On Wednesday, October 3rd, I sat down with my husband and in-laws to watch the Presidential Debate between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney. I oscillated between being totally engaged and slightly tuned-out, but rather than turn it off or leave to do something more interesting, I stuck around, and I did this out of obligation. I still haven't decided which of these two candidates (or which of the third party candidates, for that matter) I'll be voting for a month from now. So it seemed important to watch. I thought it might help me choose.

But, as is almost always true with me and things of a political nature, the debate just caused discomfort in my sensitive little soul. It caused frustration, cynicism, and a lack of confidence in the political process. Being distracted was probably just a coping mechanism to shut out the overall weirdness of the debate. Simply put, I was in pain -- a mild pain, but a pain nonetheless, and it was the sort of pain that shut me down. It was the sort of pain that made me smaller.

The next morning, I learned of the death of a child I never knew. She was the daughter (and still is the daughter) of Jill Thomas, a woman I've encountered a few times in her work as a photographer. Little Penny was less than two years old, and her death was completely unexpected.

As a gift to the grieving family, fellow photographer Jonathan Canlas offered to document the day of Penny's funeral. His pictures were compiled in a beautiful slideshow. Judging from the pictures, it was a day of family togetherness and community support. And of course, it was a day of mourning.

I want to encourage you to watch this video, but I also want to alert you to the fact that if you do, the tears will be plentiful.

So I watched this video on the morning of October 4th, and I openly wept. There was no restraining it. There was no being calm. I just bawled, sitting in bed, still in my pajamas. And I kept thinking about the video all day, weirdly wanting to watch it again. Aesthetically, it's beautiful, and the music is just my kind of music, but that wasn't why I wanted to watch it again.

The thing is: the kind of pain this video inspired in me was such a welcome change from the pain inspired by the debates from the night before. The pain from the debates, or from a thousand news stories that report on alarming trends or large-scale injustice, is the kind of pain that shuts me down, makes me smaller, and closes my heart.

The pain from Penny's funeral -- a more intimate, personal pain -- is the kind of pain that opens my heart. And that kind of pain was a welcome change. It wouldn't even appear on the same chart as the pain that exists for Penny's family and friends, because mine is a pain that can be turned off with a pause button, and their's is a pain that they live with. I honestly feel grateful that I got to appreciate a portion of that pain in a way that opened my heart back up.

***

On a related note, the emotions I felt while watching Penny's video reminded me of how I felt for a few weeks about a year ago, at the similarly premature death of another person I didn't know, Briana Blackwelder. An odd series of meaningful coincidences led me to learn of Briana's work as a midwife, and her death felt strangely immediate in my life. Anyway, thinking of Penny has made me think of Briana again, and though I can't embed the video here (it's hosted on Vimeo instead of YouTube), I'd love for you to watch this little tribute to her.

A Lifetime of Favorite Songs: "Hide and Seek" by Imogen Heap

My quest with this series is to look back over my life and remember all the songs that would have been my favorite at any point along the way. It's a tall order, and I'll probably fall short, but we'll listen to some good tunes in the attempt. 

This song reminds me of the best concert I've ever been to. The night before finals week started (December, 2006), a group of girls in Southern Utah drove to a tiny venue in Salt Lake City to watch Imogen Heap play a lit-up piano. It was hot and stuffy in that club. Imogen was somehow a crazy hippie and a proper English lady, simultaneously. And of course, she threw her voice around with technology in songs like this one.

Plans: My Future Haircuts

A brief hair history:

My hair is blond and naturally curly/wavy. Over the course of a year or so when I was a teenager, I dyed it reddish-brown, then brown-brown, then blond again. This took a big toll in terms of drying out my hair and making it less lustrous (and lustrous is the name of the hair game, folks). To remedy the sad hair problem, I first cut my hair a little, then a lot to get rid of the most damaged stuff. It continued to grow in blonde and curly. A few years passed, at which point I dyed it bright red (in a fit of self-determination), then maroon-ish red, then dark brown. That's where things stand right now.

As naturally-light hair grows on a head of hair that's been significantly colored, the light roots next to the darkened portion can have the effect of making it look like the person is balding. This makes it all the more obnoxious to have to color and re-color every 4-6 weeks, at least in my experience; stretching out the time between dye jobs isn't as carefree as it might be if I had naturally dark hair that I'd chosen to lighten.

So, I can keep dying my hair really frequently, but that gets expensive and time-consuming and against my nature. I could also have my hair lightened so that the whole shebang was light blond, but that would essentially wreck my already very dry and intrinsically-fragile hair. For now, I've decided to embrace the kookiness of skunk hair, letting my blond roots grow in without doing anything about it.

And I'm doing this because I have a game plan. It involves a carefully crafted set of haircuts that I'll employ over the coming years. I need to start out with a few solid inches of blond, so that when I get the first haircut on the list (and it's drastic!), I will essentially be starting fresh with the hair God gave me.

Step One will look something like this (in terms of cut, not color -- the whole idea is to stay natural with my color and texture):

Aaahhh, crazypants! The basic jist is having really short, practically buzzed, hair on the sides and back of the head, with a remaining poof of hair on the top. I hope I'll love it, because in my imagination, I love it a lot. It's risky, it's gutsy, and it could look really terrible. But I'll keep my fingers crossed that it won't.

Step Two:

Short all over. It'll grow in a bit, staying at a pretty uniform length throughout.

Step Three:

I want to get more dimension into a still very-short haircut, with pieces that are longer and shorter, especially pieces in the front that can sort of function as bangs if I style them that way.

Step Four:

Time for a short, asymmetrical bob cut. Very messy looking. Because I'm kind of messy.

And then ...

In time, it will grow to the length it is now -- and beyond! Which is great. I enjoy having my hair both long and short, especially when it's healthy and out-of-control curly. Blond Sara is making a comeback, y'all. With a very organized haircut plan, apparently. =)

Wishes: I Want A Yellow Tablecloth

Thrift stores play a huge role in my life.

There's a small Goodwill location just a few doors down from my workplace, and I visit it often. But I've observed that it's a little overpriced as far as thrift stores are concerned. A few days ago, there was this bright yellow tablecloth for $10, and I thought about getting it, but it seemed like sort of a frivolous purchase.  A bright yellow tablecloth? Yeah, not a necessity. I also knew, thanks to Goodwill's regular discount schedule, that because this item had a blue tag, it would be 50% off in two days. I told myself that if it was still around at that point, I'd buy it.

And as sometimes happens, the thought of this thrift store find set up camp in my brain. Suddenly, the one thing that would make my house (umm, apartment) feel like a home was a bright yellow tablecloth. How had I not seen this before?! It was so obvious! I was sure that the tablecloth needed to be mine.

I went back for the much-desired item yesterday. And of course, as you may have guessed, it was gone.

But there are other options.

Vintage Bright Yellow Tablecloth, $25

Vintage Swedish Tablecloth, $35

Yellow Lace Tablecloth, $30

But the whole idea was to avoid spending even $10, soooo ... these probably will not work.

I could just make my own, a la this:

... with this tutorial.

Or, more likely, I'll just add "bright yellow tablecloth" to my ongoing list of stuff to look for every time I'm in a thrift store. (Already on the list: "mug tree" and "You've Got Mail DVD.")

A Lifetime of Favorite Songs: "Safe In The Arms of Love" by Martina McBride

My quest with this series is to look back over my life and remember all the songs that would have been my favorite at any point along the way. It's a tall order, and I'll probably fall short, but we'll listen to some good tunes in the attempt.

My mom had the cassette tape for Martina McBride's 1995 album, Wild Angels. I loved that tape. It was an actual hobby of mine to sneak into my mom's room, start the tape, and listen to it all the way through while laying like a starfish on my parents' queen bed. This song is like ear candy to me, and it inspired my earliest memories of believing I'd fall in love someday.