Day One of my March challenge instructs me to post a self portrait and give you five random facts about myself.

Well, the way I figure it, a self-portrait may not always be visual.  I could paint a portrait of myself in words and allow you to reach your own imaginative conclusions.  But if I did that, it would require much thought and hard work on my part, and I'm not really all about the thinking and the hard working at this time of night. Instead, I ran a quick search through my Facebook albums and found the most recent self-portrait I could find.
 

This is me with "little T" whom I babysit.  We took this picture of ourselves baking cookies or muffins or some sort of wonderfulness a couple months ago.  Wait.  Is this March already?  I guess it was more than a couple of months ago.  It was...in October maybe?  You remember, one of those months where the sun actually shined?  (Shone?)  (Whatever.)  Let's bring that month back.

And now...five random facts.

1. I took a shower yesterday and allowed my hair to air-dry while I packed lunches and supervised school preparations for my two daughters.  A two hour snow delay kept me from being able to work that morning the way I usually do after dropping my children off at school, so we lazily enjoyed our morning breakfast and read a few books together before finishing up our getting-out-the-door routines.  At the last minute, I headed into the bathroom to ready my hair for the day, and I noticed something strange about it.  All the hair at the top seemed to be glued flat and wet to my head, while the hair at the ends flew about, completely dry.  Unusual.  I grabbed a brush and combed through it, but that made no change to the flatness.  So, I ran my fingers through the top of my hair and attempted to fluff it up.  My fingers came out covered in slime, and that is how I realized three minutes before we had to leave the house that I had forgotten to rinse the conditioner out of my hair.  Good thing the snow delay saved me from also needing to be at work that day.

2. On my way home from dropping the girls off at school, I listened to a morning talk show about the articles of clothing that we really should have thrown out years ago but insist on keeping and sometimes even wearing.  The hosts asked for people to call in with stories of their own to add to the show, so I called in and got put on the air!  This link takes you to the radio show's archive page where you can listen to the entire one hour broadcast, but you can also fast forward to my fifteen seconds of fame if you want and bypass all the other hilarious stories.  My call-in starts around the 55:17 mark.  When you get to the archive page, you will need to click on the listen now link next to February 28, 2013 "BLT!"

3. After my morning escapades, it was time for me to pick up little T from preschool.  However, I still had not had time to rinse my now dried and crusty conditioned hair, and I really didn't want to encounter anyone I knew.  T goes to preschool at the church that I attend, and a few members of my own four and five year old pre-K Sunday School class were waiting at the school entrance with their parents for their afternoon pre-K to begin.  I was not about to run through that gauntlet with my mullet-looking hairstyle, so I waited in my car for them all to disperse.  Unfortunately, a few of my children recognized me through my windshield and began waving happily at me.  I sat up straighter, hoping the roof of my van would hide my nasty hair and waved almost as happily back at them.  My heart was certainly happy, but my hair was not.

4. On our way home, little T and I noticed that the recently built house in our neighborhood had a moving truck parked in front of it and furniture being carried in.  I'm on the association board and one of my favorite duties is the welcoming of new neighbors and giving them the trash schedule and other assorted information they will need to enjoy an easy transition.  The last neighbors to move into our 'hood came at the beginning of January, but I didn't make time to meet them right away, and so I have spent the last month and a half trying to catch them at home.  I didn't want to make the same mistake twice, so I weighed the nastiness of my current hair-do against the possibility of them judging me harshly and decided visiting them now would be worth it.  Thankfully, their movers were doing all the heavy lifting, and the new couple had plenty of time to stand around and chat with T and me.  We enjoyed getting to know each other, but I noticed the man kept staring strangely at the top of my head.  (Or possibly I was just paranoid.)  I self-consciously touched the crunchy, unmovable hair and told them all about my unfortunate lack-of-rinsing, laughing the whole time because, really, I wasn't as disturbed about it as I pretended to be or else I wouldn't have gone visiting in my current state.  My new friends did not find my story as amusing as I thought they would, but after the story they were both unmistakably staring at the top of my head.  On that note, I excused myself to go rinse the conditioner out of my hair.  Why, oh why can't I ever learn to keep my mouth shut? 

Please tell me you enjoyed that story more than they did!

5. I am currently two shows behind in this season's Survivor episodes, so right after finishing this post, I am going to get caught up on at least one of the episodes. 

Happy Marching!