Stay Tuned - I'm going to be glamorous!

The Naptown Organizer is holding a seven day mommy challenge - be presentable for a full week, starting tomorrow. I'm notorious for taking a shower post-workout and then putting on a grimy bra and stained jeans. Or I'll straighten my hair and make it look all purty... and then I'll throw it into a messy pony tail. My daughter? She always looks presentable. Me? I typically look clothed at best.

Can I handle it? Will I crumble? Am I going to get my nails did? Only time will tell.

Stay tuned. I'm going to be posting a picture each day of my outfit, and will leave said outfit on until at least after dinner. I **think** I'll be okay, but I also have a lot of cleaning and projects to accomplish in the next 6 days. Perhaps this will motivate me to get stuff done sooner in the day!

And in the next few minutes/hours/days I'll be sharing two special recipes I've customized that pretty much made my husband a very happy man last week. 

DIY strawberry ombré (starting from blonde)

With the crispness of fall comes the urge to be a redhead. I don't know what it is, but it's an annual event for me  - the day I wake up and decide that blonde hair is for suckers. Me? I'm no sucker. This year was a little different though... I'm kind of still digging the lighter locks. Maybe it's because I know I have both an Anaheim and Florida trip booked for mid-winter. Maybe it's because I'm afraid my child won't recognize me if I color my locks a deep auburn. Whatever the case, I decided to shade myself a strawberry blonde with ombré ends.

I grabbed my cup of coffee and headed into my blue and black and white bathroom with the giant mirror and double sinks.

Step one: Find a box color that doesn't suck. Check. Nice 'n Easy is just that: it's nice AND easy. It's relatively gentle on my hair and the color (when used traditionally) turns out pretty accurate. 

Step two: Add conditioner to the ends of your hair. I ALLLLLWAYS do this to a) protect my ends and 2) protect my ends. This is especially important (I feel) when going for an ombré effect. It will prevent color from saturating the ends and help avoid any further damage. Me so smart.

Step three: Divide your hair into four sections and clip it up. Note the Myspace-esque duck face/flipping of peace-hand with squinty eyes. This is also vitally important.

Step four: From here, I applied the color to my roots and down about three inches. I set a timer for 15 minutes and grabbed a book.

Step five: After the timer went off, I applied more color down to about two inches from the bottom of my hair. Once again, timer - 8 minutes this time. When the timer went off, I added color to the rest of my hair and finger-combed it through for approximately 1-2 minutes, and then hopped into the shower to rinse. 

BEFORE (check out the pajama shorts. You know you're jealous.):

AFTER (disclaimer - please ignore all hair frizzes. My hair tools are still in my suitcase from this weekend's wedding extravaganza and I've been too lazy/distracted to unpack):

Personally, I love it. It's fun without being too funky, and it's subtle enough that my grandmother wouldn't roll over in her grave (bless her soul). You can't tell from the picture but the ends of my hair are actually a few shades lighter than they appear. I think I may opt for a more dramatic base next time, but this reddish dark blonde is relatively close to my natural shade. Maybe I can get away with not coloring it for a few months!! 

Your 20 years have gone by much too fast

Friday afternoon, a long lost friend called me out of the blue while I was getting my nails did for my sister-in-law's wedding. I didn't have time to chat with her really, but it brought back a flood of memories. Jazz in the Park at Cathedral Square, camping trips with boiling hot marshmallows and pretty horses, zombie bar crawls and a plethora of inappropriate conversations at even more inappropriate locations.

It made my heart smile, knowing this pal from my youth is still going strong in the city we love. I'm making some broad assumptions that we are in very different points in our life now. But hearing her sing-song voice and throaty laugh somehow triggered just a snippet of my youth to reappear. I don't have time or energy to have impromptu sleepovers after closing the bars or going dancing for 80's night at Mad Planet, but I can definitely swing some evening Chai tea and a chat.

Do you feel that bite in the air?

I think it's officially fall. Bring on the pumpkin spice and Chai-flavored everything. Set aside the linen and jersey scarves - its time for the heavy crochet and knit stuff. We tried to get some wiggles out at a park today and ended up taking shelter at the library instead. Brr...

My nephew's 6th grade football game capped off the afternoon and, boy, we froze our butts off. At least they won... I think? Or maybe they lost, I don't really know. It was pretty stinking cold.

 

What I do know is that after the game, and after Emma was put to bed and after the dishes were washed and coffee was prepped for tomorrow morning, I opened a bottle of red wine and curled up under a cozy blanket wearing a hoody and yoga pants. That's what you do on fall nights, ya know? Watch TV and drink wine while under a blanket.

Also, dinner tomorrow night = roasted squash and perhaps something incorporating the slow cooker. Obviously. Because it's fall.

3:15 am Guilt

It's 3:15 am on Monday morning. I'm sitting in my daughter's room trying to soothe her to sleep while she's cutting her incisors and, boy, this is rough. Her wails are heartbreaking and the time it takes for a partial dose of Acetaminophen to kick in is the worst.

That's alright though - I couldn't sleep anyway. As I was drifting off earlier, a tiny seed of a memory popped into my head.
The summer before 4th grade I made friends with a girl who was a year younger than I. We played EVERY. SINGLE. DAY. We'd set up a "candy store" in her mom's garage and wait eagerly all day for customers who didn't exist to stop by to buy our overpriced Tootsie Pops. Or on the less pleasant days, we'd spend hours on her Sony PlayStation dominating the world of Sonic the Hedgehog. We played tether ball for hours. We'd even go old school and play with Barbies. Hey, it was just the two of us - who was going to judge?!

I can't remember much about this little girl, not her hair color or her name (although her first might have been Elizabeth?). What I keep returning to is that the first day of school, she excitedly ran up to me and hugged me because, hey, when you see your best friend on the first day of school it's pretty thrilling. I pushed her away and pretended I didn't know her, a tall feat for someone growing up in a town of 600 people. I spent every recess ignoring her and if I did turn my attentions on her, it was only to mock her.

I'm pretty sure they moved at some point over the next few years. That little girl who is now a fully grown woman most likely doesn't remember me. If she does it's probably a blip on her radar - a tiny memory of an amazing summer and a cold fall. With that said, if that woman ever reads this and recognizes a variation of this story, I'm sorry. I'm sorry I was so horrible to you. I'm sorry that I thought a grade in school made all the difference. I'm sorry I missed an opportunity to be a friend to you. I'm sorry I was a fourth grade asshole. I was in a weird place of already being unpopular in my youth and wanting to not damage my "reputation" further by hanging out with a younger kid.

I repeat: I was a fourth grade asshole.