My unemployment is gone and I babysit for a living. I am {hoping} to move and live alone again soon, in a close and familiar South Philly neighboorhood.

I spend 50% of my time with other people’s children and I adore it. I also adore my nights off and question my potential interest in procreating, ever, in life.

I love my friends, I love my always scary life, and I like a boy. Life is good. Life is weird.

It’s a good question, for people who have only known me for 3 years or so. For everyone else, it likely doesn’t come as a shock that I chopped off so much hair. You see, when I was 14 I started cutting my hair short. It stayed like that until I decided in September 2006 that it was time to start fresh and make a legitimate attempt at growing out my hair. So I shaved my head. Really.

It wasn’t exactly a bad look, but it wasn’t for me, long term. I shaved my head with a goal in mind – to grow mermaid hair. So, for nearly 4 years I let my hair grow. I threw away my razor for short haircuts and started booking appointments at salons.

My hair grew and people liked it. I even liked it. But, I have to tell you, all that long hair that I’d worked so long to grow often got pulled back, and most of the time I looked something like this:

And really, what’s the point of long hair when it’s always up? The longer it got, the more annoying I found it. Drains were always clogging; hair would get stuck all over me in the shower and I could never get it off; long strands were constantly ending up in my ink and then on my type, messing up my prints; it’d get stuck in the strap of my messenger bag; you get the point.

As preparation for the Art Star Craft Bazaar chugged along, I got stressed, and I knew I had to do something drastic. The only surefire cure for my deadline induced stress has always been a self haircut, so I grabbed my scissors and went to town. First I trimmed it to my shoulders, but that wasn’t enough. The next day I cut it to my chin. That satisfied me for about a week, but the night before ASCB I went all the way.

It was strange at first, and I felt an instant twinge of regret, but I also felt a really satisfying feeling of being “myself” again. And this is what I was trying to get at with this whole post when I started. If you’ve made it this far, thank you! If not, I understand. Anyway, the point is this: So many people in my the current version of my life didn’t know that girl in this last photo. They still know ME, sure, but only to an extent. As much as I enjoyed my stint with long hair, I’m just a short-haired girl at heart. I always felt a little bit like I was pretending, like I was wearing a wig, when my hair was long. I always felt better when it was pulled up. I always felt more like me.

Today I chopped my hair a little more. It’s what I do when my hair is short, constantly tweak the cut – because I can do it myself. I like that it’s something I can control in my life, that I can maintain and manage without anyone else’s assistance. And yea, this is a really long post about something as simple as a haircut, but guess what? I don’t care.

It will. It will. I promise you.

There are two distinct sides of my personality: the cynic who firmly believes that love will never find her and the hopeless romantic who swoons over the thought of sweet nothings, love letters, other halves, soul mates, etc. Generally I side with the cynic. I am picky, nearly impossible to please; dropping men for the way they pronounce words, a face they make, the shine on their skin, their complicated dietary restrictions – the most minute things can prevent my happiness. And yet, that other part of me is always hoping, always searching for my match, my other half, the person who will be perfectly imperfect in my eyes.

I measure coincidences and search for the message the Universe is trying to send me. I read my horoscope {I’m an Aquarius} and match my sign with the sign of each potential mate. I don’t necessarily believe every word that I read, but I enjoy the insight it provides and often times I find that it’s relatively accurate.  My dear friend Avalon Clare turned me on to the Enneagram {I’m a 6} and so recently I’ve been using that for insight also. These things are all relative, and I find myself embarrassed to admit that they are important to me at times, but what’s the point of that? I am a bit superstitious, I am a lover of some mystical things. I make wishes when the numbers on the clock are all the same, I insist that others make wishes when I find a stray eyelash on their cheek, I play games in my head with certain numbers – all of these things are my way to make sense of this crazy world we live in.

Maybe you’re wondering what my point is here, where I’m going with this. The hopeless romantic in me has always wanted to believe in true love, in other halves, in perfect storms; the cynic in me has always shot that all down and guarded me against it. There has been an interesting, and constant, war being waged within my body.

Until now. Now I am wrapped up in that perfect storm. My life has been filled with magical coincidences for the last eleven days and though it feels a little crazy for me to say this, especially in so public a forum, I feel there’s no other option anymore – I’m in love. I am head over heels, life-alteringly in love and I don’t think it will ever stop. It’s important to me to acknowledge how serendipitous my life is right now – though it’s been this way for several months, to be sure – and how it feels as if the Universe has finally put all the pieces of this puzzle of my life within my reach, while gently urging me to piece it together.

You see, my new gentleman {D, for short} and I,  have been circling around each other for many years. We have had a series of near misses, close calls, narrow escapes. The only conclusion that we can both come to based on the information that has been slowly revealing itself to us is that we were never ready before now. It would never have worked like this, never would have blossomed, unfolded, spread before us like this, warm and welcoming and feeling absolutely right. We decided several days after meeting each other that we had no choice in this, we couldn’t do anything but let it happen to us and I wouldn’t have it any other way. Each day one more perfect thing about D, about he and I together, materializes and we look at each other in amazement, big stupid grins filling our faces.

I expect most people to roll their eyes at me. I expect them to say “we’ll see” or “good luck with that,” sarcasm dripping from their mouths – and I can’t blame them. I just hope they’re ready to hear me say “I told you so” in a few years when this is all still unfolding, when I am sitting calmly in the eye of my perfect storm, when I am happily existing with my other half.

Yesterday I got a call from my mother about a kid I’d grown up with. I’d more or less forgotten that J. was in an accident a month or so ago which had left him paralyzed almost completely, so when my mom told me that he was in rehab at a facility in Philadelphia I was a little shocked. She said that his brother had stopped by the house last night to let everyone know that J. was in good spirits, that he was starting to regain some movement in his arms, but that no one really knew what to expect – they just wanted to get as many visitors to him as possible.

Since I live in Philly my mom thought I might like to stop by. I was nervous, not because I’m unfamiliar with quadriplegia {I briefly dated a quadriplegic in 2008} but because I hadn’t seen him in at least 7 years and I wasn’t sure I was ready to walk into a room where he was existing so differently than the last time I saw him.

Anyway, the long and short of it is, I went. I wouldn’t have recognized him if someone hadn’t pointed him out, because it’s been so long, and he didn’t recognize me. I don’t know what else to say about my visit, except that it was surreal. In front of me was this man who had been like a brother to me, except now he was 25 or 26, and now he couldn’t move his limbs, and now I had to carefully read  his lips to understand him because the ventilator made it difficult for him to speak.

There was a moment when I smiled at J. and he winked at me, and in that brief moment our childhood flooded back to me. I remembered the game of truth or dare we played where someone {probably R.} dared him to unhook my bra, he was the first boy to ever do so. I remembered the time we all skinny dipped together in R.’s pool. I remembered so many days and  nights spent watching our siblings play together.

I stayed strong the whole time I was with J. I stayed strong as I kissed him on the cheek and walked away. I stayed strong, but now I am alone in my apartment and all I can think about is how tragic it is. He was always so smart and kind and wonderful to be around. What happened to him could have happened to me – to almost anyone I know. I am crying tears for him now because I know that in every interaction I have with him in the future I am going to have to be strong.

There isn’t much of a point to this, it’s just that I need to get it out. And I would like for you all to think positive thoughts for J. and his recovery. And please, please please please tell everyone you love that you love them every chance you can. Please live life to the fullest. And please, help me to be strong for my friend.

Via Design for Mankind

I saw this image on Design for Mankind today and couldn’t help but smile. You see, my completely adorable baby sister has a hard time saying the word “muskox” and instead says “mugsocks.” Too fucking cute.  Last summer we spent a few days in Wildwood and I relished every single time I could coax the phrase out of her. Sometimes I call her just to hear her say it.

Oh, and for the record, she’s not quite a baby these days, she’s 18-years-old and graduating from high school in 2 weeks. Congratulations, Kelsey. I love you!