Little Tiny Hairs

So I decided to do something wild and crazy today: pluck my eyebrows. Now, if you are a loyal reader, you know my feelings about plucking eyebrows. (If you're a new and future loyal reader, you can read them here.) I decided to do this momentous deed for two reasons:

The first is that I looked at myself today and thought I was looking my age. And my friend Angela says that plucking eyebrows "does wonders for opening up faces." And let me tell you, brothers and sisters, something needed opening up this morning.

The second reason is that I was going out to lunch with Angela today.

So the thing no one ever told me about plucking eyebrows (besides everything) is that there is a trick to it. I do not currently know the trick. But I know there must be one. Because I had to pluck each hair NO FEWER THAN FIVE TIMES. The darn tweezers kept slipping off the hairs. Or the little hair would break off so that I then had to PLUCK THE WHISKER. Now what kind of idiot would go through the pain of each hair being pulled out of its socket FIVE TIMES????? Certainly women aren't doing that to themselves every day. There MUST be a secret.

But now it's done (I think—how do I know for sure?). I was smart enough to stop before I had nothing left and had to draw an old-lady-line two inches above my regular brow ("opens up the face"). I probably stopped too soon. I can't tell. And now I'm wondering if Angela will notice. Probably not, because she'll be distracted (more by my fascinating conversation than by her six-month-old and my four-year-old, I'm sure). But I'll let you know if she does.

Meanwhile, I would show you a picture but our digital camera is broken, and no one here knows how to fix it. (Aye, 'tis verily so. You think that a person who can't even figure out tweezers would know how to work a CAMERA?) And, of course, we can't pay to have it fixed--because I'm going out to eat today. I've got my priorities straight, even if my eyebrows aren't. So if you see me within the next few weeks with whiskers around my eyes, you'll know what happened. I'll have "Li'l tahnee hayers, growin' out ma face!"—and if you know what comedy sketch from the early 70's that quote came from, you are probably my sister (Hi, Mar).

In addition to killing innocent hairs today, I also pulled out two entire healthy, producing plants from my garden, a tomato plants (with about 20 large, green tomatoes) and a zucchini plant. Yes, I saved the tomatoes to put face-down on newspaper in a sunny place so that we can eat them. I had to pull these plants out because my garden is insanely fertile and it has so many productive plants that have outgrown their space that I can't even WALK to the back of the garden. I am cursed with this garden. I hate gardening, and I have the most fertile square of soil in the United States! This year I was too lazy to actually plan a garden and simply threw some seeds I had leftover from last year in the general vicinity of the plot. I did, also buy three tomato plants. (Because the six I did last year were WAY, WAY too many for my family and all the families on my circle and any relatives who would take tomatoes from me).

I hadn't counted on volunteer plants. I had at least FIVE volunteer tomato plants! Arrggh!

I wonder if all this has something to do with my fertility earrings?

So anyway, I just wanted to say that pulling out those plants this morning made me feel dirty (in more ways than one), as if I had committed murder. I'm hanging my (well-plucked) head in shame, today, because I have killed some of God's creatures—productive ones, at that. I'm sorry, sorry, sorry. I hope I'll be able to apologize and explain to the little tomato and zucchini spirits in heaven someday.

Park Bench

(by, well, me)

Wherever it is you've gotten to these days, I wonder
if you know you've got a piece of me stuck
in your back pocket, the way I still have wisps of you
clinging to my hair or caught in my shoe
making me limp now and then.

Someday a hundred eons hence we'll meet
at a park bench on the edge of that fat fair Finally--
where people go pocketless and pieces float free
in the wide autumn light—
to put things back where they belong.

In that place people pause to pass around minds,
try memories on for size, share sips of point of view.

Ten minutes on a bench. For once and all you'll see
without the fog of pride that yes, I really loved you.
Maybe, too, I'll see that you forgive me.

"Ahh!" we'll say, and then shake hands and mosey off
into our separate destinies, kicking at a pebble, maybe,
feeling lighter for the trade.