Reasons I shouldn't go running today

Please choose three of the four excuses.
○ It's snowing.
○ My knees feel sort of loose. Is that a thing?
○ Maybe I should stay home and watch tv so I know more about pop culture.
○ My hair looks too good to mess up.

I don't have cheekbones

Hey guess what it's 5 great things about not wearing makeup for 5 days:

1. You can rub your eyes in comic disbelief and you’re ready to go to a waterpark at a moment’s notice. I wrote that sentence in a way that makes it seem like those two things are related but the only connection is they’re both easier to do without eyeliner.

2. Everyone thinks you’re sick so they don’t make loud noises.

3. You look enough like a child to order from the kids menu, old enough to get senior discounts at movies, enough like a boy to use the men’s bathroom if the line's shorter, and bad enough to be completely invisible. I haven't tested any of these but I have a good feeling about all of them.

4. Beyonce sings about you. There's lots of language in this, the main language is English but there’s also swear words.

5. Now it’s time to think of something to not do next week. I think it’s going to be laundry.

I'm the main character in the most boring movie ever

It's pretty lame but the main reason I wear scarves  is because when I'm wearing a scarf and I see my reflection, I think that I look like a photo my robot kids will see someday that will make them say "oh man my mom used to be cool."

Because one day I'll be really into chess, or whatever moms are into, and I'm sure I'll have gingivitis, and my kids will tease me about how bad I am at teleporting and they'll ask me what it was like to breathe oxygen growing up, but there will be photos to prove that once upon a time I was 26-going-on-35 and this is what a photo of those days would look like.

And then the second reason to wear them is look how messy my hair is here:



Just kidding, you can't tell how messy it is.

Now you are older than before you read this

Today's the sort of day where after the third person in a row tells you how tired you look, you go to the bathroom and see yourself in the mirror and realize you're not tired, you're just not wearing any makeup.

So the joke's on you, well-meaning friends. This is just how my face always looks.

Casting list: Portland airport

Girl in a mouse shirt and a black leather jacket.
That's me, but it's not really leather, just black plastic.

Woman at bag check.
The one who says "There are mice on your shirt" using the same tone of voice you'd use to tell someone your name.

Man who calls for backup when you set off the metal detector.
"Attention! We've got a woman in a leather jacket!" is probably some sort of airport code for "Look how cool this girl is!" but it's not really leather, just black plastic.

Woman who wipes your hands with a wet wipe after you set off the metal detector.
You set off the metal detector? No problem. Now that your hands are wet you're good to go.

hair story

So far every day of my entire life has been the part of the movie before the unpopular girl gets the makeover and is suddenly smokin' hot.

hats and a love story

My family has one photo of my great-grandmother when she was a baby, and she is wearing the best hat I have ever seen on anyone, especially a baby. Her dad was a hat-maker, so I guess she had her pick of great hats. Being a hat maker was a thing back then, I also guess.

Today I think hats are mainly a way to tell people what sports team you like, but when my great-great-grandfather made hats, it didn't matter what sports team you liked. Hats were for everyone. In fact I've spent a lot of time looking at this photo of my great-grandmother and I still have no idea what sports team she liked. This is all true.

And then the part that isn't true, but that I love, is that one day my great-grandmother grew up and fell in love with a man with the biggest skull in the world, a man that looked terrible in hats, a man whose children would have globes instead of heads and would also look terrible in hats and would never have mysterious baby pictures wearing million-dollar hats. It was the opposite of everything her parents wanted for her. And she sat them down and she said "Listen, there are ten things in the world that are less important than love, and one of them is hats."

And she married him, and her dad came to the wedding in a hat so fantastic the other wedding guests wanted to scratch their eyes out so it would be the last thing they ever saw.

And she had seven children, each with a bigger head than the one before. That is why my grandmother's head is so big she uses a punch bowl as a fitting tool when she crochets beanies. That is why my mom's head is so big she can't ride bikes because no helmets will fit. And that is why my head is so big that when I look in the mirror it is hard to see both the left and right edges of it, and that is why I look terrible in hats, and that is why if you want to know what my favorite sports team is, you will have to ask me. It's the Minnesota Twins.

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Pictures to break up the text!

Dispatches from Aix en Provence

I don't really recognize myself lately.

Because the last couple days have been made up of really lazy activities. Like sitting at a cafe spending fifteen minutes slowing drinking a hot chocolate and fifteen minutes not drinking a room-temperature chocolate. And today I woke up from some sort of trance and I was in a lipstick store which is apparently a thing, trying on a third tube of red lipstick.

"Don't just dot it like that," said a saleswoman who looked like a very pretty clown. She waved the mirror closer at me. "Do big stripes, go all around.

"That's good but do another loop." said the only stranger whose face I would gladly wash.

"I don't even recognize you!" she finally said, I heard it minutes later because her voice had to travel through the deep layers of makeup that separated us, and the sound became more muffled as it crossed each barrier, making what should have been screams of terror sound like delighted praise.

Outer space tights and the not worst idea I've ever had

I signed up for another race a few weeks ago - the cheapest race I could find when I woke up in the middle of the night and started signing up for races and buying space-printed tights online.

I didn't get incredibly excited about the race until yesterday, when I got an email that detailed a ton of important information I skipped over, and a short reminder about weight categories. Weight categories?!

Every weight category is named after a different type of horse (obviously) and while my weight has zero benefits, the class just fifteen pounds above me gets a discounted race fee and a ton of free things. Possibly a free horse. I skipped over most of the email.

Challenge accepted, horse race. The race isn't for another week and fifteen pounds is nothing - that's like an especially large sandwich or two newborn babies.

In high school all my friends started a two-day steak-and-excessive-amounts-of-water diet to meet the minimum weight to participate in the blood drive and everyone swore it had absolutely nothing to do with an attractive and persuasive health teacher who smoked cigarettes through a Kleenex to show us how much tar was in them. This story ends with everyone dropping like thin vomiting pubescent flies in the halls so I'll skip over the middle parts.

The only possible downside is that if I gain fifteen pounds my new space tights might not fit anymore - I knew I should have bought more pairs. They're going to make me so good at jumping.

I think I'm a winter

It's been way too long since I did a fashion post. Here's what I wore today:

Highlighter-colored sweatshirt, Gap
Gap does it again! It's only 11 am and I'm already five compliments deep.

Spilled chocolate milkshake, coffee shop across the street
Chocolate milkshakes are a great mid-morning snack for young professionals who want to replenish their bodies with vital nutrients like sugar while simultaneously testing the effects of gravity on milkshake.

Soap water, 5th floor women's bathroom
When I finally finish my Yelp review of the 5th floor women's bathroom it will lose at least one star for the handsoap's inability to even somewhat fade a chocolate milkshake stain from a neon sweatshirt.

Paper towels, 5th floor women's bathroom
Tired of wet sweatshirt touching your skin? Try stuffing a few handfulls of paper towels under it! Looks like the 5th floor women's bathroom just earned back a star.

Black raincoat, my desk
Not only covers chocolate stains, wet sweatshirts, and paper towel stuffing, but gives you that awesome "Brooke are you going somewhere I didn't even realize it was raining" look.

Stay tuned for tomorrow when I maybe do laundry.

Pictures to break up the text!

People I like when I have a bruise on my face

People who somehow can't see it

Lately I'll be talking to a stranger - a girl walking a dog, or a cashier, or a woman on the bus eating Cheez-its dipped in hummus - and I'll realize something's off: they're treating me normally. Because they have a superpower that allows them to not notice things on people's faces. These people are incredible and I never knew it until this week. I wish there were a parade for them. I wish there were a celebratory breakfast. If I become a scientist and invent a pill that simultaneously cures the hiccups and gives you a tan I will name it after these people.

People who act like they can't see it

"Hellooooooo! What a nice… earrings! Wow! Are those real diamonds? You have fantastic ears has anyone told you that? Ears are great for hearing and hearing is better than seeing, who needs seeing not me I'm not looking at ANYTHING right now not looking at anything at ALL!"

People who tell me embarrassing stories about themselves

I learned once that pets and babies are the two things that make people break social norms, but add "temporary face injuries" to that list because all lists should have at least three things. Strangers come up and tell me about accidents with baseballs and bikes and bunk beds and coworkers show me bruises they got from running into doorknobs, and holding people's hands too tightly, and trying to jump on a glass table. Both those lists have three things.

People who make jokes

Do you think you have a good joke? I would love to hear it. Go ahead and swing for the fences because guess who has been spending two hundred times as long thinking about this topic? Me! Chin-girl! I have an endless amount of material. Very few people can say that they woke up this morning knowing exactly what 100% of their conversations were going to be about. I can say it. It hurts a little to say, because my jaw is still pretty swollen. But I can.

goat with beautiful eyes

Today a woman came up to me and stood really really close to me then even closer and said "I love that one of your eyes has a blue square in it!" so I wrote her off as insane, along with the man with a blanket at the crosswalk who told me "Today is a beautiful day to die!" and the taxi driver who told me that every time I sneeze my life is shortened by one heartbeat. And I hoped for her well-being until I remembered her in the bathroom hours later and looked in the mirror and realized she was right.

I need you to answer all these questions but you can answer them in any order you want.

1. Do eyes go blue the way hair goes gray?
2. Can I see the color blue better now? I hadn't noticed, but I also haven't looked at many blue things recently.
3. Do your eyes have blue squares in them? They might now, or they might tomorrow.



If you search "goat with beautiful eyes" that is the first photo that comes up. And this is the fifth:

Advice of the day: public restroom etiquette

Here are the very-best decoy moves for when there's someone washing their hands at the sinks, and the only reason you came into the bathroom was to check how your hair was looking but you don't want anyone to know how obsessed you are with your hair.

Pretend there's something in your eye. 

This was my go-to from the day I got contact lenses to the day I realized it looked incredibly strange and required a lot more acting skills than I have.

Wash your hands. 

Oh no, EMERGENCY. I need to run to the bathroom for the express purpose of washing my hands, and while I'm here I might as well quickly check out my hair. What did I just touch? Who knows. Something horrible probably.

Get paper towels. 

Nothing to see here, just grabbing a handful of paper towels and then throwing them away.

Pretend to blow your nose. 

For some reason blowing your nose in front of the person at the sink is more acceptable than checking your hair. The reason is that it's less vain.

Ask them if they've seen a phone. 

More as part of a survey. Don't do this if you're holding your phone. If you're holding your phone you can ask them if they know what the date is, or if there's enough soap in the soap dispenser, or who the fifth president of the United States was, or whatever you think of first.

Wash spilled food off your shirt. 

Whichever food you spilled on it most recently. 

The old "count imaginary things around the room and nod." 

Nod very slowly while looking upwards then leave. Are you looking for something? Are you insane? Did you just walk into the bathroom to check your hair and now that there's someone here you don't know what to do? Who knows. You seem totally normal to me.

please don't ever wink again

The other day my friend said I had parmesan cheese in my hair and I wasn't sure which was worse: the fact that it was probably actually dandruff, or the fact that I eat so much pizza she automatically assumed it was cheese.

I'm glowing so much I can see in the dark.

Before you get a facial the person (spa person? spatrician?) sits with a clipboard and asks you loads of questions. Questions like "What skin products do you use?" and "What's your favorite part of the facial?"

"Probably when it's over," I answered, and regretted it immediately because it made me sound like a teenager describing a nosebleed. But I'd rather be the one with the clipboard asking loads of questions. Questions like "By skin products, do you mean products for my skin or products made of skin?"

You're not supposed to ask questions during a facial. Once I asked "What color is my face right now?" and the spatrician just laughed. So I had plenty of time to think about the answers to her clipboard questions, with time left over to think about what umbrellas would look like if wind went up instead of sideways, and what comebacks I would make to hypothetical insults, and what animals mixed together would create the perfect animal. Here are my answers.

I hardly use any products made of skin. I have one jacket that looks like leather, but it's actually black plastic. In fact, it doesn't even look like leather.

My favorite part of a facial is when it's over because there are some things I like best before and after they happen. Also on this list are square dancing, baking, and looking at a photo of a blue whale on the internet. I look forward to these activities, and I talk about them for days afterward. Sometimes I even blog about them. But during them, you have no idea what color your face is. And that's the worst.

The world's cutest animal would be a combination of a loris, panda, meerkat, and otter. It's really complicated and I don't have time to draw it right now, and when I do it will be so cute you may cry. This photo of a blue whale will give you CHILLS. If you send me a photo of you sitting down to prove you are sitting down, I will send it to you.

Koalas are in season

When I was five, my family lived in Australia, which isn't important at all. What is important is that my mother purchased the most legendary sweater ever to grace that continent: an over-sized navy blue number soaked in white koalas. Here is a picture:

(Facebombed with my face to protect their privacy, and because it makes them look like energetic show dogs.)



Like any good sweater, the koala sweater has caused twenty years of emotional turmoil: at five I loved the softness and beauty of the koalas, at fifteen I pretended not to know her when she wore it in public, and at twenty five I have to convince her not to donate it on a daily basis. Never get rid of the koala sweater, Mom. I can't think of an article of clothing that better represents my mother, or the great country of Australia.

Imagine my shock and sheer joy when I saw this girl on the street the other day, and she said I could take her picture. (Face cropped because her face looked like an energetic show dog and it was creeping me out.)



THAT IS DEFINITELY THE SAME SWEATER.

The world is like one awesome Australian department store littered with marsupials. Just when you think you may have to go the entire day without seeing a stranger dressed in your mom's favorite sweater, a tender mercy like a sweater miracle comes along and proves you wrong. Thank you Mom, for teaching me that koalas will always come back in style.

I ruined three notebooks this afternoon.

It rained really hard in Portland today.

The sort of rain where when you come inside you need to change your shoes and your pants, and also your socks, and also your underwear.

I took it as a challenge to get as soaked as possible, and walked around for an hour in the sort of rain where after a while the raindrops aren't making you any wetter, you're just spinning your rain wheels and you might as well be swimming.

And when I came inside I took my gray Converses off and they were so dark I thought they were my black ones.

Some deep thoughts here.

Other thoughts include thoughts about small warm places, like forts, and caves with deers in them, and the Borrowers, and why all of the places I like that are small and warm are things I liked when I was small. When I was small my family would get extremely competitive about snow fort building, we saw a documentary on people living in Antarctica and used their technique of blowing up a dozen garbage bags and piling snow over them, then popping the bags to make a fort more fit for survivalists than suburbists. The forts never collapsed on me, but I have memories of one collapsing on me because I've seen so many movies where forts collapse. Sometimes I wonder how many of my memories are real and how many are made up and whether I've ever seen snow in my life.

Last year in LA the rain was a special occasion and people put on Bean Boots at any sign of moisture, and in this sentence a sign of moisture includes an especially good lotion. Here in Portland, fall asleep during the rain and you won't miss anything - it's going to rain again tomorrow, they say. How great is that. I want to high-five everyone else walking around in wet underwear because WE ARE SO LUCKY GUYS.

I'm going to write this down and put it in a waterproof container and look at it in six months to remind me, when it's still raining, that it rained really hard in Portland today, and I loved it.

Ham cubed

Day 11 in corporate housing was also the first day I looked for plates, because it was the first day I needed one. I'll give you a minute to applaud my home-making skills.

The reason

The

Thanks guys.

The reason I hadn't needed any dishes in a week and a half was that you don't need dishes for skim milk or olives. But Day 11 things got all Towanalynne (cooking show host, if you haven't heard of her) and I was ready to slice an apple, and I was stoked to find out my apartment came with a ton of plates. It's also equipped with a buttload of knives (sometimes buttload is just immature and sometimes it's hilarious). None of the knives were any good and I'm an expert on the subject because I tried all eleven.



I realized a photo of eleven knives was a little dark so I spelled out "LOVE" in an attempt to make it less aggressive. A pretty successful attempt. And the photo's out of focus, but that only makes it artsy! I really cannot lose today.

Now is probably the time to try winged eyeliner.

Here are some more cooking tips while we're at it: when you get free dinner for working late at night, order a salad with ham cubes and a side of potatoes. Meal one: lettuce from the salad, meal two: the side of potatoes, meal three: the ham cubes from the salad! They stay good forever. You haven't lived until you've eaten a a cardboard carton of ham cubes for lunch. Sometimes life doesn't require plates I guess.

What's in what's out

Collars are the new stripes. But you've probably already heard.

Yesterday the mail woman called me "hey little one"

More things I thought of while I was scanning: holding doors for people, the Olympics, socks.