My Life As A Shadowy Figure

Lately I have been spending a lot of time reading other peoples blogs.

But I'm starting to feel really self conscious about the fact that I have a big, ugly, gray head.

Whenever I pop up, that's what I look like. I look kind of menacing, don't you think? Like some kind of a shadowy/stalkery figure.

I tried, believe me you, I tried, to upload a nicer picture. But it won't accept the one and only picture of myself that I would post on the Internet. It just gives me an error message that says it's too big. I think they mean the file size and not the actual size of my head.

I hope.

So just find another picture, right?

Okay, here's the problem. This is what I have in the way of pictures of myself:

-about three hundred wedding photos

-about a dozen pictures of me in labor with Alex. Under any normal set of circumstances I shy away from the camera. But put me in an ugly blue hospital gown that makes me look, literally, like a whale and all of a sudden I'm like "take a picture of me next to my IV pole." Maybe it was just the drugs they were giving me. I don't know. The worst possible photo op in the world and I'm all over it like white on rice.

-about ten pictures of me in various post partum states: proudly holding my baby for the first time on the labor and delivery unit, being discharged from the hospital, nursing Alex. In all of these pictures I look like I've been on a four day drinking binge, and possibly like I might have just had an allergic reaction to swordfish which caused severe facial swelling. And I have to say that in all the pictures I have of me nursing Alex, I don't look at all like those glossy posters of breastfeeding moms you see in doctors offices, that are smiling blissfully at their pink swaddled bundles who have their lips curled around a just barely exposed nipple. I look like a stunt double in Fight Club.

-and lastly- a ten year old glamour shot of me in which I look a lot like Molly Ringwald's character in The Breakfast Club. (Note to my family: if I ever get abducted or anything untowards like that and they need a photo to release to the media, please DO NOT use this photo. I can imagine what would happen. Much to Molly Ringwalds chagrin, she would be abducted and delivered to my door. Meanwhile, I would still be out there getting beaten in a basement dugout whilst shackled to the wall.)

But that's the way it is when you have kids, isn't it? I have bazillions of pictures of my kids all over the place- on the fridge, filling up my hard drive, on CDs and discs and in albums.

But find a picture of me where I'm not wearing bridal gown or a hospital gown or look like Molly Ringwald??

No can doozle.

Anyways, I will work on the picture, I promise.

And for those of you whose blogs I follow- trust me that I am not menacing or stalkery (at least not generally speaking), and I look nicer in real life (marginally), and please forgive the impersonal nature of my picture.