Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow

Got a call from the mother of a really depressed little girl losing her hair. We needed to find a way to cheer her up.

I sent her a clown sheitel with this poem:

So you wake up one morning and your hair starts to go
its all over your pillow and blanket and clothes

its itchy and depressing and feels so bad,
but it doesn't have to make you sad.

Yes, this may be the part where chemo takes over,
but its a great excuse for a make-over!

Have very straight hair and want to give curls a turn?
Get a sheitel with a nice frizzy perm

Or are you tired of breaking brushes in your curly messes?
Time for a straight look with easy smooth tresses

Like long and short, but cant decide which one?
Get two sets of hair and switch around for fun!

Go to school every day and make your friends guess
What way you decide to wear your hair next.

What about color? Would you look good as a blonde?
You never know, go try one on!

Black or brown might suit your head,
Go try some one, or what about red?

Or orange or purple with highlights green or blue.
What do you think? It's up to you!

I know your real hair is hard to part with,
but here's some new hair just to start with.

The Truth

It's been on my mind a while, but I never said anything because I don't know what to do about it really.

I'm not "Me" anymore.

The reason I decided to actually post about this is because tonight I've been skimming through some old emails and found one written by a fellow blogger (Though I doubt she still reads my post after that email she sent me) telling me that since my book came out I've become different. She said I used to be funny and spunky and now I was some big headed speaker and writer who enjoyed being full of myself.

So she's not wrong. I like being full of myself. But serisously, I know what she means and I know why it happened.

When this blog began I was a kid. It was read by only my friends and those that weren't my friends had no idea who I was. I kvetched about chemo and talked miserably about those annoying chessed doers and said funny things to Santa Claus when he tried to give me X-mas gifts. And I was allowed to say all that, because who was I? I was just some anonymous stinker writing a blog.

Suddenly, I'm not anonymous anymore. And there's this pressure. This need to conform and this fear of saying all that stuff I used to, of being the pain in the neck teen I used to be.

But in real life I'm not this way, so it irks me.

Because in the life I really lead these crazy things are still happening to me and I'm still sassing back and enjoying every minute of it.

But I can't quite post on the blog how my son sings "Ding Dong the Witch is Dead" every time I mention my mother-in-law, can I?

And I'm sure my husband would find it weird if I told you he knocked himself out by opening the car door while he was texting and hit himself on the head and needed me to drive his dizzy bleeding self to get stitches.

I could tell you how my sukkah blew away two weeks ago but not about the snooty conversation I had with the con-ed guy.

Cos now my blog is more real. And I'm afraid of hurting people and afraid of hurting myself.

It was very hard after Miracle Ride was published and people began judging me, the real me, for all the things I said there. I found this last year and a half I was busy defending myself to annoying readers who thought they had a right to judge me and my story. There were lots of compliments too, don't worry, but I'm sick of trying to be a nice normal girl for all the people who feel they have to comment all the time.

I miss the days where I could just rant to the world about my insane life. Cos my life is funny. Always good for a laugh. But now that you guys all know me, it's different.

But now I started finding my posts kind of boring. Like each one had to have a lesson, like I'm some sort of rebbetzin. In fact, someone so close to me started calling me "Rebbetzin" and it bothers me, because our friendship isn't the same as it was.

I want to be able to post funny stuff again, randomly, for no reason. Think you'd still read my blog if I did? Or would you call me a hypocrite or wishy washy or any of those other names people have called me in this last year and a half?

I'm afraid of being Me again. People think that I'm something I'm not and for the last year plus I've been trying to live to that standard but I can see it just aint working.

So I want to rewind. Go back to being that crazy person who never gets it right. My blog used to tell this story of my weird and funny life. Maybe I can do it again?

I sure wanna try, but I'm still not sure how to do it. Lots of what happens in my life involves real people and real emotions and I'm afraid of hurting them.

Bas-Melech, in a comment to my last post, congratulated me on rejoining the masses. Now I want to do so for real.

But I don't know how. And I need your advice. Please be kind.

And that's the truth.

A Dressing Down

People think that just because I was sick and got over it that nothing small in my life ever gets to me. That unless it's something hugely monumental happening, it has no effect.

Let me assure you, that is not the case.

People email me all the time and preface by saying, "you probably think I'm crazy or overreacting, compared to all you went through," and sometimes, yeah, you might be overreacting, but hey, sometimes I hyperventilate too.

And it doesn't make me a shallow person. It makes me normal.

Yes, five years ago I was fighting for my life, but now I'm living my life. And part of life are the frustrating little bits that can bring me to tears a lot faster than chemo did.

For example, (and if anyone dares to laugh at my misery, I will ban you from reading this blog,) take Sunday.

I was up Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday nights with my baby who is teething (yet again). Motzai Shabbos we were at an all time record where I was up six times between one and four in the morning and then up at six for the day.

At three thirty I ran out with my mother and sister, leaving the husband with both kids so that I could go to my last gown fitting before the brother's wedding.

Guess what. The gown don't fit.

I don't know if it was just made wrong, taken in wrong, or I'm built wrong, but that thing didn't look right no matter what we did.

I am not a picky person when it comes to these things, and spent the next two hours trying on 25 other dresses. Nothing doing.

Everything was too big or too fluffy or too nightgowny-looking, and almost all of them made me look thirteen. In fact, when my mother saw some girl trying on a stunning gown that she thought I'd look nice in, the girl was thirteen.

When after two hours, at closing time,I still had no gown, I threw a temper tantrum in the gown place.

I know, real mature.

I was sobbing all over some huge fluffy dress at how I was up since some unholy hour and now I was going to look ugly at my brother's wedding and no one cared and I just wasn't going to come, and I hated looking like I was still in high school...you get the picture.

So in a last-minute-no-choice-in-the-matter decision, we ran to another bridal shop that rents for DOUBLE the amount I was spending before (and it was NOT cheap to begin with, mind you!) and within fifteen minutes rented another gown.

I still came home and cried all night.

What? I'm entitled to want to feel pretty at the wedding! I never got to wear a gown before! I missed most of my sister's wedding to give birth to JB and I was really looking forward to being pretty next week.

One of the things I learned when I was sick was that no one has it easy. It doesn't matter that I had Hodgkins' and that my friend had a brain tumor, we were both suffering. Who's to say that one of us suffered more? How would you know?

Sure, crying about dresses might have seemed petty to me when I was bald and attached to an IV pole all the time, but hey, I would have given anything to be so innocent. I'd have loved for the most devastating thing in my life to be about a dress.

So I'm going to take this whole gown fiasco as an excuse to be grateful. I'm so happy that I'm at a time in my life where I can cry over a silly gown. I'm healthy, I have two cutie kids, a wonderful husband (who made my daughter a bottle with RICE instead of FORMULA)and in the end, a great gown to dance in at that wedding.

I used to feel awkward around those "shallow" people in my life, but for once, I can appreciate being one of them.

(what JB is wearing to the wedding. Couldn't resist.)

New Article Out!

Check out my short story/article in the Mishpacha's Teen Pages this week. It's called The FBI.

Lemme know what y'all think!