Heptadecagon

I think you can find this over at Sweatpants & Coffee , but I didn't take the time to look for it. I did, however, find it over at The Coulour Yellow (and all across Facebook, of course).

The other night at dinner, after a long day of writing, I finally took my hair out of its clip. At this point, if my hair isn't curled, it reaches the middle of my back. I'm only 5'2", but tresses that extend down that far are still quite long, no matter how short my back might be. Which means, that's a lot of hair sitting atop my head and around my shoulders. But I don't wash it everyday, and the other day, being an at-home day, my shower in the morning did not include a shampoo. In between bites of guacamole, Talia looked up at me and said, "You should wear your hair down more often, Mom." "I do," I replied. "I haven't worn a ponytail for at least a couple of days." As many twelve-year-old girls are wont to do, she rolled her eyes. Because a couple of days is not what she meant. Clearly. And here I was forcing her to talk more. With words, not with non-verbal tween body language. "No," she said. "I mean o...

The bookshelves stood against the wall, all three of them unfinished. "I'll get to them someday. Take a stain to them, once I've decided what color to go with," she said as she wiped her hands against the dark blue denim covering her legs. "Now what color to go with..." Her voice trailed off as she turned off the light, plunging the shelves into complete darkness. That was twenty-five years ago, and those shelves still stand, as pale as desert sand, the same color as the day they came through the door. There's been no time to find the right color of stain, nor the inclination to do so. There have been appointments to get to, weeds to pull, carpet to replace, and bills to pay. The busy-ness of life never allowed her to get to staining the bookshelves. At least, that's what she tells herself. For it isn't the chaos of the ordinary days that interrupted her quest to place some color on those shelves. It isn't the fact that you or I might h...