This is where I would put my wienery “please excuse the mess” message with a stupid jackhammer gif. Pretend it is here. We are moving to wordpress blahdableeblah

Oh my god! HIHIHIhihihHIHI hi hi!
I cannot even believe how many long times it has been since I did the thing that is tell you something. Be careful because now is a regular time for me to tell you things and I have to tell you things with so many crazinesses that it might make even more problems in your head!
You should believe this.
Because I am telling you this.
The first thing that happened did it a long time weeks ago. One day, the man and the lady started taking our stuff and hiding it in boxes because I think they had a fear of robbers, except they left the boxes out where a robber could find them! How smart is that? That is zero smartnesses, even the man on the tv with the neck has more smartnesses than that and he doesn’t even know a thing about stuff. THEN!! Then one day people came over to rob our house and the man and the lady HELPED THEM!! They stole all of our stuff out of the house and the lady and the man were okay with this thing! They even carried the things out. I tried to stop them!! I yelled, “BARK BARK BARK!!! Get out of my house!!! GO AWAY OUT!!!”
This isn’t even all of the crazinesses!
They stole all of my toys and bones.
They stole them, the people stole my toys and bones and the lady and the man helped them.
This isn’t even all the craziness!
Maddie and the lady and me (Chester) all do the thing that is go to the dog park!! Finally the lady does a thing that is not wear her butt backwards.
But another craziness happens!
We go and go and go for more times than it takes to get to the dog park. And when we finally get to a place it is NOT THE DOG PARK! I could not even believe a thing that is that the lady had become a tipped over wiener stick.
The craziest thing is that the lady did this on 3 of the days in a row!!! Can you even believe this is a thing. Believe it. It is a real thing.
But none of that is a thing at all that matters!! NO!!
You listen to me and I will tell you a thing more amazing than doing tummy rubs with a peanut butter biscuit and then another thing that is so horrible it will make you do backwards poohibbities for almost an entire hour!!
Yesterday was a day that had okayness and we liked it and the man and the lady took us to a place with trees and a path and I wore my special back pack and there was so much runrunrunrun and climb and runrun and there were so many goodsmells!! SO MUCH GOOD SMELL and OH MY GOD!! It was so much of all the goodnesses!
And then… THE BEST THING THAT EVER HAPPENED TO ME EVER IN MY LIFE!!!!
You are the person reading this and you can’t even know how much Chester is in this.
I found a smell. I FOUND A SMELL! The smell was so good. All of the other smells I have ever found in my life can not even be added together to make this smell. It was the best smell ever!! And it wasn’t even just a smell! It was a thing that made so much smell!!
And do you want to know a thing that is what I did? I got on that smell and I rolled and rolled and rolled!! I could not even do the thing that is know that I was on the earth because the only thing I could ever know was putting this smell all over me.
And do you want to know the BEST PART EVER??? The smell was a poohibbity!! I did the thing that was like naked pig splits but with a POOHIBBITY!!! CAN YOU EVEN KNOW THIS???
I had so many many many thick smells all over my neck and face and I had almost 8 units of happinesses in me. YOU CAN NOT EVEN KNOW!! This was one poohibbity that the man DIDN’T pick up!
But a thing that happens is that no matter how many happinesses I have, there will always be the man and the lady to ruin it all for me.
Remember how I did the thing that was tell you that a thing happened that was so bad that you would do backwards poohibbities?
Hide your littles before you read this!
When I got home the man WASHED THE SMELL OFF OF ME!!
Even I can not believe this. The greatest thing ever that can happen to this little dog was COMPLETELY made to be ruined. Now the only smell that I have is the lady’s stupid shampoo.
This is a thing that happened. Other things happened but nothing of the things are a thing to talk about. In one day I did the best things ever and then the wrongest thing ever.

I have not seen my natural hair color in years. People ask me about my natural color and I can only describe as “dead mouse”, it’s that dull not quite brown, a bland and entirely feeble sort of color. Uninteresting to say the least.

Now my hair is a carnival of colors on my head and I absolutely love it. I see my hair in the mirror, a color of joy or celebration and it makes me smile. For a very long time, for most of my late teens and then my adult years, I could not smile at what I saw in the mirror. I would look in the mirror and see a crooked, fat face, a sagging mushroom of a body. I looked in the mirror and only shame looked out at me. I made things easier on my reflection, I bought clothes in the blandest of colors, khaki, beige, some black, off white. I wore these nondescript colors and I kept my hair long and I hid myself from view. If I kept myself hidden then I would not offend anyone with my fat and ugly body, no one would be compelled to think derisive thoughts since they couldn’t see me.

Eventually I was able to lose the weight and gain some confidence and I felt good about how I looked. I bought clothes in brighter colors, I bought fun shoes, I started dyeing my hair.

I started with your standard bottle blond (Feria 100 Pure Diamond). Mostly it lightened my hair, made it brighter, maybe not awesome but I was feeling better, like I might deserve to be worthy of looking at.

Then I met Owen. There is much to say about Owen, he is a magician, he is my hairdresser (really he’s a very good friend who also cuts my hair). He crafted beautiful hair styles for me, he still does. Eventually, he gently mentioned that the out-of-a-box blond was really not my most flattering decision and that he had a solution for this. He started coloring my hair for me.

We started slow, different shades of blond, sometimes a few different shades at once. I felt so good!

Then we stared experimenting with other colors, maybe mostly blond with a bit of red or pink mixed in. Then we got braver and bolder and we went to town on my head. Pinks, purples, blues, everything. We did color highlights or spikes or swirls, we would cover my head in the shiniest of pinks! I glowed! I could advertise my triumph over the bland me. Owen taught me how to do it myself, it became a part of me.

My depression came back. My soul hurt, it still does. My world sometimes feels like a monstrosity grey and shadows. I do not always feel so colorful. I considered ending the hair coloring, it was most definitely not reflecting who I was in my heart, it felt trite and forced. But also I stilled liked it. In fact, the idea of stopping had made me sad. That was a glimmer, a little bit of hope. So I continued with the colors.

When you are in a negative place in your head, when you are depressed or low, you tend to pick up on the depressing and low. You perseverate on the negative. You read the the horrid accounts of people being murdered and tortured and abused and it sticks in your brain. You don’t notice the heartwarming stories of someone beating the odds, you only see the crippling and the rending. That’s what I saw, a world as horrible as my own heart.

Then I’d go brush my teeth and see a blob of shiny pink on top of my head and I smiled, a little smile but it was a smile. In soothing myself after a panic attack I would go get a drink of water and there is was, spiky blue fun.

I’d go out and kids would stare and smile, they liked it. Could a world as terrible as the one I imagined also be a world with kids waving and smiling and loving my hair? But even adults liked my hair, people often complimented me on my hair color (sure, there were the ones with the snorts and snide asides, but I didn’t care!). The color of my hair made me happy on even the very terriblest days, anything that potent was worth hang on to.

This is why I do it. I color my hair the way that I do because in some small way it creates happiness for me and for others and that is some powerful magic

Um yeah, went to Chicago and came back! and I have to go again this weekend!
And I would write about it but I’m still pretty exhausted.
1. finished most of the Christmas shopping
1a. finding myself less and less interested in Christmas as the years go by. Whatever it may have been, it’s pretty much just turned into obligatory product exchanges and a reason to double up on the ‘mood enhancers’.
2. Had the awesomest time ever with the kids and Lisa and John.
3. Missed the hell out of David. I mean really really missed him.
3a. also missed the dogs
3b. the dogs have been plastered to my body since I got home.
4. Cloverfield has good explosions and a pretty good monster but it’s like every character is trying to function after 3 beers and a frontal lobotomy. “There’s a gigantic fucking monster breaking things…I think I will run towards it to try to save someone who might already be dead.” “I’m flying a helicopter over a city being ravaged by a gigantic fucking monster. I think I will fly directly over it instead of flying away from it.”
5. I absolutely loathe the children’s television show “Dragon Tales”. I mean like seriously hate that shit. What the fuck is a kid supposed to learn from a show with absolutely no conflict/resolution? And why is Cheech their teacher?
6. I had prosciutto wrapped fresh mozz for dinner. it was pretty good.
7. I’m going to go have a snow man ice cream head.