I Hate Having my Picture Taken OR Someone Should Fire That Damn Photographer

Some people are just naturally photogenic.  These people post tons of pictures of themselves on FaceBook and Tumblr and their personal "Look at me I'm so Beautiful" website; pictures of them with the wind slightly tousling their long flowing locks and a serene setting with the waves just right or the tree in the perfect bloom and their ears don't stick out the side of their head at all.  That is not me.  No, don't worry, I'm not an ogre and I don't sport a unibrow.  In fact, more than once in my life I've been told how beautiful I am (by people not trying to sleep with me even!). But once that camera comes out my hair starts to revolt.  My ears grow twice their normal size. My nose grows. My makeup magically disappears. My clothes become disheveled and no matter if there is coffee around or not, some of it ends up on my shirt in a highly visible spot.  And when I try to smile one of my eyes gets all squunchy (that's a word, I'm sure) and the other one just stares ahead. It's terrible.  And there is no known cure.  Looking back across my childhood I see that the only good pictures of me that have ever been taken were in black and white and I wasn't smiling.  The grim look seems to suit me better.  Perhaps I was never meant to be in technicolor.  Or maybe you just can't contain all this awesomeness in one little print.

If I Were a Rich Bitch or How Fiddler on the Roof is draining my life force already

I LOVE to do plays.  Community theatre, playing with my daughter, acting like a nut job in real life: if it requires a quick wit and fast drama, I am ready and willing.  So this will be my third play with the local community theatre group and I am playing Yente, the Matchmaker.  I think the role will be fun and I plan to make it very funny and interesting. I never ever ever ever watch the movie version of anything before I play a role because I want to go into the character with no preconceptions.  So far, so good.  This is also my 7 (soon to be 8) year old daughter's first appearance in a play.  She is one of the young daughters, Sprintze. She blew me away at the audition, and apparently the director thought so, also.  One of her BFFETTEOTW (Best Friends For Ever Til The End of The World, apparently) is also in the play as Bielke.  Excitement all around.  Flashback to the previous play practices, bringing my daughter along, her playing nicely and even help paint sets and tote props and helping people with their lines (since she has memorized the whole play before the "actors" have). This will be awesome!
Flashback to last night.  The BFFs go to play outside the auditorium because they are bored 7 & 8 year old girls who don't care about the deep underpinnings of the play. They run back in and firmly announce the building is haunted. And a guy across the street snuck out his window with a knife in his pocket, but they could see it! And then chairs were moving all by themselves. They are little pockets of annoyance. Dear Lord, the play doesn't start until November, can you help them out with the drama until then?

Why I Hate New Cell Numbers or Why Phone Companies Should Pay Us to Switch

I have had the same phone number and cell provider for about 6 years.  That's a long damn time in my world.  I moved right after I signed a new two-year contract. So for about the last two years, that service has been horrible.  Like walking to the middle of the road and turning my head slightly to the right and down bad.    Plus, the number I had wasn't long distance for my parents to call me.  They hate long-distance.  But I finally had to do it.  Then end of the contract was near.  The hubs lost his phone. My phone wouldn't stay charged longer than 10 minutes.  Contract expiring in 3...2....1~  Woo hoo!  We'd been shopping around, but times are tough.  I had a Droid, which I LOVED! But I couldn't afford a comparable phone.  We ended up with the biggest piece of shit doesn't even have a camera phone for $19.99.  We did the pay as you go plan to start, so we paid $50 unlimited everything. Sounded like a bargain. The internet on this POS phone doesn't work half the time because it is a POS phone.  There is no wonderful QWERTY keyboard so I'm texting like I'm back in the 90s.  This month I'm downgrading to the $30 unlimited talk/text since internet is useless on that phone!  This is terrible!  But the worst part?  All my google accounts have 2-step verification.  With my old phone number.  UGH!  For 2 weeks now I've been trying to get their stupid automated system to realize that I need to get to my accounts and change my phone number.  So today I finally got the link and here I am.  Stupid cell phones.  But....at least now I have great reception.