Random Observations and Trivial Events

1. My daughter Katelyn and a friend were at home the other day with my older daughter Rebecca babysitting. Katelyn and her friend decided they wanted to give each other facials, just like they’d seen done on TV. They didn’t have any cold cream, so they decided to use yogurt instead. And we didn’t have any cucumbers in the house they could slice and put over their eyes, so they figured, “Hey, pickles are just tiny cucumbers, right?” Luckily, before they got the chance to put pickle slices in their eyes, Rebecca caught wind of what was going on and stopped them. If she hadn’t, we’d still be hearing the pained howling now.

2. I saw a CD the other day titled “Irish Drinking Songs.” Isn’t that categorization a bit unnecessary? I mean, from what I’ve heard, you can play just about any song ever written and Irishmen will drink to it. Belt out an off-key rendition of “Mary Had a Little Lamb,” and they’ll gladly get out the Guinness. Am I correct?

3. This is by no means authoritative, but based on observations I’ve made of college-age women (strictly a scientific study, I assure you), the almost total domination of straight hair styles among females is slowly coming to an end. I see more and more girls and young women who are letting their naturally wavy or curly hair come back, and if I had any doubts, the person who cuts my hair says she, too, has noticed that hairstyles with more body are again gaining acceptance. For a while there, I thought we’d never see a woman with anything but long, straight hair again. My position is: vive la difference.

4. Speaking of altering hair, my 20-something niece, who has absolutely gorgeous wavy hair, has been straightening her hair for probably two years or more. This involves basically ironing her hair with some newfangled device every single morning, a process that takes awhile and is surely not pleasant. Why is it that we so often want exactly the opposite of what we don’t have? If we have straight hair, we want hair with body, and if we have wavy or curly hair, we want it straight. If it’s brown, we want blonde; if it’s blonde, we want red or black.

5. Last weekend, we went to a Sunday school social at the new home of some church friends, which is located on 20 acres in a rural area outside of Waco. The property is gorgeous, with a big riding stable, a pool, pastures and trees. My envy for the rural life was tempered a bit, however, when the hostess told all of us how she has battled against scorpions ever since moving into the house. Even though they have sprayed three times, they still get the little terrors on a semi-regular basis.

She told us of incredible tales involving these nasty, poisonous little devils. One time, she awoke early in the morning to find a scorpion apparently asleep on her bathroom floor. She managed to put a large drinking glass over it, then left to go to work. When she came back home, the scorpion was still trapped, but there was another big scorpion sitting right beside it, possibly its mate.

Another event would have had me fleeing the house like those folks in The Amityville Horror. Our hostess said that one early morning she awoke in the dark to find that her cheek was in great pain. She finally figured out that a scorpion must have stung her. She got out of bed, flung back the covers, and there it was, making its way toward her soundly sleeping husband. She yelled at him that a scorpion was attacking, and he shot out of the bed like lightning.

My house is much smaller, and it doesn’t have a stable, but we so far have no scorpions, and I think I’m staying put.