Weekly Thing #3
Weekly thing is a new experiment I'm putting on trial - quick reflections and plans, to try to give myself more grace and more inspiration when progress is sluggish or everything seems slow as heck.
Hi friends,
What a week.
It was so totally skewed by what happened on Thursday and Friday that I can’t remember the rest!
I guess it’s good that I’m noting these down weekly because it really seems, well, noteworthy!
Something I Did:
I had multiple meltdowns this week!
Meltdown 1: I signed up for a group programme/thing that swiftly fell apart on Thursday. My poor husband had A TIME1 listening to me process it out loud.
Meltdown 2: After prepping my quitting speech a hundred times, I finally did it on Friday and then swiftly got convinced not to 🙃 (see below section ‘Something I'm Thinking About’)
Meltdown 3: Minutes after meltdown 2, I left the house for my hair perm appointment. Approximately 2 mins later, I was hailed down by another driver with the lovely news2 that my car had a puncture. While trying to find a gas station to stop and inspect, I got lost twice and was convinced the puncture (of unknown severity because I can’t see it from inside can I!!) was VERY BAD. Cussed at Google Maps GPS.
Meltdown 4: At the gas station, I found out the puncture was…mid? Not flat, but obviously getting there. The really kind attendant there and another driver tried to help me by telling me about tyre shops nearby, but both these uncles were speaking in a dialect I barely understood, so our conversation went like this (question marks are the words I didn’t understand) :
Gas station attendant (GSA): There’s a (??) shop nearby! Just go straight, on the right!
Other driver (OD): Isn’t there one nearer? In front there?
Me: (frantically searching ‘car shop nearby’ on google)
GSA: Oh that one closed long ago lah. No more.
OD: Then that one in Lavender?
GSA: Dunno leh. (speaking to me) Girl, you don’t know this area meh?
Me: No?? I just moved here recently! This isn’t even my car! It’s my dad’s car!
OD: (speaking to me) Girl, you just go straight, lavender there got a lot of shops!
Me: ?? Can you show me on this? (gives OD my phone open to Google maps)
OD: Wait ah. (takes off his spectacles and walks off staring at my phone). (walks back) Can you zoom out for me?
Me: (takes phone and zooms out Google Street view)
OD: Oh that one!
Me: (gets tyre shop name, adds to google maps) Omg thank you!
Meltdown 5: Getting to the tyre shop meant I had to drive into peak post-lunch hour crowd combined with post-Friday-prayer crowds. I have never been more worried about getting into a car accident in my LIFE.
Here’s the ending: Finally, I get to the tyre shop and the uncle there puts a plug into the tyre. I make it to my hair perm appointment, but late.
When my husband heard this story, he told me “damn, that’s a LOT. You need to go home and lie down!”3
Something I'm Doing:
Changing tacks to the smallest thing I can mention - I am trying to take care of the aforementioned permed hair.
The reason I didn’t think about this beforehand? Two reasons. First, all that shit that happened above! I didn’t have excess brain cells to remember that this was happening. Two? The perm actually worked!
Usually4, the perm just gives me mild height at the crown and zero curls5, so I told my stylist to max out the curliness this time just for fun 🤷🏻♀️ And who would have guessed, it finally worked! I actually have curls now (48hours and counting)!
I had to buy curl cream. Wish me luck.
Something I'm Thinking About:
I was telling my partner that if God (or whoever is in the great beyond) was trying to send a message this week, it could not have been more clear.
Shit happens. But damn if there aren’t kind people around.
That first driver who waved me down? He stopped his car (twice!) in order to get my attention and alert me to the situation. That GSA and OD? They spent 15 minutes in the hot sun with me figuring out what to do with my car.
Also, the reason I gave up on quitting the group thing was because the other party was so unbelievably kind about my concerns. He listened, he validated, and he gave good suggestions. I was so touched?? And if there’s anything I’m trying not to be, it’s stuck in my ways6. So I decided to stick with the programme but without extra help. Flexibility!
There are kind people around.
See you soon,
Charing
in total, maybe like 6 hours(!) across Thursday and Friday
that poor man did such a good deed and was met with me and ‘Oh FUCK….thank you!’.
and that’s why this is going out on Sunday, because I could not bring myself to type anything on Friday night.
thanks to genetic/god-given/asian straight hair, which balks at any type of curl
I know the perm itself sounds like a waste of time, but actually, the mild height is enough of a reason for me to do it because my hair gets flatter the longer it gets.
my therapist is trying to get me to give up black-or-white thinking because it limits my options.