, but alas, that is definitely NOT the case. Even now, at almost 2 am I can still hear the occasional crack and distant boom. I suppose they figure they bought the stuff, so they darn well are going to fire it all off. From past experience I know they'll be setting it off every so often from now through the first week of January or so. Oh joy!

By 1130 pm the time between explosions big and small was pretty much nonexistent. There was no let up from then all the way past midnight, and for more than a half hour after that.

I made a quick visit downstairs to tell the girls to come on up to get ready for "the show." At street level I noticed that the noise level was much less down there than what I was exposed to from 50 feet up. Interesting phenomena that, the fact that much of the explosive sound is apparently blocked by houses and trees. From up above though, we got the full effect!

By 1140 the sky was no longer clear enough to see anything past a half mile. Thousands of individual explosions, from sparklers to Roman candles, all the way up to the full fledged fireworks displays, had filled the air with a pall of whitish smoke. When I'd first gone up I could see bottle rockets going up from many miles away, but no more. Only the exceptionally big "boom booms" were visible now from more than a mile away. By midnight the smoke was so thick that visibility was less than 500 meters. The fireworks fog doesn't really show up on the video I notice.

Being the anal fellow that I can be I could not help but to think of all those "pyrotechnic amateurs" out there firing off some very large and dangerous pyrotechnics. I wondered the number of fingers mangled, hands burned, and eyes blown out tonight. Surely there were casualties.

At midnight, explosions of all types and sizes were steady and deafening. It looked something like Baghdad in 1991 when Hussein's boys fired all those anti-aircraft tracers skyward. With hundreds of bottle rockets and fireworks of every persuasion going up nonstop in every direction you would easily believe that a war was going on right here. It was loud to the point of deafening, but this year, with that fantastic 360 degree view, I actually enjoyed myself. Here's the YouTube site of my video.

"No Easy Way Out"

The Ray & Elizabeth Spear Clan circa mid 1930s

Nelson, Keith, Donna, Eugene, Dale

I was fortunate to be able to spend a significant amount of quality time with my mom after my father’s passing. One of the last things my mother and I did together before I left Michigan was to visit my dad’s older brother, my Uncle Keith, at his home. He was the last living member of the original clan of five siblings—all born in the 20s with the youngest, Dale, in the early 30s.

I felt bad for my Uncle Keith. At 83, almost by accident, he managed to outlive not only his parents, his sister and four brothers, but he also survived his wife and youngest child to boot. Based on observing his sad experience, I can definitely say that outliving nearly everyone in your immediate family is not like winning some kind of contest. On the contrary, the poor guy was miserable with a capital M.

Eugene & Keith in the late 1940s

During our visit, he’d intermittently stop in mid-conversation and weep bitterly at the thought of his recently departed “baby girl,” Dawn, having left us much too young in her mid 40s. Openly weeping, head bowed nearly to chest, he continuously sobbed how he missed her. Her recent passing obviously had broken his fragile spirit, what there was left of it, not to mention breaking his old heart, already weakened from decades of atherosclerosis and more than 60 years of some serious chain smoking. I noted an ash tray full of butts on the table next to him. Obviously his health was the last thing on his mind.
Over the years, I became very fond of my Uncle Keith and Aunt Marilyn; I think, because they had demonstrated so much fondness for me. From the time I left for the marines at 18, over the next 27 years thereafter, whenever I made it home on leave they always made it a point to come see me. No matter what they had going on, no matter how busy, they made time to come visit, without exception. They dropped everything and came, every time. It was probably Aunt Marilyn who had the most to do with this wonderful aspect of their affection for me, but as a team, I think they were both pretty special. Even after Aunt Marilyn died of cancer a few years ago, Uncle Keith never failed to ask my parents how I was doing whenever they spoke.

In a special homage to the Aunt Marilyn side of “the team,” over the years, she spent hundreds of hours knitting Afghan coverlets, one for each of my kids, starting with Marie in 1979 all the way through Sarah in 2003. Only my mom showed more interest and got more involved in welcoming my children into the world. Indeed, I was determined to name my child (the one that turned out to be Sarah) either Marilyn or Keith, depending on the gender. My wife at the time wouldn’t go with Marilyn, so, she compromised and agreed to Sarah Marilyn. Post Mortem: Strange how things rarely go as imagined. When I learned that Uncle Keith had passed away last week I pictured him as leaving us by way of a simple heart attack or stroke, where he simply left us and moved on to be with the rest of his departed family and friends, but no, unfortunately I was disavowed of this notion when my mom sent the following email:

“…There is some controversy over Keith's death. When they were taking him to the hospital the original responders were just transporters. When they tried to move Keith from their gurney to the medical ambulance gurney they dropped him and he landed on the right side of his head. He died shortly after that. They tried to resuscitate but could not save him...”

I answered:

“What a Keystone Cops episode that was for Uncle Keith's last moments. Geez. Seems like all the Spear boys just had bad luck on the end side of their lives, didn’t they? I mean, didn't any of them get a break? Now this... and what does that mean...transporters? What the heck? He had a heart attack at home or something and they didn't send a medical ambulance? I never heard of such a thing as "transporters." Explain please?”

My mom:

“He was at St. Francis Nursing Home, as the doctor said he could no longer live alone at home. They called the ambulance to take him to the hospital, as he was having some bad chest pain. Instead of the ambulance coming, it was people who are equipped to only take the patient to the hospital (transporters); there must have been a problem at the EMT Center. Well, then the medically equipped EMT ambulance finally did arrive, but only after they had already gotten Keith on the transporter gurney outside the nursing home. So, they elected to transfer him. Why they couldn't use the same gurney is beyond me.

You are right though; all four of the brothers died the hard way—no easy way out for any of them.”

Death and Sadness

I'm pretty sure that the last time I felt deep racking sadness over a death was when I was about eight. We were staying for an extended time at my grandma’s house in Saginaw, probably on our way to my dad’s next assignment. I can’t remember exactly how I came to have it, but I had brought home a small snapping turtle, perhaps from the lake where my grandpa Spear had his cabin.

(I have to give my parents some credit, for I would never allow any of my kids to have such a potentially harmful critter as a pet. It was neat how much leeway I had as a child, to explore and delve into the world around me. Things were different back then; that’s for sure.)

Anyway, someone had left the wooden gate open to the back yard. My juvenile 7 inch snapper proceeded to make a break for it. I knew this only after spotting the aftermath of this “jail break” from the upstairs dormer window overlooking the street. There below me I saw that my turtle was now mashed into the pavement—the shell flattened and cracked, head and four limbs sprawled, forming a five-pointed dead turtle star, and worse, massive amounts of spurted blood and gore.

I have never been more devastated. The sense of loss was crushing. I sobbed and sobbed as if this turtle had been the most important thing in my life, ever, which funny enough, it wasn’t. I had only had it for a couple of days, yet I was overcome by its demise.

Flash forward to more deaths. My Great Aunt Helen died when I was about 12 or 13. I was more uneasy with having to see her dead in her casket than I was sad. Not long after that my wonderful Grandpa Spear died. I was sad, but never cried. I really loved that man, but not even a single tear did I shed. I remember feeling confused about myself at seeing my other cousins crying and freely shedding tears.

Over the years I lost other friends and relatives and it was always the same, although I missed them I did not feel profound melancholy. This was true even when my beloved Grandma Haley died in 1987, and I was closer to her than even to either of my parents. We were great pals, having literally spent thousands of hours together, conversing and learning about each other; yet, when I learned that she was gone at 85 I felt next to nothing.

My brother warned me many years before my father finally passed that his kidney condition would likely end in his death. Sure enough, about 18 years later, that’s pretty much what happened. I had always figured that when he died that I would be as distraught as when my turtle was killed, but again, nothing.

I’m still trying to figure this out. I’m the kind that hates going to poignant movies because I tend to cry at the parts meant to elicit that response. I actually sobbed out loud during Schindler’s List, you know, the part where Oscar Schindler loses it at the end and laments that he could have saved more. Even now, thinking of that damn scene I feel pressure in my chest and tears welling. Cripes! So why do I feel no sadness when people I love die?

I spent a lot of time talking with my mom about Dad’s passing, how we felt about him and how we feel about him. Every so often she would cry, not uncontrollably, but for a minute or so, and I would ask her afterwards what brought on that particular episode of emotion. There were two primary reasons: one, she felt so bad that she could not do more to save him, to make him eat, to make the doctors want to do more to make him well; and two, the memory of his suffering, his yearlong crumbling into death, during which he lost his appetite, lost weight, lost interest, and finally lost his ability to keep breathing. It was a slow process that very nearly took her along with him.

One thing that both my mother and I have in common concerning the after effects of all this: We both feel some level of guilt over not feeling “bad enough” over his demise. She feels awful that in spite of herself she feels a level of relief. When he finally left this world her life instantly became easier. Intellectually, she knows that he is in a “better place,” yet, she feels guilt, thinking that maybe she could have done more, and now that he's gone, that she SHOULD feel worse.

I made an argument for her, trying to put into words against her continuing irrational self-reproach over “not feeling bad enough” over his passing.

“Mom, literally thanks to you, Dad LIVED 80 years. No other woman would have put up with him over the entire course of that 50 year marriage. YOU were God’s gift to him, from start to finish, because I can’t think of any other woman that would NOT have divorced him. He needed a kidney and YOU gave him one. Then, you made sure he took his dozens of pills per day, that he ate what he needed to eat, that he did what he needed to do. It was all YOU! No one could have done more for another human being, especially someone so difficult at times, NO one. Because of YOU, he lived LONGER than most. YOU did that.”

I went on, as I CAN do:

“Besides, how long should anyone live? For instance, do you want to live long enough to have to see your own children die? I think that alone would kill me, to see one of my kids go. There is a natural order of things. We live, hopefully into old age, and then we die. 80 seems to be just about right. Besides, we all end up where Dad is now. I think that’s why I haven’t cried or felt any deep sadness since that snapping turtle died in the street in front of Grandma Haley’s house. None of us are here for all that long. We all end up dead, and hopefully, together again with God on the other side. That’s the hope, right?”