Let Me Count the Ways

20 reasons I am excited to move to Oregon

1. I read here:  http://wweek.com    that there was a salon in Portland giving away a $75 deep conditioning if you would stand outside their building and reenact the scene from "Say Anything" where John Cusack wears the trench coat and plays "In Your Eyes" from his boombox.  The promotion is over but how cool is that?!

2.  The idea of visiting all of these delicious looking, cheap sources of food  http://foodcartsportland.com

There is pho!!!! and dim sum!!! and thai!!!! and EVERYTHING!!!!!

3. Being in the home of the coolest place on earth  http://www.mcmenamins.com/

4.  Weather

5.  Not having to smog my car unless we live in Portland.

6.  No sales tax

7. A house with a washer and dryer and TWO bathrooms AND A YARD.

8. Maybe college will be fun this time?

9. Living two miles from school after having commuted 45 minutes each way for two years.

10. I already have a bunch of friends in Oregon

11. The beef jerky place on the way to Corvallis

12. Closer to lots of Brian's family.

13. The green in Oregon makes California look brown.  No offense California, Oregon is just really green.

14. The beaches

15. An excuse to be pale.

16. Have you had beer in Oregon?

17.  I always loved that game Oregon Trail

18. We won't have to drive to Oregon every Christmas.

19. Powell's books

20. River Phoenix was born in Oregon, enough said.

Know what's really lame?

My hair.  

My hair is naturally super curly.  I have always hated it.  I don't hate curly hair in general, its just that I can never count on my hair to look good when I need it to.  If I straighten it, it looks good, but if I get sweaty or it rains or its foggy it will get so frizzy that I can't do anything to make it look ok again.  If I let it stay curly, it might look great, but it also might look like a freak show.  Can't predict which one will happen.  If I put it in a ponytail at any point during the day, it will totally mess up the back of my hair and leave a totally stupid looking dent in the curls.  This sucks, since I take care of babies and they will pull my hair unless I have it up.  

The second Christmas Brian and I were together he bought me a miracle.  I got my hair permanently straightened at a salon in Beverly Hills.  Its a special form of Japanese hair straightening developed by this guy Joe Kanno.  So Joe straightened my hair, even though I was convinced it would either all fall out, still look curly, be straight but look super damaged, or some other disaster would occur.  Yeah none of that happened.  My hair was straight, shiny, perfect looking.  Even the color looked new and better than ever before...and my hair was like 6 inches longer than it had been when it was curly.  When they sent me back to take off the robe thing I had been wearing, I looked in the mirror with my glasses on for the first time since they had straightened it and almost passed out.  I couldn't wash it for three days and it smelled like bacon, but I didn't care.  When I finally did wash it, I left it wet and just combed it, and it dried and looked perfect again.  Even better, it never got tangled, always looked perfect even if it rained, and didn't get dents in it if I had my hair up (or at least not as bad as before.)  Since the straightening was permanent, it stayed perfectly straight until it started to grow out, and even then it look pretty much straight, but the top of my head would get a little frizzy sometimes.  Barely anything compared to how it had been before.  After about 7 months I got it done again, and 7 months after that I got it done again.

I haven't gotten it done in a year and I think I am done with it.  This decision haunts me daily.  I decided to stop doing it because 

A. Its expensive, really expensive.

B. I will only let Joe do it and if we are moving to Oregon I don't really want to go to LA twice a year for the specific purpose of getting my hair straightened.  The Governator might go once a week, but he's the governator (yes, he goes to this specific salon once a week, and I have seen him while getting my hair done.)

C. Straight is awesome but it makes my hair REALLY straight.  As in, won't do anything at all except lay flat on the sides of my head looking nice and shiny but boring.  and flat.

D. Part of me feels like I'm living a lie and being someone I am not....walking around with straight hair makes me feel fake.  Not a lot, but a little bit.  If I had a daughter one day who had curly hair, I would feel bad that I was parading around as a straight haired person.  Its a thought that's way back in my head, but still.

So my hair has been growing out since last March and its doing weird stuff.  It pretty much still looks straight, which is crazy.  The new curly hair has grown down to about earlobe level, but the top still looks straight.  At the point where the new hair and old hair meet, there's a crazy weird triple dent.  That's the best way I can describe it.  It succeeds in making my hair look neither curly nor wavy....just messy.  I got 2 inches trimmed off the other day in the hopes that it would make the messy dent a bit more curly or wavy but it didn't.

That's about it, my hair is just lame.

wait wait wait back up

Ok so I guess I left a lot out of that last post.  First of all, I didn't write anything for 2 months.  That is basically because I had meant this blog to be about the big move we are embarking on, and I wasn't sure about the details and hadn't told the appropriate people (ie employers) so I didn't want word to get out too much.  Also, I just got really busy.  So we had Christmas and New Year's, spent 2 weeks in Oregon during a crazy snow storm that everyone kept assuring me was NOT normal, and Pat (the same Pat I had just written about) thought it would be fun to go get a brain tumor and scare the crap out of me.  Turns out its not cancer, which is nice.  Didn't find that out for like two weeks though, and then there was another two weeks of the hospital and gibberish text messages from him at 2am.  Found out later that the hospital stay included a couple reactions to meds and meningitis.  Since he didn't share that info in his drugged stupor, I just thought he was being his weird self.  Truth be told, he has had weirder moments when nothing was wrong with him.

Also, I've applied and been accepted to Western Oregon University and we are moving at the end of June or beginning of July.  WOU is in Monmouth, near Salem, OR.  Also, Monmouth is not a dry town anymore, some people feel very concerned about me living in a dry town.  Really, it will be ok.

I love Oregon, I am totally excited.  I will miss being close to family in Ventura, and some friends and definitely the kids I take care of...but the truth is that Santa Barbara definitely doesn't feel like home and Ventura isn't quite right, and I'd like to try something different than San Diego.  When we move to Oregon we will be close to lots of Brian's family, and lots of Brian's old friends who I have gotten to know during our trips up there.  Yes, I know it rains there a lot.  I don't mind rain though, and now I will have an excuse for being so pale.  Oh, and its cheaper.  SO MUCH CHEAPER.

It was just a quiet, sleepy town...

So...you know those movies that start out with the family in a station wagon packed full of kids and boxes, pulling up to a house that the kids and wife have never seen before?  The kids are yelling about which room they want, the wife is amazed at how big the house is...."it needs some work but it will be great!"  Apparently, the wife was never involved in getting the house, and she can't believe her husband found it for such a great deal.  The house is in a small town, the neighbors seem friendly (maybe a little strange, but we're not in the city anymore!)  Then the kids start hearing stuff....and seeing stuff....and pretty soon people are getting possessed/people are dying/people are freaking out.  Yeah well, we've put an offer in on a house, and it has been accepted.  A big house.  In a small town.  We just can't believe what a great deal it was!  Don't worry though, I've watched a ton of scary movies, I know how to stay alive.    **2 points if you know what the house is in the picture.