Daisy Sparrow

 Hey, so, I don't think my previous thing posted? Screenshot of Daisy Sparrow Designs now live on Etsy? (no entries yet)

Anyway, I did the business card today, I'll try and post that.

And not today but in the near future it will be on my personal facebook page. And some of you are going to be all "YOU'RE Daisy Sparrow???!!!"

To which the answer is, yes, 'tis me. I've been playing double all along.

But can we PLEASE do all that over here, and not on my personal facebook page??? Please please please???

I cried a lot on Friday. Partly at getting some sad news, a bereavement. Mostly, though, (and prior to that,) out of self pity. My Mam and sister going out for lunch and not inviting me. And it wasn't even a "fun" lunch, it was a "I need to see my Mam! (and we just happened to eat food together)" sort of lunch. Poor sister. I was just feeling jealous, because I was feeling overlooked, a thirsty orchid desperate for a bit of attention. Managing a health/hormonal issue that reduced my capacity. And wondering whether it -- whether I -- mattered to anyone at all.

A song comes on the radio (ok, the tv music channels), and the nostalgia hits with force. Not the wistful-memories kind, although maybe it is, but more the I-am-actually-transported-back-in-time-and-not-really-aware-of-the-present, kind. Clever lines sung by a cheesy boyband that remind me of my first love. Alex. The Ginger-haired Swimmer with the good teeth. The only guy I've ever dated who was actually taller than me. Who would still have been taller than me as an adult, despite my second growth spurt at 17, even though in the year 2000 I was probably only 5'6".

Alex. The first person I'd met, not including family, who just... liked me, from the beginning. As in, did not have to put up with me and then get used to me and then maybe see that I had some positive qualities. No, just liked me, from the beginning. That was a very strange phenomenon. And that history is the only explanation I have for what happened on our last night. He'd been away from the hotel with his family. Our hotel was in small blocks, 1-2 storeys high, each door leading directly outside. Which is what enabled me to spy on him. I saw them all return and have a drink in the bar, and I saw them leave. I followed; I watched his parents say goodnight to him, and retreat to their own room next door. This was some time between 11pm and midnight. I waited behind a tree until I knew they weren't going to come back out, and I knocked on his door.

Alex's large smile was wonderful, literally splitting his face. It's making my heart race, even now. Y'know how some nights just have the volume turned up? The starts shine brighter; the air is heavier, leaving you breathless; every sound, every movement, takes on extra meaning? They are few and far between but they are the nights that make life worth living? It was August, the height of summer, but even so... this was one of those nights. Y'all, I looked in his eyes and I saw fireworks. Magical. Breath-taking. Sounds like something out of a cheap romance novel, but it was actually happening, in my life, and my head was spinning.

... Two thoughts darted through my mind in quick succession. 1) "He's going to kiss me." and 2) "I don't deserve to be this happy."

... And then I was out the door, running away. Over. Gone.

It was a long time afterwards, much longer than it should have been, when I realised that this was the reason why he was so short with me the following morning, once I'd found him again and gave him the napkin with my address on it. A napkin that I'm pretty certain ended up in the trash.

"You know you wouldn't want it any other way."

I've never been particularly impressed by architecture.

Buildings should be functional. Clever features are clever features and of course they have their place, but to me, fancy stonework and so forth is largely a waste of time and effort.

One earthquake and either way, you're still looking at a pile of bricks.

But that's a house.

Even in a pile of bricks, you can have a home.

Even people who make significant contributions to a society, ones who get a building future pile of stones named after them, will all be forgotten after a while.

It's a hard fact, but the truth is that all of us will only ever be important to a few people. Even in our own families, our memories will likely be gone within three or four generations. Which is fine. If we have loved well in the time that we have, then we have lived well. A full home, even amongst a pile of bricks, is happy.

Hard not to have it, though.

Friends are great, we can feel satisfied with them for up to a few hours at a time. Religious/Spiritual practices can bring peace and joy amongst the darkest of times. But it still hurts to pull the duvet over our heads at night without a shoulder to rest that head on. It's still a fight to contain the jealousy when our (married, younger) sisters are heavily pregnant and getting full time care of their step-kids. Or to remember that it's not actually our baby to invest all of our hopes in. To not throw all of our neediness at someone on a first date, because we know from bitter experience that loneliness + loneliness =/= happiness, if there's nothing else to go with it, even when the loneliness is oh so very strong!

And it's hard. We try not to let it, but it drains us. We lose relationships when someone's life takes a turn into these family adventures and we're no longer in a similar stage of life. Or when we try to ask them to fill roles in our lives that overstep the boundaries that would otherwise be in place. Not completely, necessarily, but it's still not going through the journey of live together. We don't have other relationships building us up that they do. We try to stop it, but we become filled with misery. And then no one wants to see us anymore anyway. And the misery is weird, because it's like acid, so it dissolves and empties us. Nothing left. No heart, hardly, and not much personality either. No future without any hope, no legacy.

We're just an empty shell.

A stone house.

One earthquake away from crumbling.

A LOT of curly hair. Nope, more than that. ... And a bit more still.

And you'd think curly hair would be great; swishy, bouncy curls, fabulously full of joie de vivre, the envy of all those with slightly lank locks. And you'd be right.

Some of the time.

Maybe... 10%. Maybe less.

The irony, of course, is, that, if one does actually manage to get one's hair into an actual hairstyle that is not just 'hair hanging down from one's head, plus or minus a hair accessory', chances are, having curly hair will actually be helpful, because it's already used to being bent into different shapes, and having hair so thick means that it will hold in that style all freaking day. Probably all week, actually, if you didn't have to sleep on it. Straight hair is much, much easier to make many styles with, not including fancy styles with lots of twists in them. Colleagues with straight hair all one length get my envy here, even though they would then have the style fall down rather more quickly.

Well, can't you use a hair straightener on it?

Of course I could, and sometimes I do, but did I mention I have A LOT of hair?! Straightening it takes a long, long time. Not to mention, heating it up is obviously going to dry it out further (leading to more split ends!), so even if it was straight, chances are it still wouldn't be sleek.

Well, then, isn't there any way of just making your curls look nicer more often?

You mean like a curling iron? Yes, but, basically I'd run into the exact same problems. Even forgetting the heat for a minute, I still have A LOT of hair. I got it curled with a curling iron when I was bridesmaid in a wedding, once. It still took three hours. (Yes, you read that right. Three hours to curl my already-curly hair. I have A LOT of hair!)

I do have a couple of other options.

I could roll sections of it up in soft curlers when it's wet, and leave it overnight. That does lead to nice curls the next day, and is now my go-to method for very special occasions. It will still take a long time and I need to get someone else to do it for me because I can't do the back of my head, because I can't see it, but it is an option.

And then there's the "Curly Girl" method. The short version is, the stuff that's in most shampoos is great for making straight hair look sleeker, but is the opposite of helpful for curly hair, so don't use them, mostly you just need conditioner, and dry your hair with a t-shirt not a towel. I found one product that is packed full of moisturizing ingredients that also gently cleanses and I just use that one now. It's still tricky, because I can't see the back or top of my head when I'm in the shower, and even if I could, my hair's wet, so I don't know how it's going to end up looking when it's dry, so I'm never really sure exactly how much to use each time, and if I don't apply it evenly, some sections will be very curly ringlets and others will not. Sometimes it works, and it looks fabulous! Sometimes it doesn't.

Curly hair does what it wants.