Oh, how I hated those curls - they were absolute torture. I would wake up in the morning with snarly hair. I could count on at least a half hour of sitting on the red kitchen stool while my mother first brushed out all the snarls, and then twisted each segment of hair around her finger with a wet hairbrush. Then off I would skip the block and a half to school, cutting through backyards, picking up additional kids along the way. I envied all the other girls their straight hair, some long, some short. There was only one other girl that had long naturally curly hair like mine, and her mother didn't make HER wear those stupid ringlets.
By the time I was in third grade I was "doing" something about it. I secretly carried a hairbrush in my school bag and would race to the bathroom and brush all the ringlets out into what I thought was a beautiful hairstyle of curly fuzz. Do you think my mother took the hint? Nope - every morning it was back to the kitchen stool and the wet hairbrush. By the middle of third grade my long ringlets reached about halfway down my back. By this time my mother decided it was easier to give in and cut them off as I had been begging. After all, who was being punished here - me having to sit there every morning, or her having to put up with all the fussing every morning. No brainer here. One Saturday she finally took a scissor and whacked all that hair off just below chin length. It didn't take her long to decide that made HER life much simpler in addition to making her daughter much happier.
My first grade picture, looking just a wee bit happier than in the snowflake picture of yesterday's entry. Of course, I wasn't turning into a popcicle here either.
I was awakened at 5:30 this morning to the most obnoxious noise of someone's outboard motor plowing up the middle of my bed. What in the world was going on here - had my bed been put afloat in the middle of a Minnesota lake and Ole was trying to get us ashore or something? When I finally became completely conscious I discovered that Simon, the world's coldest cat, had taken up residence beneath my blankets and had managed to situate himself so that just his nose was peaking out of the covers by my shoulder. And needless to say, he had to let me know how happy he was by putting out his very finest and loudest purr. Then very slowly, a furry paw reached out from beneath the blankets and softly tapped me on the cheek. Persistent tapping indicated that it was definitely time for Simon's breakfast and that he would roust himself out from the warmth if I would only feed him. Poor pathetic, starved, boy.
I'm really not keen on pets being beneath the blankets with you, but this poor old bugger (aged 19) has to do whatever he can to stay warm. He lays in front of the heat registers when the furnace is on, one in particular that gets so hot you can't keep your feet in front of it. Simon parks himself there on an almost permanent basis these days.
Love, Lena
1 comment:
Oh my! It is Nellie! Love the picture. But I'll have you know that I didn't have to sit on our little red kitchen stool every morning, just on special occasions, Sundays and Christmas. Yes, I had the finger ringlets too, in my brown hair. I think I was saved the daily process because my sister 2 years younger than me had hair down to her butt which had to be braided each morning. Thus no time for my beauty routine!
And I should write about our Christmas programs too.....we received the same brown bag of candy and peanuts, with an apple. I hated the ribbon candy!!!
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