The

Undeniable

Ruth

®

…and the Ruth shall set you free!

  • I Want my Hair Back | Experiment with Biotin

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    Ruth Carter

    Photo by Devon C Adams Photography
    Photo by Devon C Adams Photography

    I shaved my head over Memorial Day Weekend – number zero clipper. I’m going back to my natural hair color after dying it for 10+ years and I didn’t want to deal with the grow out. And I thought it would be awesome – every woman I know or know of that has shaved their head had no regrets.  I didn’t need hair products for at least six weeks except for spray sunblock. It was refreshingly cool in the Phoenix heat.

    I felt powerful, strong, and beautiful with my buzzed head, and I liked having a fuzzy head while it lasted. I pet my head daily for the first month.

    And then the awkward grow out period began.

    biotinGrowing my hair out from no hair to short hair may be as annoying as growing my hair out from short hair to long hair. I measured my bangs today; in the nearly three months since I shaved my head, at most they’ve grown an inch! The side and the back feel longer so I’m afraid I’m inadvertently growing a mullet. I’m not sure what I want my style to be for now so I don’t want to cut it yet. I just want it to grow out faster so I have something to work with.

    Let’s do some science!

    A neighbor claimed her hair grew faster when she took biotin. Being a man of science, I’m willing to do a $10 experiment. I picked up a bottle of biotin – 120 pills with 10,000mcg of biotin in each one. The directions say take one pill per day.  We’ll see if there is a positive correlation between biotin and hair growth. It would be great to have a proper hairstyle by the end of the year.

  • Hat Tip to Ms. Donovan

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    Ruth Carter

    With few exceptions, reading fiction does nothing for me. Since I know it’s not real, I don’t have motivation to remember it. I sucked at writing stories in school and I didn’t care about the books I read in English class. I read, but I can’t tell you what happened, in Beowulf, Pride and Prejudice, and don’t even ask me about anything Shakespeare wrote unless I’ve seen the movie. (On my bookshelf, I have a copy of Hamlet in Klingon – Shakespearian English on the left and Klingon on the right. I like to say I have a book in two languages, neither of which I can understand.) Looking back, I have no idea why we were ever tested on the “facts” of any story. It would have been much more interesting to use excerpts from books to learn about their historical or cultural significance, or merely tools to learn about literary concepts.

    Sometimes going analogue is the only way to go by Tobias Vemmenby from Flickr (Creative Commons License)
    Sometimes going analogue is the only way to go by Tobias Vemmenby from Flickr (Creative Commons License)

    It never crossed my mind that I would ever be a writer – until I was required to take expository writing during my senior year of high school. That was the class that taught me the art of ranting on paper and being a truth-teller (well as least as we knew it as a bunch of 17 year-old kids).

    Ms. Donovan taught us that not all writing needed to be academically correct or high-brow impactful. She exposed us to different styles of writing that demonstrated that being raw, direct, and creative was powerful because the writer didn’t get tangled in the minutiae of how he/she wrote and focus on the what message they wanted to convey.

    This was the first class I ever took that provided a truly creative platform for my thoughts, where rawness and thoughtful feedback was encouraged. I still remember some of the essays we read, things I wrote, and I’m pretty sure I have some of the notes from my classmates in my memory box.

    Taking expository writing challenged me to give a voice to my perspective and values – an undertaking I face every time I put pen to paper or fingers to keyboard. This was the course that taught me not to worry about being right; just be real. Being a writer is one of the most usable and transferable skills in my arsenal. For the rest of my life, not matter what I do, I hope I can honestly say, “I’m a writer.”

    I am thankful that St. Vincent High School made me take this class and I am especially grateful that Ms. Donovan was there to lovingly nurture me (and I hope my classmates) to not only create quality works in her class, but become writers for life.

    Ms. Donovan still teaches at St. Vincent High School in Petaluma, CA. I hope her students know how lucky they are to have her.

  • Un-Caffeinated People Can’t Read

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    Ruth Carter

    Stardate 94202.47

    Dear Hyatt Hotel:

    I enjoyed spending my last night in New York at your establishment, including the complimentary breakfast. In the future, please make the distinction between the regular coffee and decaf coffee more obvious – with the visual equivalent of glitter and sirens.

    I’m sure Seattle’s Best Coffee put significant time and energy into making the labels on their dispensers beautiful, but the verbiage and coloration of the decaf coffee is too subtle for blurry-eyed un-caffeinated people. Before my first hit of caffeine all I can think is “Coffee-There-Gimme.” I barely had the mental capacity to properly put cream and sugar in my cup. (Shut up you people who drink it black.) I opened one of the mini-cups half-and-half and proceeded to pour its contents into the trash instead of my cup.

    Morning Coffee - My Vision is Too Blurry Before Caffeine to tell the Difference
    Morning Coffee – My Vision is Too Blurry before Caffeine to tell the Difference

    Your coffee is delicious. (Thank you for not carrying that Starschmucks swill.) Thank goodness I came by the coffee counter to top off my cup before heading back upstairs. (What is this “thank goodness” crap. Everyone knows I need more than 1 cup of coffee to start my day. I’m just being nice.) By then the smell of coffee and the carbs from your delicious pancakes connected my cerebral synapses long enough to detect the subtle green “decaf” sign on the dispenser where I poured my first cup. (I would have been hurting by 10am if I didn’t get my daily caffeine fix.) I immediately threw that first cup in the bin and pour myself a cup of real coffee.

    In the future, please make the distinction between the real-deal coffee and decaf so obvious that that that actual reading of the dispensers is not required. Put a space between the dispensers and label them with big signs – a neon rainbow-colored sign on the “Real Deal Coffee” (it will be a beacon to your caffeine-addicted patrons, something like “This is the coffee you’re looking for.”) and “I don’t know why anyone wants decaf but here you go” sign on the decaf.