Hair knock down

Buckle up for a senseless post about my hair. (Or you can just go read this this awesomeness).

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*tap tap*


Well, if you are still here, I'll tell you about my annual hair knock down.

When you have pale blond and uninteresting hair, everything goes fine until you are about 32. When you turn 32 (or so) things start happening. Namely, the pale blond uninterestingness starts to sparkle a bit more than you'd like. You know, because it's turning gray. Now, this can go on for a good number of years more and you can tell yourself it's fine because your hair looks like champagne. Kind of bubbly. (Note to you ladies under 30: lying to yourself is an indispensable life skill after age 35. Start practicing now).

So you spend the summers running around outside and your hair lightens up and then grows some more, a little darker here, a little lighter there. You get about 15% of your head highlighted one day because you are feeling sort of ordinary and another day you get the tiniest fraction low-lighted because the hair - it's still kind of ordinary.

Then one day you wake up and you realize that your hair is nine different colors. And one of them is still gray.

Ordinarily it is round about October when this happens to me, and then I go to Aveda Institute on Spring Street and have them give me some 7N. (7N is the color my hair was when I was five. It is the correct color). Now, Aveda knows that I am totally not ok with dumping my entire head in a sink full of blond hair color. (I am holding out on that idea as long as possible). I have them pull 7N through the top layer to "knock down" the effects of sun and um the effects of, um, not being five years old anymore. Or twenty-five, if it comes to that.

Only this year, that hair knock down? It never happened.

If you were me this year, your dad threatened to die and you had a banger of nervous breakdown and you didn't look in the mirror for six months.

Then he didn't die and you realized you had to start paying attention to stuff other than inky black psychotic mania.

So you peeked in the mirror and you saw that, in your hysteria, you forgot to get your hair knocked down last fall, and as a result, your hair is very bubbly in addition to being nine different colors, and when you finally walk into Aveda, the stylist gasps "where the hell have you been? The knock down... it has been six months, yes?" Then she runs her fingers through your technicolor disaster and says "Wow. We need a whole lotta 7N."

Well, I let her do it. The 7N. The result is there was a whole lot of knock down. My hair has probably never been this dark ever in its life.



Now, I won't say I hate it because I don't. I kind of like it. But it's dark. Really dark. Wheatty dark. Nutty Chimay dark. If I look in the mirror I am all like "who the heck is that?"

So I am going to give it a few days and if i still don't recognize myself I will go down the street to the Russians who cut my hair before I left for Peru and let them toss some highlights into it. You know, to start the whole process over again. For the 7N.

Have a good weekend.

Aveda 7N

$200 worth of hair cut, Aveda 7N, styling products and a facial later, here I am.

(It goes without saying I didn't have $200 to spend on my hair today).

But here I am, and with very little to say for myself except thank you for continuing to show up here for the masochistic siege of compulsory blog posting known as Blog365.

And so I send you to P, who has a new URL for her fabulous blog What Possessed Me and who has written a far better post today than I possibly could.

So go see P. Tomorrow, I will talk more about my pale, blond ordinariness. (Hint: it involves the Aveda 7N).

I love* you. But you already knew that.

(Have a good weekend).

*re: my love for you: like a stampede of wild horses, it is.

Baby, what did I say?

Rather than give you a bullet point list of Grip's crimes, I will tell the story of the time I saw Grip. (Well the last time I saw him before he started stalking me. But I don't want to confuse you. This is the last time I "saw" him).

Grip had told me on our first date that his first marriage had not worked out because they were "too young" and that she had left him for an older man who could "better provide for her." I found this discomfiting but I made no comment. Several weeks later, Grip and I were in his living room on a Thursday afternoon. I was reading Burney's The Wanderer and I came across the word "delusory." Grip was on the other side of the room, reading The Times.

"Grip," I said, "Delusory. What does the word delusory word mean to you?"

"You are getting a PhD in English, and you don't know what delusory means?" he replied.

"Of course I know. I just wondered what you thought it might mean." I handed him the book. He read the sentence I had marked.

"It means delusional," he said. He handed the book back to me.

I read for a bit longer. Grip had put down his newspaper and was staring out the window.

"Why didn't you go to work today?" I asked.

"I wanted to spend the afternoon with you," he said.

"Ah," I said.

To this day I don't know why I said this. This would be the part of the meltdown that is my fault.

"Why did you leave your wife?" I said.

I expected him to be angry, but he simply sighed and stared at the floor. Then he turned and told me this little gem of a story.

"About two years after our wedding, a buddy of mine invited me to go to conference about thinking positive and building confidence. It was a three day thing and I really just went to support my friend because he was having a hard time. Well the whole seminar was about positive thinking and believing in yourself and making decisions based on who you want to be and it totally changed my life. I realized within half a day that I had married Meg because I had been too scared to try to get someone better. I realized I had married her based on an idea of myself that I didn't want to live anymore. Once I knew I could do better than Meg, there was no way I could live with her anymore. I moved out as soon as I got back."

I, speechless, considered a moment before answering.

"Did she love you?" I asked.

"Yes," he said. Then he whipped around in his chair and gave me the anger I had been expecting ten lines ago.

"It's like you," he said, crossing his arms over his chest. "You with your reserve and your quietness and your ridiculous ideas."

"Me?" I said. I had no idea that the end of his marriage had been about me. I couldn't wait to hear more.

"Yeah, you. You live this tiny little life with, as far as I can see, nothing in it. You like me, so don't try to pretend you don't. There are at least ten ways of preventing pregnancy, and yet your refuse to have sex with me and don't even give me a reason." Then he threw his hands up in the air and stomped off the to kitchen. I could hear him making espresso. My heart was beating so fast I thought it might pop right out of my chest, grow legs, scurry into the kitchen and kick him square in the ass.

Perhaps I should have mentioned before: I was not sleeping with Grip, nor anything near it. I didn't want to. It was too early and I was unsure of him in at least nine different ways. Plus I didn't want to and there is also a rule, among people raised in plaid skirts and knee socks, about not doing it. (But I won't pretend that rule was driving my behavior. The not wanting to was far more operative).

So I read a few sentences and waited. He returned. He handed me a tiny cup of coffee. I wriggled back into my shoes and waited for it to get worse, which it did.

"It's like, you know," he sat again at the window. "It's like we are different on some cultural level or something. There's no reason for us not to have sex and you act like there is no reason for us TO have sex. Ridiculous."

"There isn't," I said. I put my book back in my bag and moved to the other end of the couch.

"Great!" he said. "That's just great! Next I bet you'll try to tell me it's some kind of thing about morals or something. Jesus!"

This is the point at which I started laughing, but it was nervous laughing, the sort that also makes a person cry and also, regretably, makes a person's hands shake uncontrollably. Very inconvenient if one is trying to shrug into one's coat and flee the apartment of a madman.

Grip stared at me, astonished.

"Are you," he gasped, "crying?"

"Whatever it is, I am doing it," I stammered. By then I was on my feet and half way to the door. He came after me.

"Baby, what did I say?"

This is the part where he put his arms around me and was backing me up against the wall and was looking at me with almost believable compassion. Next was the part where I tried to wriggle free. But no luck! He grabbed my face with his hand and started kissing me. To his credit, he let go of me when I said "stop."

I left without another word.

Grip, poor fellow, has been calling me off and on for five years. The messages have ranged from abject begging to pathetic, tearful, mega-abject grovelling. A maximum of three a year, a minimum of one.

Here is the one I got in December:


Hi Nina, this is Grip Spitzer. I know it's really strange that I am calling you, but I just woke up and I just had the strangest really strong feeling that should call you. Um, well, there is more to it than that, but I think there is something that we really seriously missed out on, um and, so, I guess what I am asking, if you are still single would you please, please have a cup of coffee with me? Because, um, I think that I was really really really not ready, and not who I am now in terms of what I want out of life when I met you, and um, I should have grabbed onto you and held on to you with all my might when I had the chance. So, um, if you could, give me a call, ---,---,----. Hope you are doing well. Bye.

Do you think he means, perhaps, that he is now ready in terms of you know, doing better than the wife he abandonned? Might I be the lucky woman he considers up to his standard? Or does he perhaps mean that he is not who he was in terms of, you know, being prepared not to bully a woman into flinging her underwear on a lampshade just because he wants her to? What do you think he might be ready for? Who might he be now?

Well.

What do you say we never find out?

Happy Thursday, and thank you for reading.

Ash Wednesday

Today is Ash Wednesday, and I am off to confession this morning so I can start the season reconciled. I was thinking I would compose a note to the priest and roll it up like a cigar and shove it between the grating. Just to see if it would go over. Here's my note:

"Dear Monsignor, I did everything bad I could do except kill people. Calculate the maximum number of occurances possible in a year. Impose maximum penalty. Gracias."

A few of you have written to me to say that writing my once a week "sin" post is in poor taste, that I do harm to the concept by making light of it. That is not my intention, of course. My intention is to take a look at my week and notice what was bad about it. It is also my intention to encourage other people to care about right conduct but also to make people aware that bad conduct, even among believers, is maddeningly common. And also blogging presents an excellent forum for explanation. Confession provides no such thing.

You go in wanting to tell all your stories and explain all your challenges because secretly or not so secretly, you want the priest to say, "There, there. You have had a hard time. Here's a cookie for you. Run along."

But that is not what it is about. The explanation doesn't matter. What you need to say and what he needs to hear is the flat, ordinary, ugly total of your failures. Not the why, but the what. And that, although it's very itchy and uncomfortable, is the also its great benefit. It divorces you from your string of excuses and forces you to see results. Even successes, if you have any, are often attributable not to virtue but some other cause. *

I have rarely made it through confession without hyperventilating and biting a hole through my hand. What I want to say is "The word 'fuck' is featured in 54.536434% of all my utterances. I rarely compose a thought that does not include obscenity. But this is because you, Jesus, made me very intelligent and sensitive and I therefore have need of giving voice to the coloration of my very special refined and exalted fucking feelings. Oops. Perhaps what I meant was you should have given me less personality. If you had wanted me to be dull and ordinary you could have made me a stupid and ordinary person. What's that?? I am ordinary? You mean only my disgusting tendency to swear is truly remarkable??? Well, what do YOU know? Oh dammit. I forgot. You know everything. Could you please then make my thoughts and feelings less exciting? Oh wait..."

You see how this goes? Much better to just say "I swear every chance I get."

Oh and you are right if you are thinking, "Nina, bad language is the least of your problems."

Indeed.

Here's another thing that makes me uneasy and cannot be expressed in any dignified way: my lying. What I want to say is "I lied to my boss because she drives me crazy and has no understanding whatsoever of the special challenges involved with my job. If she had my job she would be similarly bored, miserable and desperate and she, too, would do only enough to avoid getting fired. Obviously. Because this job that pays me a full time salary for 5 hours a week is TORTURE!"

And of course, when the word torture is mentioned, not even I can pretend I don't know what is really meant by the word. Certainly not the gross indignity of having to work 5 hours a week to collect a 40 hour paycheck.

So you see.

And so do I. Which is why I maintain, despite the displeasure of all my dear friends who are Baptist and Jewish or Muslim or Pentacostalist - confession is a terrible, awful, very bad, perfect thing.

And by the time you see me again, I will have tried to accomplish it with something like dignity. (Impossible). Nevertheless, I will have tried.

* Take, for example, my celibacy. It would be a victory indeed if I could attribute it to love of the law. But it not attributable to the law. It is due to my fear of being vulnerable. Fuck. Oh wait. Not fuck. I meant... oh well... yeah. Etc.

$1384

Well, make that $1404 if you add two cab rides and a can of diet soda to the tab... ahem... $1404 later, I now have a sixth computer.

Yeah. This New York City schoolteacher has sixth computers. How is that possible?

I'll tell you.

The first and oldest is a Compaq desktop that hasn't been out of the closet since I moved here. I don't know what to do with it. The second is a Fujitsu Lifebook that I bought during my "Oh my God I am turning 30 and I am losing my shit and I guess I better write a novel" flip out. The third is the Powerbook G4 I bought when I moved to New York. It lived three months - and died only because I was riding an Amtrak train one day and happily working when the train slammed on the breaks - and consequently slammed my skull straight into the monitor. That's right, people. I broke it with my skull. The fourth one is the PowerBook G4 17" wunderkind I bought shortly thereafter. It lived four years - until the CD driver broke about six months ago. It, too was functioning (sort of) until last night, when it chose to sound like a squirrel in a well just like computer five, which is right now as we speak undergoing surgery to install a new hard drive. I expect to get it back in three days. But can a person who works from home be offline for three days? Not so much. Also, I signed up for Blog365, which y'all know I take far more seriously than my job.

A sixth computer was clearly in order.

Computer six is an iMac with wireless mouse and keyboard. Thus far, we are friends. If this one fails, however, I am taking a direct flight back to Morocco, hiring a safari to take me to the Sahara, and walking straight into the desert to live among the nomadic sand people. The. end.

Nothing boring about this

What, you ask?

How about having your new computer - you know - the once that cost $3000 and is less than six months old? That one! Right! How about having your new computer make a sound like a rabid squirrel trapped in a well - and then give you the finger:



All of you who said I was foolish to have so many computers? You people?

I think you can now see how wrong you were. Are. Were.

Whatever.

Snow and socks

We had one hour of snow this morning before it turned to rain:



I made socks this weekend. The big one is for my dad. The small one is for Liam:



I made another pair of socks over Christmas, but those are wrapped up and will go in the mail this week.


I have yet another pair on needles right now, and those, when they are done, will go in the mail, too.

Also, sorry I am so boring lately. Work has started and as I mentioned yesterday (sort of), I am not feeling like myself. Perhaps later I will publish the Grip post.

Sin of the week, 2/3/08

I saw him again today. This time he was crossing the street in front of my building. He didn't see me, and I confess I am glad he didn't. If three seconds of eye contact in a coffee shop can ruin a Saturday morning for me, then why permit Sunday to be similarly trashed? No, thanks.

I regret to inform you that I have no spectacular crimes to report this week. I know, I know. I am failing at the business of being openly and nakedly disgusting. But do not despair. I feel pretty sure I'll be exposed to new opportunities for success (or failure) in the coming weeks.

I have the growing impression that the ground is shifting under my feet. Either I am changing, or something else is changing in direct relation to me. One symptom of this change is that lately everywhere I go and whatever I do, I am awash in memory. People and events I have not thought of in years are turning up everywhere. I was walking back from the gym the other night and I passed a bakery. The whole block smelled of cinnamon and butter, and I suddenly I was on Hillsborough St. and I was 26 years old and my boyfriend and I were standing under a vent smelling butter and cinnamon and we had $8 between us and where could we get two hamburgers for $8? We had nothing, not even each other for much longer, but it was a good time.

Another day it was an unseasonable 50 degrees in Manhattan and I opened the windows to get the smell of bleach out from the scrubbing mania I had recently fallen into, and then I was nine and sitting on the front steps with my parents drinking tea at dusk and they were talking of putting me in Catholic school to prevent me from knowing any boys. I had tea and it was a warm summer night and the breeze was blowing and I did not mind one way or another whether I wore the plaid skirt and the knee socks or went to school with boys because boys did not interest me at all. I was happy.

And so these scenes I feel sure I would never have remembered again keep wandering in and interrupting otherwise normal days because something, I know not what, is working on me. I could not say whether the change is for good or ill, but I have to hope the former.

And of course, I readily see that I have no choice but to change, adapt, adjust, whatever one might call it. The way it is going, the way it will certainly go unless something changes... it cannot be. Whatever you say about my life as it is, that it is fun and interesting and full of adventure and so forth, it is unsustainable at best and seriously disordered at worst.

For no particular reason, a picture of sunrise the other day:



Oh, ok. I lied to my boss again this week (and I am not sorry; the lie needed telling) and one of my students appealed a grade and I let it go to the provost without even reading the paperwork. Because I don't really care. Perhaps I could work on the whole compassion and integrity thing. (Maybe).

See you tomorrow.

This

Standing in line at the coffee shop is like this:

coffee and a muffin no maybe only half a muffin ew muffins bagel but won't sell me half only large coffee maybe a small make more socks or finish papers floor is dirty hair inexcusable many phone calls emails inexcusable severe introversion forgot to pay rent practically schizoid inexcusable check your email, duh! flossing in shower hate hair make more socks make more socks make more socks I don't like anyone my turn yet coffee clear out voice mail no excuse check your email pale blond and ordinary polish the silver clean the rugs muffin? bagel? coffee coffee coffee get your eyebrows waxed and change light bulb polish silver ordinary coffee and

and

and

neck shoulders back elbow fingers on table reads the post sneakers and jeans no hat and hair is dark and drumming on table neck neck neck shoulders shoulders table reads the post I don't like anybody I don't like anybody drumming on table reads the post fingers and elbows reads the post and I don't like anybody

The line moved. I had to decide between the muffin and the nothing, but I could not take my eyes off the back of his neck, the straight male ordinariness of it. I listened to his fingers drumming on the table while I ordered: coffee, small, milk, no sugar. $1.45. The drumming on the table stopped and I had my coffee. I turned.

He folded the newspaper and placed it on the next table, and then he sat back in his chair, looking at me. I looked at him. So I stood there and he sat there and we regarded each other. He had green eyes and brown hair, and he had not shaved. There was something like a smile; he might have blinked. So I closed my eyes.

Then the door opened and it was cold, and I was on the sidewalk and then up the stairs and into the elevator and now I am back here, drumming on the keyboard.



So this is all I have today. See you tomorrow. (I hope I am over this by then). (Thank you). (Oh and have a nice weekend).

Perhaps tomorrow

I promised to tell the story of Grip. I fear I cannot deliver, at least not today.

I have papers to grade this afternoon and then I am meeting Bibi to run stairs tonight. I am sure you will understand, if you glance at my Kili training to the right, how much I can't afford to skip work outs. Beyond a few runs on the treadmill and some gratuitous crunching, I have not done much. Unless you count cookie avoidance. (Which I obviously do).

I do not even have a witty and interesting way of telling you how today's post will be a whole lot of nothing.

Oh look! It's already over!

See you tomorrow. (And thank you for reading).

Wing-a-ling dragon

Thank you to My Reflecting Pool for introducing me to Strongbad.




Oh, go ahead and click it. For a wing-a-ling dragon.

The pale blond un-interestingness of it all

I neither shave nor wax my bikini line. Sorry. I am neither dark nor hairy enough to bother. (Unlike some people).

In fact, let me just keep talking. I sometimes get sad about my lack of interesting hair. The pale blond un-interestingness of it all. Women with a little pigmentation actually have something to trim back or wax - hell - some have enough to shave their boyfriends' initials into the situation.

I was at the gym yesterday, and I had to share a bank of lockers with such a (naked) creature. She was applying lotion to her shins, which required that she fling her shins up onto the counter (one at a time, of course). This afforded me a good view of her sitation, whether I wished to observe it or not.

She had shaved or waxed it into a, um, how to describe? A charming... runway. Then I noticed that she was darker than I in an all over way and had - get this - longer eyelashes and prettier, thicker hair. She even had visible eyebrows. Lovely, she was.

And then I got a little sad. I have no good reason to apply razor blades or firey hot wax to my parts or situation. This must be no way to live.

Someone comfort me.

Even Weirder

Tagged again, this time by Bee, to list the seven most famous or infamous people I have ever met or to do the ubiquitous seven strange things about me post.

Happily, there are more weird things about me to share.

1) I do not own a single tube of lipstick. Gloss, yes. Stain, yes. Stick, no.

2) I categorically reject thong underwear. Whose idea was that? I'd rather not wear underwear than have to wear a thong. And yes, it is possible to find underwear that doesn't create lines. Please stop looking at my ass.

3) I used to be a telemarketer. (I was in graduate school and really poor. Don't judge me).

4) I have twenty bottles of nail-polish. Why is this weird? Because I don't wear nail-polish.

5) I am rarely late or early for anything. I am on time.

6) I have never read a single word of the Potter books.

7) I can't sleep unless I take my earrings out.

Tagged herewith:

Maggie, LAS, Liz, Lotus, Jen,and Cajunvegan.

P, you are also tagged if you want to be tagged but not if you don't. Ditto Woodrow.

(This presupposes that the above listed taggees don't have a choice, which they certainly do).

Oh yes and the "rules" state that if you are tagged you should tag more people and leave comments on their blogs telling them they are tagged.

Etc.

Tomorrow, I will tell the story of Grip. Until then, have a lovely Tuesday.

Go see Dan and LAS

Go see Dan. After you do that, please go see LAS.

Thank you. See you tomorrow.

What rhymes with annoy?

Last night, Roy and I were settling down to watch Pride and Prejudice when I recalled the other bug from my past, one I did not name and incorporate into my household.

I will name him now. His name shall be Troy.

I will tell the story of Troy to illustrate one of the many excellent reasons I am watching five hour "movies" with a common household fruit fly and a cat, in my pajamas, with my hair piled on top of my head and very expensive beauty products piled up on my face.

The reason is that I am annoying. (Secondary reason: debilitating hatred of bugs). (Tertiary reason: petulant sense of feminine entitlement). (To be live unmolested by bugs). (The end).

A bit of pre-amble. Please be patient. Here is where I live:



The building is run by a squad of doormen, porters, maintenance workers and assorted real estate swindlers. These people are maniacs about making sure the building is well-run, organized, and above all, clean. Many times I have to share an elevator with a guy who is rubbing each individual crystal of the chandelier with a hanky. Once a day, I listen and observe that someone is running a vacuum cleaner right up to my door. Obviously, pests such as mice and roaches are not tolerated. In any event, I have had limited exposure to them in my five years here.

I am getting to the part where I explain more fully why I am watching Colin Firth amble across a meadow* in a wet shirt. (For the fiftieth time). Please be patient. Oh! And look at this:



So many years ago, I was bent over my needlework with my hair piled on top of my head. (I may have been wearing $10 worth of moisturizer). I glanced up from my embroidery and saw the creature scurry into my apartment from under the door. It was Troy, urban cock-roach.

(Please forgive me for not making you a proper drawing of Troy. To even picture him makes me shudder).

So in walked Troy. I screamed. I climbed onto the kitchen table, weeping and shuddering, gnashing my teeth. Troy, realizing there were no Ritz crackers and EZ cheese laid out for him on a doily, perceived his error. But instead of exiting the way he entered, he scrambled across the room (that would be my entire apartment) and set himself up under the heater in my bathroom.

If you think I was upset about Troy perching on my welcome mat, you can't imagine the inconsolable mania that resulted from his new location. My hands were shaking so badly that I couldn't dial my cell phone.

Who was I trying to call, you ask?


Why, FB, of course. He was wrangling a stent into Some Old Guy's hardened artery down at the hospital, but no matter.

FB arrived ten minutes later, but by then the problem was much, much worse. While I was on the phone, Troy had vanished. I shrieked and chewed my hands while FB tore the bathroom apart, looking for Troy. No luck.

So FB spent the night at my place, protecting me and Cat-head from Troy. I slept on one side of the bed and he sat up on the other, reading medical journals with one eye trained on the heater.

As you may have surmised, Troy did not reappear. The next day, FB and I had to go back to work and defer bug hunting for another day.

Two weeks went by without word from Troy. I had almost forgotten about the incident.

And then one day, while I was rinsing the shampoo from my inexcusably long hair, I glanced up to find two long, wiggling antennae reaching over the top of the shower curtain.

Oh, ok. I'll make you a drawing.



FB was working third shift in a hospital thirty miles away. Nevertheless, he arrived thirty minutes later to find me naked, wrapped in a quilt, with shampoo in my hair, in the fetal position, sobbing on the kitchen table. Have I mentioned how much I hate bugs? (I do like Roy a little bit).

FB, according to my instructions, disengaged the shower curtain and threw Troy away with it. He then took the trash all the way out to the sidewalk. He returned with a cookie and a bottle of my favorite mineral water. Then we had a "talk" about being a little more grown up about bugs.

Thirty minutes is an inexcusable duration to make Nina wait for rescue. I was most seriously displeased.

If you are marveling at the patience of FB, let me point out the original purpose of this missive. It was to illustrate one of the 345,232 reasons I am still single. (It's because I am annoying). The end.



*Not all women are vulnerable to The Colin Firth in a Wet Shirt pathology, which is attraction to men who are well spoken and refined and who do not define having good manners as being fussy and afraid of a little dirt. What every woman needs to know about Darcy, she learns when he arrives home on horseback, dismounts, takes off his hat and boots and jumps into the lake in front of his house. He is a Man, you see. Stupid Regency Period breeches notwithstanding.

** If you think this unreasonable, well, it was. But in my defense, FB found this behavior acceptable. While intolerant of certain other features of being In A Relationship, (like me speaking more than three sentences consecutively), FB had a very useful "savior" complex. Nothing motivated and pleased him more than being needed. He actually liked going to extraordinary inconvenience and trouble to "rescue" me from whatever situation I could present as beyond my strength. So you see, I was doing him a favor by acting like a spoiled child. (He liked it when I was helpless and he could step in and be competent and powerful). (We all have our issues).