Blue sage again, but truly, it's the glory of summer.
We had a hard rain last night, apparently, but I slept through it. Now the sun is out, and the high is supposed to be 88, which will feel downright fresh after yesterday.
I was going to get my hair cut this morning, but I dunno. I slept on it wet, and woke up with it looking good.
So I might put off the haircut another day, as I have been doing for months. I last got it cut in March. The ends feel dry, but I've been using Olaplex (#3, if you're interested) on it, because I figured that with all the sun exposure and general aging, it could do with some help. Still, I kind of think I want to cut off the bottom layers and have it shoulder -length. We'll see if I get myself dressed and out the door to do this or not.
The main thing I'm doing today is taking Anna-Kate to get her learner's permit. That she is almost 32 and has never learned to drive is its own long story, but anyway, she has a driving school lined up, has amassed her scattered documentation (parents: make sure your children have, for example, a birth certificate and social-security card that they can locate as adults), and now just needs a ride to the DMV.
It's an unfortunate aspect of life just about anywhere in America --- certainly anywhere otherwise affordable for normal people to live --- that not driving a car more or less cripples you. This is easily my least favorite thing about contemporary America, and that's saying a lot. To be a non-driver, especially a non-driver living in an apartment complex in a suburban area, especially in the American South, where the heat is your enemy half the year (especially if you're obese and prone to overheating and could have a heart attack, yea, even at almost-32), is to be stranded at home unless somebody else will drive you where you need to go. That doesn't help people's obesity problems, obviously, but it also doesn't help their problems with loneliness, boredom, and depression, all of which arise from the enforced isolation of being a car ride away from literally anywhere you might want or need to be.
Anyway, I hate that American communities (I should probably use scare quotes) are set up that way, but they are, and this is why it's a big deal for Anna-Kate to get her permit and learn to drive. This has been the ongoing drama of the summer: getting the birth certificate, getting the social-security card, figuring out how to get a name-change document (parents: don't legally change your 7-year-old's name, even for a very good reason, without putting that documentation in the same well-marked folder in which you also keep the birth certificate and the social-security card, and especially don't die without having done these things) . . . all the list of items you need to present at the DMV.
I am uselessly angry at AK's parents for all kinds of things, but this issue of documents you need to do practically anything in America, for a person who actually is and should by all rights be fully documented . . . it makes me crazy. Again, uselessly. It's completely stupid to be this angry at a dead person whom I never knew --- the actually better parent, because all this parent did was not know how to parent, not have any kind of act together, and die without having the act together, leaving AK (who can't drive and has problems of her own) to try to get her part of the act together and get on with her life. We won't even talk about the other parent, the worse parent, because I might have to break some dishes, and I really don't want to do that.
Suffice it to say that that's today's plan: the learner's permit. We're going to go to lunch, then to the DMV, which I hope and pray, with all my heart, soul, mind, and strength, is not going to take untold hours. I hate the DMV. After four children, I kind of thought I'd seen the last of the DMV. But here we are. And probably not for the last time. I have a kind of feeling that when the driving test happens, it's going to happen in my car. But we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.
In the meantime, I'm going to walk the dog and probably put off getting my hair cut. After all, tomorrow is another day.
And . . . wearing for the day that is today:
I continue to feel the teal. Yesterday: Aegean Teal Maggie T. Today: Fiona, who hasn't been out to play in a while. This is only her second July outing, but she seems a good choice for a day when the heat is only moderate, and I'm going to be in air conditioning a lot.
Haircut-reprieved hair pulled back in an Invisibobble Waver. Another resolution I'm making for the coming seasons is to bother to pull my hair back. It just looks so much better when I do. So much of what's wrong with a lot of my outfits from the winter is that I didn't bother with my hair --- and it's hard to bother on a daily basis, but honestly, when to bother just means to pull the front part back and secure it in some kind of fastening . . . I can do that. It makes my hair look instantly done, and it's so ludicrously easy. Anyway, I did that today, to serve the building of the better habit.
And now I'd better waltz myself on out with the dog, because before I know it, it's going to be time to pick up AK and proceed to this DMV business.