I am an optimist.

I think your mood for the day is a choice: you can choose to be happy, you can choose to be sad, you can choose to be downright ornery if you want to. But you choose the kind of energy you are going to send out into the world, and more often than not, I choose to be happy.

I tend to see the glass as half full. I tend not to give up until I’ve found a solution. I tend to analyze something until I find a happy ending for everyone. I tend to give the benefit of the doubt. I tend to root for the underdog.

I basically have good self esteem. I have always felt loved – by my parents, my husband, by God. And even by me – I like who I am, and have always believed I am capable of anything. Which is probably why I try to accomplish a little bit of everything.

I have always felt attractive. Not in the drop-dead gorgeous kind of way, mind you. I am a little soft here and there, and certainly could lose more than a couple of pounds. But I tend to see my strengths first – thick hair, full lips, nice curves, clear skin (until I hit my thirties, anyway!). I mostly eat right, though too much, and I mostly have an active lifestyle, though I do enjoy sitting still quite often, too.

But the last few days I haven’t felt quite myself. I’ve been more than a little grumpy, more than a little moody, and have had a lump in my throat that I have worked hard to swallow away. I have avoided mirrors, felt dumpy, and criticized just about everything about myself, from my parenting to my intellect to my ability to pop good popcorn. Everything.

I’ve been a total downer. Pessimist. Crybaby.

PMS, you ask?

Nope.

I got a bad haircut.

Yep, that’s it. Bad hair. And I feel like the world is ending.

I found a style in a magazine, thought it would be a cute one to help me through the awkward stage of going from short hair to long, and was ready to get some of the dry frizzy ends cut off after the furnace-fueled dry winter.

And the end result is UGLY. The shape does not fit my face, the back of my head looks flat, and the end-trimming turned into a huge pile of hair on the floor. And now? Well, now I feel ugly. Homely. Out of date. Think Steve Sanders circa 1990, or early OJ saga Marcia Clark without the mole. Not stylish.

Really, for one of the first times in my whole life, I feel ugly!

In the beginning, I did my best to make jokes about it while I secretly tried every trick in the book to make the cute come out, but it didn’t work. And now I am working SO hard not to go get a pint of Chunky Monkey, climb back into my pajamas, and settle into a superficial, old fashioned, teen-angst filled cryfest about how I could possibly have done something so horrible to myself.