Yesterday's Head Scratchers

Yesterday had me scratching my head twice.

The first one was literal. I shower at night, so my hair looks like a wreck when I wake up. Usually I wet it down, dry off the excess, and put in some hair gel. Yesterday, in my early morning stupor, I forgot to towel it off and put too much gel in my hair. The result is that the gel sunk down the hair and formed a solid cap on my scalp. This got rather itchy as the day wore on, and when I scratched my head, the dried-up gel started raining down, making me look like I had a nasty case of dandruff. I couldn't wait to get home after my mall walking (which I am doing in defiance of the crowds of holiday shoppers) and wash the gel out of my hair.

The second head scratcher was more mental. Most people who know me have turned berating me over my job into a cottage industry. This involves my roommates, my aunt, my brother and sister-in-law, and others. Now my own manager has added her voice to the choir. The executive secretary mentioned that I need to get a better job to my boss, and my boss replied in a way that sounded a lot like agreement.

Keep in mind that this is the same manager who I have had for eight years, and who has given me more or less stellar reviews every single year. So I am scratching my head over that one as well.

But the truth is that they are all unified in their delusion that I am capable of doing anything else. I have no real skills, talents, or abilities, so I am pretty much stuck. And apparently I have managed to have every single person snowed into thinking I am some super genius. Well, I'm not. I'm pretty much of average intelligence; just because I have been wearing glasses since I was eight years old (and spent my childhood resembling the fat bespectacled nerdy kid from the old "Far Side" comic) doesn't make me a brainiac. It just means I have lousy genes. Thanks, Dad.

I have attempted to mitigate the effects of my eating this past weekend with far less food the past two days. But tomorrow is my birthday, and a friend of mine is taking me to lunch. I insisted on going someplace where I could have grilled shrimp and lighter fare, but I am wondering if it is too little, too late. Making matters worse is that my boss will be buying us lunch on Friday and Saturday, and I am still walking that line between not wanting to be impolite and not wanting to overeat. I know that I will be eating a lot on Monday and Tuesday, and not walking on Tuesday (it's Christmas, after all), and I don't want to reverse the effects of all the work of the past year and a half.

I don't remember having this many problems last year. Also, we have to keep in mind that my calorie counts were more like 2000 calories a day at that point; today, if I were to eat like that, I wouldn't be able to live with myself. What a difference a year makes.