Day 20:365 Gratitude Challenge and April 6th A to Z Challenge
Today I am grateful for my eyebrows. It is not because I think mine are extra special or better than anyone else’s; in fact, I have complained about and cursed mine for not being thick enough, not arched right, being uneven, having too many rogue hairs and so on over the years. As I get older and so increibly wiser (*cough*), I have begun to see things in a different light especially in regards to my appearance. After all, at 52 years of age, what the hell am I going to do about it? I was given my features for a reason and, instead of tearing myself up with criticism about the way I look as I did many years ago, I have come to understand that not everything is about appearance. Sometimes it is about function and purpose and how our acceptance of beauty lies within that.
Take eyebrows for instance. Have you ever considered why we have our eyebrows? No? Well, me neither until recently. A Google search about eyebrows has changed my opinion and belief about my once cursed eyebrows; it has also led to a new appreciation of these 
often underrated rogue-haired beauties for the roles that eyebrows play on our face.
Apparently, we have eyebrows for two main reasons. The first is that eyebrows perform an extremely important function because eyebrows protect our eyes. Who knew? All these years, I have have been plucking and shaping these little suckers never realizing that they were actually keeping sweat, rain, and moisture away from my eyeballs. By doing so, eyebrows help keep our vision clear. Amazing, don’t you think? This makes me think back to that time some years ago when a bird dropped a particularily runny bomb on the top of my forehead. Now that I think about it, the doo doo never ran into my eyes. And holy cinnamon gravy, I never ever even thanked my eyebrows for that. How unappreciative was that? Perhaps that is why I get the odd white eyebrow hair in my eyebrows every once in a while. Perhaps it is payback for my unappreciation of my eyebrows for their protection. Sorry about that old eyebrows. Things are going to change from here on in; I give you my word.
The second reason we have eyebrows is my favourite. Eyebrows are essential for nonverbal communication. We need our eyebrows to help us express our emotions such as happiness, surprise, anger or for any of the expressions below. Without speaking, we can convey exactly how we are feeling just by moving our eyebrows. Move them up for surprise, move them down for angry. As such, this nonverbal communication is a universal language because everyone knows what different eyebrow positions mean.
One of my favourite expressions, especially when my sons were little cabbages, was to raise only my left eyebrow when I wasn’t quite sure if I believed their stories or not. If I remember correctly, we referred to this as the ‘evil eye’. The evil eye was effective and got my point across that I knew that they weren’t being quite truthful and that they were to cut to the chase and spill the truth. These days it is my hubby, Sauerkraut, who is usually on the receiving end of the evil eye especially when I know that he is trying to get my goat about something. This usually makes him quiver with fear (*snicker*) and makes him spill the beans about the truth of the matter.
You, too, can learn how to do the evil eye. Imagine my surprise when I stumbled upon this website http://www.wikihow.com/Lift-One-Eyebrow, a step by step guide on how to lift one eyebrow. By the ol’ snortin’ Norton, that Google is certainly an amazing research tool.
I also discovered that eyebrows are especially useful to speakers of sign language who contort their eyebrows to complement hand signs. This is a cool fact that I never knew before and elevates my regard for eyebrows that much more. How about yours?
Additionally, eyebrows even act as an identification card. Eyebrows are unique in that they do not change much over time, they stand out against the forehead and can be clearly seen from a distance (must be a helluva bushy set to be seen from a distance but, hey, who am I to judge?) — making them perfect for identifying people. Have you ever played one of those Facebook games where they ask you to guess the celebrity’s identity by just their eyebrows? It can be done.
Here are some famous celebrity eyebrows:
Also, here are two photos of celebrities both with and without their eyebrows illustrating how important eyebrows are in terms of identification. If either of them wanted to go undercover or rob a bank, shaving their eyebrows off would work far better for a disguise than donning a pair of sunglasses would.
So there you have it. Eyebrows are more than just objects to be beautified. They serve a real purpose by protecting our eyes from bird poop sliding down our foreheads into them. They are great for telling others to stop bullshitting us just by giving them the evil eye. AND if you ever need a clever disguise for an undercover operation like say, robbing a bank, all you have to do is shave them off. How amazing is that???
Eyebrows: 1
Bird Shit: 0
back to your bedroom, slam the door, take that dammit doll and slammit against the back of the door for as many times as you need to. Scream, “dammit! you bastard!” with each and every slammit.
Today I am grateful that I am a Canucklehead. That’s right, a Canucklehead. According to 
freely way up, and I mean way up, in Northern Canuckland where it is frigging cold enough for polar bears to live comfortably. While I have seen pictures of polar bears, the closest I have ever been to a polar bear was at a zoo and there was a nice enclosure between us. However, I do not think that he could have been a true Canuck polar bear because he wasn’t all that polite when I waved at him. Actually, the impolite bastard looked the other way. He remains dead to me to this day.
lumberjack and I’m okay. I sleep all night and I work all day.” (Good luck getting that song out of your head now – hey, I needed it to make a point. Okay?) This song was written in reference to a barber who always wanted to be a lumberjack in British Columbia (a province in a Canuckland). While lamenting about his unfulfilled life, he rips off his barber coat and reveals a red flannel shirt underneath. I mean, really. Canuckleheads have way more fashion sense than that. And while we may have oodles and oodles of trees in our fair country, not all 33 million of us can be lumberjacks. I mean, who would be left to play hockey?
December to March. As a matter of fact, we Canuckleheads have been know to endure many the blistering hot summer and, if we were to wear toques and red flannel shirts all the time, we would be dead from heat-itis or some other hot disease. Not to mention that we would all look like feckin’ eejits and feckin’ eejits we most certainly are not. Plus all the igloos that I have heard that we live in would melt.
because all of Canuckland is covered by tundra. False. While we do have the Trans Canuckland Highway stretching from one end of the country to the other, we do have other roads that allow us to get off the highway and visit friends and family from time to time. That is, for those of us who actually like our families otherwise you could just keep going until you really want to get off the highway. It’s really amazing how our country has progressed from sled dogs to planes, trains and automobiles. Some of our automobiles even come with heated seat warmers which is awesome when you consider how we live in a country that only has one season called feckin’ winter.
sport, I can understand why there would be a misconception that it is the only sport we watch. As great as hockey is, we are interested in all kinds of sports. Did you know that a Canucklehead invented basketball (James Naismith)? Did you know that our national sport is lacrosse? At some point in time, Canuckleheads were introduced to curling, skiing, skating, broomball, baseball, football, soccer, golf, track and field, and a whole slew of other sports. I know. Crazy, right? Who in their right mind would ever introduce a bunch of beer drinking, toque and red flannel shirt wearing, sled dogging, and well-mannered speaking people, who only have one major highway to mush their dogs on, to other sports? I have to say, you’ve got me there.
Dion *cough * Barenaked Ladies *cough* Rush *cough* Now before you go sending off your emails of hate to me because you just LOVE Justin Bieber and Barenaked Ladies, hear me out (please pretty please with sugar on top). Canuckland has this little thing called the CRTC (Canuckland Radio-Television and Telecommunications Comission) which issues certain standards for Canuckland’s broadcasting and telecommunication systems. One such standard is that all Canuckland radio and televisions stations must play a certain percentage of Canuckland content each and every day. I get it. It is important for a country to promote its own talent before anyone else’s. However, what usually ends up happening is that the next hit single of say, Justin Bieber, is played over and over and over and over and over again throughout a single day. Baby, Baby, Baby, ooooh, you just cannot escape it. By the way, on behalf of all Canuckleheads, I apologize for Nickleback. Enough said.
enough under my Canucklehead collar to melt my igloo when I am made fun of for saying ‘eh’ and ‘aboot’. What country doesn’t have their own version of ‘eh’? For example, Americans say ‘huh’ and Ausralians say ‘aye’. Why should we be picked on for it and not anyone else? Is it because we are just so gaul darn nice and you know that we will just sit back and take it? Eh, is that it? Well, blow it out your piehole. And as for ‘about’, let me clarify it. From what I gather, how we hear things has to do with ears and dipthongs and linguistics and shit like that which is really fancy speak for “we hear the sound that most closely resembles something in our own experience with language and lets us reproduce a recognizable approximation” (https://www