More ways to tell.

Sunday, I watched 4 hours of "Animal Cops Houston," the show about rescuing damaged and broken animals from neglect or abuse.

I am notorious for having an especially soft heart when it comes to the suffering of children and animals, I suppose mostly because they are generally helpless, and have limited ability to escape the abuse.

The worst I got was when my eyes teared up a little once, but no tears actually happened, nor did nose blowing occur. And a couple of times I tsk-ed, and said something like, "That's horrible. That poor horse!"

And then Monday, I successfully talked about how painful the beginning of 9/11 was for me, which is something I have never been able to do without bawling and/or saying," I'm sorry, I don't feel comfortable talking about this subject right now." My eyes did tear up a little at first, but I didn't get all choked up and distraught. I was merely saddened, and regretful.

I did tear up when watching Grey's Anatomy, when Meredith was having a panic attack and hyperventilating in the hospital closet, because I feel the same way sometimes, and I know how that particular flavor of pain doesn't seem to go away very easily. And yes, I did snuffle just enough that I needed to blow my nose one time.

I feel terribly successful for the baby steps.

How you can tell I'm less broken now.

I was on vacation from the 15th to the 22nd.

Prior to this, I had set a deadline of the 24th for STYLIST to THING, or provide some sort of proof of THING, or else I would have to THAT, because OUR EMPLOYER required THING. Which gave her 16 days to THING.

On the 23rd, while Diva was cutting my hair, she mentioned that STYLIST had told everyone goodbye on the 21st, and that she would miss working with them.

Diva said that they tried to convince her to call me, or leave me a note, or talk to a manager in the store about the situation, but that STYLIST insisted that it a was pointless gesture, because she hadn't THING-ed or have proof of THING. And then she packed up her gear and left.

The way that Diva had initially explained it made it sound like STYLIST was just taking her stuff home to have it with her, and that she would still show up for her next shift, if only so that we could discuss THING, and how it would effect THAT.

I've needed THING for several months now, but I had cut STYLIST slack because she had a silly, but perfectly reasonable and understandable excuse for her not THING-ing several months earlier.

Well, it turns out that since she had missed a particularly important date involving THING, because of the silly but perfectly reasonable and understandable excuse, she needed to ACTION that would cost a lot of money, and then also OTHER THING.

Of course, neither Diva nor DIFFERENT STYLIST thought to call me or tell a manager about STYLIST leaving, so I found out about it being a permanent issue when she didn't show up for work the day after my haircut.

STYLIST had already allegedly ACTION-ed before the particularly important date, but DIFFERENT STYLIST told me the day after I had my haircut, that STYLIST had told DIFFERENT STYLIST that she didn't have the money to ACTION in the first place, and didn't know when she could THING. Much less OTHER THING. So, basically she lied to me about THING all along.

Ergo, I am down a stylist.

And it didn't even make me cry.

In fact, I was all like, "Well, whatever. Life goes on," and then went back to whatever I had been doing before I was given the rest of the skinny.

I didn't even get a stomach ache.

Seriously, I totally don't care.

Shit happens.

People lie.

And yet the world still keeps on spinning, which is enough for me sometimes.

I've been watching Discovery on Friday nights, again.

Dr. Zawi Hawass has like the coolest job ever.

Secretary-General of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, dude.

That's even better than Wafaa El-Sediq, and she gets to be the Curator of the entire Egyptian Museum in Cairo.

Well, okay, that's pretty damned cool, too. So I think her position is like the other coolest job ever.

And, as an aside, this is what I'll be doing at noon on my birthday this year.

Something else I love goes away.

Damn it, I happen to really like Teflon.

I might even go so far as to say that I love it.

I'd much rather have an unlikely and improbable, yet still very, very, very remotely possible health risk than I would have some hypothetical fettucini noodles firmly bonded at a crazy, culinarily molecular level to the bottom of a bare metal sauce pan.

Hell, I do love Teflon.

I feel like I should scamper over to Wal-Mart and snap up all the T-fal that I can get my hands on.

snatches of song.

I was at an NCA trend show, learning stuff, when I realized that the music playing during the show was fantastic.

It was sort of dreamy, and hypnotic and vaguely dance-y.

A woman and a man were sometimes speaking in maybe French, maybe Portuguese, maybe both.

I wrote down what few snatches of sony lyrics that I could grasp, figuring that I would be able to find the song(s) online somewhere, if only so that I could buy the album for myself.

And yet I can't find it online anywhere.

This is what I wrote down:

"a conversation overheard between + man + saxophone" french? portuguese?
"lazy casanova" "so much love"
"lazy lazy love"

I think that it was the Manuel Rodriguez class at the Merchandise Mart, showing trend cuts, color blocking techniques, and hair styles for fall.

I don't remember specifically if that was what it was, but I do remember someone referring to the "American Graffiti" collection. (Even though he would have been teaching the Pivot Point trend collection, "The Mechanics of Emotion.")

I took the class in like August or September, and have been carrying around a scrap of paper with those words on it (in my apron pocket at work) for so long that the scrap is all ratty around the edges, and full of creases and stains.

I don't know. I just liked the damned music.