I know I'm getting older because I don't take as many pictures of myself. I don't really like the way I look in them anymore. Don't get me wrong, I don't think I'm ugly. It's just I no longer think I'm pretty enough to warrant being the sole subject of a photo.
But I still take just as many pictures, which has put the load squarely on:
I don't know who I am anymore.
But I still take just as many pictures, which has put the load squarely on:
There are a lot of very pretty bloggers out there. Has anyone else noticed that? I daresay there seems to be a correlation between being pretty and skinny and having a popular site.
Sometimes I poke around on those big famous blogs and I've noticed that they all have a few things in common.
One is cheekbones. Cheekbones and adorably mess hair.
I don't have cheekbones unless I am sucking a viscous liquid through a straw, and believe me when I say that when someone near me has a camera, I rush to find a drink.
Another thing these very famous blogger all have is a big, white bed. White everything! White sheets, white comforter, white pillow cases over white pillows and a big white wall behind them. There's usually something to decorate the wall, something minimal, like a bone or a feather or a thread.
The bed makes the big blogs a lot. There are a disproportionate number of pictures of the bed, sometimes with curly haired toddlers messed up in the sheets, or tiny swaddled infants sleeping right there in the center.
I don't have any kids, but nothing was stopping me from having that big white famous-blogger bed. Colors? Patterns? Not in my house! Not anymore!
I found all the white linens at TJ Maxx. Then I set it all up and called a few friends to brag about my big, crisp, immaculate white bed.
"That sounds risky," they said. (I tend to night-eat. And other reasons.)
But I am a grown up so I didn't worry.
I had a great first night in that bed, in my new bedroom in our new house, although I was almost too excited to sleep. I stared at the ceiling for a while, imagining the fame that was waiting for me right around the corner, now that I had this effortlessly minimal existence. The next morning morning I planned to drink a little cup of coffee on a big wooden table. Later in the afternoon I'd busy myself by placing a sprig of white flowers into a mason jar.
But instead, I made the bed the next morning and found blood. Little spots of blood randomly dotting the sheets and the duvet cover.
First, the anger hit. Then the frustration. Then the fear. Did that blood come from me?? How? When? From where? CANCER?
Probably.
Dave came home that night and I sat him down and solemnly explained the situation. I did not go into detail about my hopes and dreams regarding the white bed, and how they were all dead now. He wouldn't understand. I focused instead on how it was probably me who was bleeding, from an unknown orifice, at an unknown hour, and the big bad things that lay in store for me.
He studied my face for just a moment. Then he pulled up his pant leg and showed me the scab on his leg. "I picked at it all day long yesterday," he said. "It was really bleeding."
I was really relieved. But the fact remains that my white bed didn't even last one night. I decided to dab at the the spots with my Shout Pen, but not to pull the sheets off and wash them. Wrestling my feather comforter into that duvet cover AGAIN is too much. It's too much.
No kids, no white bed, no cheekbones. And not as much to write about these days, because I'm back in school. Back to being the star of Asheville Buncome Technical Community College.
That's right.
I don't know who I am anymore.