Eyebrows are hard

My middle sister is a cosmetologist. She's good with hair. She always has been. Well, with the exception of one event:

Maddie was in fifth grade. Brocky Blue-Head and I cornered her.

"Hey, Maddie."

She was suspicious. As she should have been.

"Your eyebrows are looking a little hairy."

She stared at us.

"Yeah, they definitely are!" I piped up. "I think you might have a...uni-brow."

"Yeah, definitely!" Brock agreed.

"What's a uni-brow?" she asked.

"It's when your eyebrows grow over your nose and you have one. long. eyebrow."

After this brief torture, Brock and I laughed to ourselves and parted ways. There was no reason for our torture. We frequently came up with unique ways to inflict pain on our siblings, be it swirlys or holding the door open just long enough for the person walking through to be smashed like a small, stupid bug. Suckers.

The next day at the breakfast table, Maddie wandered in wearing a red and white stripped ski hat. The brim was pulled down low over her eyes. So low she could barely see her food. My mom became suspicious.

"Why are you wearing that hat?" she asked. Maddie, not one to be easily tricked (she thought!), replied that she just. really. liked. her. hat. My mom, also not easily tricked, pulled off the hat to reveal:

Maddie's half-shaved eyebrows.

Hearing that she had a horrible uni-brow, she ran into the bathroom and proceeded to shave her eyebrows. Holding the razor horizontally (that's hamburger-ly...), she manged to not only shave off her unsightly uni-brow, but also most of her (now missing) eyebrows. Instead of meeting in the middle like a giant roller coaster of hair, they now sadly attempted to gain momentum over the arch of her eyes...and failed. Crashed.

And burned.

The best-saddest part of all this:

It was school picture day.


-whitters

Brocky Blue Head

I am the oldest child. For awhile, I was an only child. Then this kid came along:

Notice the big, bald head.

This is my brother Brock.

I was not impressed.

For a year and a half, I had been the darling one. The adorable one. The one who screamed whenever I was put down. The one who talked at six months and yelled, "He's looking at me!!!" every time her dad glanced her way. The one who wouldn't eat unless she had something to distract her.

What was this thing?  This monster?

I did not like it. It cried, especially when I tried to put it in a headlock. Or bite it, which I frequently did. Gnawing on its little fingers, I quickly dropped them when my parents looked my way.

The face of an angel?

Plus, it was bald. I mean, really, really bald. Its little head wobbled all around, gleaming at me. It had hair once. When it was born, it had a full head of black hair. Then it all fell out.

I, ever the problem solver, decided that it may be ugly, it may cry and hog the attention, but it didn't need to be bald and frightening on top of everything else. Ugly as a baby bird at birth, I myself had only the thinnest of hair.

I had a plan.

My parents left me unsupervised. HaHA! Perfect. I sneaked into where it lay -- unsuspecting. Its little head bald as an egg. I took out my blue colored marker.

I approached, quietly. Sneakily. I uncapped the marker.

And colored all over its little head.

My parents suspected something. The jig was up.

Preemptively I screamed,

"LOOK! IT'S BROCKY-BLUE HEAD!!!!!" 

My parents were not amused. 

They took away my markers. 

And I my hair stopped growing until the age of four. 

Behold my bowl cut.

  -whitters

Busy Little Thing

I think giving up laziness for Lent is the best choice I've ever made (love you B!).

Not only do I work at my ever-increasingly-fantastic full time job -- that's sarcasm, folks-- I've also been lucky enough to pick up a writing project on the side for the (truly) fantastic site ReferAll.com. If you're a business owner (or lover!), this is the site for YOU. I finally feel like I'm actually putting my talents to use!

THANK GOODNESS!

-whitters

Ass-ets

 image source

In my quest to become fatter, I decided to try the Tin Roof Grill. It has a hip, trendy, sports bar feel to it. I know that sounds like an oxy-moron. The inside is a mix of sports bar meets hipster and the food is bar food meets tapas bar. Identity crisis?!? Tin Roof Grill, what are you!? Are you the place where those girls who don't like to eat wings (I don't know any) could go and watch sports with their boyfriends? The plethora of flat screen TV's and fancy appetizers tell me yes. I think. 

I ordered croquettes, which are little deep fat fried ham and cheese sandwich balls. Yum. Deep fat fry anything and I will eat it. Even fish. They were pretty good, but they scalded the roof of my mouth! Owwww. I also had a cup of french onion soup. It was good, but the cup was so tiny. How am I supposed to get fat off THAT!?

-whitters

Delicious-ness aka I'm obsessed with The Copper Onion

I love to eat. Did you know that? I know I'm a scrawny little guy, but seriously. Food.

If the sun can manage to shine for more than two hours, I want to try out some new places. It's been a long while since I have tried anything new. My love affair with the carbonara at The Copper Onion has prevented me from trying anything new. That pasta is like heaven on earth. It was the first solid food I ate after having my gum graft. The cook remembers me when I come in (or is really, really good at pretending) and the staff is attentive. I haven't been there in awhile and I think I need to go ba-

No, I need to try some new places.

The Rose Establishment.Salt Lake City. Definitely trying this one out for my early-out Friday's. Tiny coffee house, but it looks really cute. I'm a sucker for cute.

Britton's Sandy. I'm probably going to try this one out today while I wait for Kenzie to be done with harp lessons.

Tin Roof Grill Sandy. I pass this when I drive right by the gym I should be frequenting because I've given up laziness for Lent. Probably going to try this on a Friday too.

Tin Angel Cafe  Salt Lake City. Not to be confused with the above. This place apparently sponsors my other love in life, NPR. One Yelper said her friend from Provo described the Tin Angel as "Hippie Nonsense." I'm on board with that! Anything Happy Valley hates, I love. Definitely another early-out Friday pick. Gnocchi! Brie! Mushrooms! Chickpeas! If I wasn't diversifying my assets tomorrow (you think I'm joking, but I'm not), I would stop by here. Maybe I still will...diversify my ass..ets. I wish. Then maybe my pants will stop falling down. Maybe I should give up being scrawny for Lent.




-whitters

Helix

 This is my ear:

After much deliberation and research, I went to a piercing parlor, picked out a little gem and waited while several others also had tiny holes stabbed in their body. The girl next to me had a tiny fleck of silver above her lip, the girl across from me had a tiny nose ring. The man doing my piercing had a whole row of rings up and down his ear.

The actual piercing took about five minutes and didn't hurt at all. The first time I went to get anything pierced, I was eight. I sat on a tiny bench at the mall while the gun was prepared. Only, I missed the memo about the part involving a gun. I screamed. Covered my ears. Ran o-u-t. Nothing like that was getting close to my ears. I told this all to my piercer. He looked at me like I was a nut case. This time, he used a needle and I slowly breathed while he stabbed me and put the earring in.


And it didn't even hurt!

Much.




-whitters

Eight Moments in the Life of the Writer: Eight

So, I'm fairly good with words. You must agree if you're reading this. I like words. I like big words. Small words. New words. Nerdy words. One of my favorite books is the Phantom Tollbooth because of the proliferation of puns. (Apparently they are making it into a movie!!!)

JoHanna and I are in charge of writing a handbook for my work. The handbook is about kitchen remodeling. I have never remodeled anything nor do I know anything about it. But, here JoHanna and I are writing a handbook. It looks amazing, by the way, and is really good.  I'd use it. After many drafts, we present our book to our boss. He looks at it. Reads it. Practically points out each word with his finger the way a kindergartener does. He stops.

'I don't like this word."

"Which word?"

"Problematic."

"Uh, why?"

"It's a Big Word."

"Problematic? I use it all the time...it's not a hard word..."

"Oh. Sorry. We didn't all go to [Fancy Liberal Arts University in Southern California]."

Blank stare. More blank stare. Really blank stare. This is starting to get problematic.

"Well.  I've been speaking since I was six months old. I've been collecting words ever since. So..."

Laugh. Laugh. Laugh.

Apparently, problematic is now a Five Dollar Word.

pedantic, pretentious boor. 

Side note: An ex-boyfriend's sister-in-law majored in journalism. At her Thank You All for Coming wedding speech, she said she didn't want to write anything down because it would probably sound pretentious.

Hey, congratulations. Not being pretentious? Didn't happen.

Then, the entire family made fun of her behind her back. Which is malicious, spiteful, or overbearing.  See what I did there?