Category Archives: pictures

The Internet Police

Sometimes I run queries for redheads and find different sketches and portraits to use for my blog, or as avatars. I must be very generic looking since just about every drawing of a redhead I find resembles me. I have found so many lately I have a little folder with all the ones I like.

If I ever use actual pictures, they are my own. It is one thing to have a cartoon avatar of another woman, and quite another (weird) thing to actually use her picture.

I like pictures, and just as on Pinterest, I can spend hours distracted. Not to mention that finding one or two sketches involves looking through hundreds of them.

Ally came up next to me to see what I was doing. She is still at the age where she thinks all redheads are me, even if they are not cartoons but real pictures. Tonight I found another one I like (featured above) and showed it to her. She looked at it and exclaimed “Look mama! It’s you when you are being bad!” What do I look like when I am being good?

Later in the evening, when I thought she was in bed, she comes into the kitchen. I was on my laptop (actually blogging about ants), she watches me for a few seconds and then asks “Mama, are you being bad again?”

When did my child turn into the Internet police?

Mix Tapes and Photographs

The GRE is tomorrow. I studied a bit today, but I think it is for the best that I stop. So I found ways to keep my mind off of the exam.

I was boxing stuff up and I found an old cigar box with mix tapes. Sean used to make these for me many years ago. This was before iTunes was around, so if you liked one song you had to buy the whole album, and CDs cost about $20 each, and I was working for minimum wage at around $5 an hour (it may have been less than that, but I don’t remember exactly). I still can’t listen to B-52’s Roam without thinking of Sean and those tapes. I remember one of them had the Cranberries on it. Van Halen on a third. Nirvana was either one of the same tapes, or accompanying something else.

The tapes are old, and their boxes are long lost, hence I have no idea what any of them contain. I also have no way of playing them. My car at the time was the reason for the tapes. I was driving a Daewoo that had a tape player, but no CD player. So instead of making me mix CDs he made me tapes. I used to drive a lot and I liked my music.

In fact I remember driving with Sean late one night. I was blasting Blondie, singing along to One Way or Another, and we were looking for something to eat. We ended up at the In and Out on Ventura (and something). Maybe I am conflating memories, but I think this was right after he had gotten his tattoo of the barcode. The skin was still raised, and I was playing with it. I had never seen a fresh tattoo before.

One time we sat in a parking lot listening to the Roam tape. We didn’t really have the same taste in music so he wanted to get out and walk. As we walked across the lot he found a little kitty charm someone must have dropped. He picked it up and gave it to me. I put it on my purse. Packing up more stuff I found that purse, and the charm is still attached. A gold kitty with a pink ribbon.

I also found the cigar box with old floppy disks. These I knew I had. I vaguely remember what is on them – dozens of pictures Tanya took when we were in high school. A lot of them have pictures of the cats and kittens I had at my parents’ house. Some pictures of me and Tanya doing random things. And there are a few of them from the time Tanya and I went to a shop and she had me try on all sorts of wigs. I haven’t seen these pictures in well over a decade, but I can say with certainty that neon hair does not suit me. If I remember correctly there are several pictures of me wearing a glittery green wig, followed by a pink shimmery one, and about half a dozen others in quick succession.

I wonder what else I will find.