Something New

I bought a new hair dryer the other day. My old one died a couple months ago, so I’d been using my travel hair dryer, which is small and snub-nosed. Apparently, I’d gotten too used to it because every time I’ve used my new dryer over the past few days, I’ve beat myself on the head with its longer barrel.

Oh, I like to think of myself as adventurous and always up for a little something new, but this whole week it’s been me, both literally and figuratively, whacking myself with the unexpected. I had to write some business material for Brain, Child yesterday, and I just couldn’t do it. I’ve been describing the magazine for longer than the existence of sliced bread, and I could not get my brain to think the new, improved way.

So eventually, I went downstairs and watched Elizabeth Gilbert of Eat, Love, Pray talk on Oprah. On the one hand? Enjoyable. On the other? Frustrating in the (of course, narcissistic) way in which I realized that if someone called on me to talk a little about divinity and happiness and the self, I couldn’t. Gilbert can describe a spiritual destination to her spiritual journey. The best I could do is offer a possible shortcut for agnostics. There’s a lesson about thinking in different ways here. (The more important lesson, though, should be that all professional jealousy gets you is a bad mood.)

By five, I was a little tired of all this stretching, of wrapping my head around something new. (Remember the hair dryer? Get it?) Stretching has its place. If I don’t do it, I will most certainly become unbearable. (WHO MOVED THE TEABAGS?!! WHY IS THE DISHWASHER LOADED LIKE THIS?! I CLAIMED THE RED TYPE FOR EDITING!!) But it was a comfort last night to watch Kathy Griffin’s new special, to just chill out with the meanness and humor to which I’m so accustomed and forget about new anything. She had a piece about Dr. Phil, and it is awesome.