Me and my hair

I don't know how to explain what she did when she cut my hair. She took small sections of it and cut each small section into steep layers so that there are small pieces of hair all over my head. Those smaller pieces support the longer pieces as they curl and keeps things from being weighed down. 

It doesn't look much different. 

And yet it is very different. I like it. The only thing I don't especially like is that it seems to me it is too frizzy. But I looked at older photos from here and it doesn't look more frizzy after all.

There is a lot less hair! Tons of hair hit the ground and I didn't care in a huge way.

I don't normally use a lot of products. I use a sulfate-free shampoo from Nature's Gate and occasionally I use a citrus rinse from Dr. Bronners. I comb it when it is wet and full of conditioner. I make my own leave-in conditioner in a spray bottle: distilled water + conditioner. I also will sometimes use Aveda's Be Curly, but it has alcohol in it, so I don't like to use it. I wrap the wet hair in a small towel that's super absorbent and after a few minutes, I take off the towel and shake my hair. Then I flip the towel so the drier edge is toward my face and let the towel soak up some more water.

I use a diffuser on my blow drier when I need to get it really curly and/or dry really fast.

With this new cut, I have been touching up with a small curling iron. I just curl a few pieces here and there and also touch up the ends.

The surprising thing I did was allow her to color it. I was deeply undecided up until the point I was sitting in her chair. She used foil as for highlighting, but she matched my hair color and didn't try to eliminate all the gray hair.

 This is new

This is old

I'm glad I did it and I'm also glad it isn't a huge difference.

Here it is straightened. You can see how the ends aren't full and that's because of all the hair she cut out of it. Doing this made me realize she cut more from the back, where I have a ton of hair, than she did on the sides and front, where there is a fraction of the hair.


This is after I brushed it. ACK!

 I didn't work on it until it was smooth because it has a lot of hairspray on it and I didn't want that baked in with the heat of the iron too much.

Here is where you can see that the ends aren't as full as before.

The old stained hair from a previous dye job is still there, but not so boldly obnoxious as before. She cut a lot of it off. It's much more subtle.

This is in sunshine and may give you an idea of how much less grey there is right now. As my hair grows and gets cut, I will see more realistically what my grey hair looks like. Then I will make a decision.

That's the saga. If you have read all this, you're a trooper!

Is it Thursday already?

Dang.

I have so many things to talk about, I'm sure to leave something out.

Last weekend I ran a relay race that took us just over 12 hours to finish. Rather than jibber jabber about my running ability or lack of running ability, I will show you how this happened:

I have enough of these action shots I could put together a flip book of how she dances.

Frankly, I can't picture in my mind where I was when this shot was taken. I wasn't even tired at the time, but in the end, it was a bit foggy all up in my brain. I know things happened, but I can't recall them. 

After I finished running and before my team got to the finish line, I did this:

 

The teenagers

How can anyone resist that face? He was such a gentleman.

Then that night I put the tornado plan in place, which isn't easy with cats. Like the dollhouse? That's to keep Annabelle off the television equipment, which is warm and a good place to sleep. I haven't actually slept there, but she was sleeping there all daylong

So tomorrow I'll be posting about my hair cut. It's not very exciting, but it was a big deal for me. You have a sneak peak in the photos above.

Who's that in your garden, ma'am?

Why, it's a giant rooster!

There's a nursery here in town attached to a grocery store. I pulled into the driveway for some lunchtime errands and this is what I saw!

I want one of these roosters. The biggest one is the best, most colorful and most imposing.

 See how tall he is?

 Rawr!

The little rooster got a little hug from Grande. No roosters were harmed in the taking of these photographs. 

Happy little rooster. 

Forlorn little rooster.

The peacock was looking for a place to hide in all that grass I want in my own backyard garden. Along with a giant peacock, of course.

Here is a very large perched peacock. Wouldn't that look imposing in my suburban backyard? 

I finally did something about my hair and will blog at you about that later. Tomorrow I'm going to a college visit and then Saturday I have an all-day relay race guaranteed to make me regret signing up for an all-day relay race this early in the season. I'm taking Tylenol with me. 

By the way to other bloggers: For some reason I can't comment on other blogspot blogs. I've visited and will come back to see if that glitch gets fixed. :(

More art and other photos

It's time for more photos! 

We went to see one of the local high schools put on 42nd Street, which I now believe to be an impressive feat! It's a huge cast of dancers and singers and about half the cast needs to know how to tap dance. 

They have to tap dance well because it's a big Broadway show, ya know! They didn't disappoint and it was very good. 

Our office should install one of these in the kitchen immediately.

Last night Aaron's relay team took first place for the 4x100 relay race! He is the one on the right. Look closely at his socks. We don't need the bright socks to spot him, but it's fun. I think he's worn them to every single meet this year.

Bryan leaves on a motorcycle tour in the months to come. That's fun stuff. Motorcycles scare me a bit. Not being on it so much as the terror of dying while I'm on it. 

I bought a cat tree as a surprise! 

Here is Henry enjoying the new cat tree. Enjoy my super-duper photography skills, won't you?

I was sick all weekend and Sunday evening, I got out my art supplies. Here is what I doodled:

Answer me this on Sunday

I made a deal with the universe. I woke up on Friday with what Jane Austen may have delicately described as a putrid sore throat and I took myself straight to the doctor's office. After waiting 90 minutes, I went in and she said for sure it was a bacterial infection and so I worked from home.

Then yesterday, after a little running around with one of the teenagers, I came home and stayed home. I watched old movies and episodes of Mad About You and interviews with Johnny Carson. So I did my part and stayed home with no exercising or shopping or housekeeping and the universe was supposed to let me off the leash today.

But I woke up with a cough and my headache is lingering and my appetite is gone and I'm not happy when the universe doesn't play along as I have directed it.

Here is another edition of Answer Me This from Kendra's blog and since the brain is a bit fogged, it's a great way to amuse myself without having to be too intelligent.

1. Are you becoming your mother?
I think she might agree when I say I'm a bit more like my grandmother. But my mom and I crack each other up and I think that's because we're on the same wavelength, so that's excellent stuff right there.

2. Coffee or Tea?
Coffee. I drink tons of it and I drink it black and mild. I like tea, but don't drink as much. I will drink tea with or without sugar, but I like it strong. Black tea is fine, but I prefer English or Irish Breakfast and I like Scottish tea as well. I use one teabag per cup and let it steep for a long time. Then I drink it with the teabag in the cup for extra toughness.

3. What foreign country would you like to visit?
I'd like to go to Ireland and Italy. I think Hungary would be nice as well.

4. Do you cry easily?
No, not really. When tears pop up at a bad time, I have a technique for stopping them.

5. Do you often wear heels?
Not since I trained for a marathon. That was in 2008. I will wear wedge heels and very small heels once in a while, but my days of high heels are over and my feet are happier for it.

6. Do you play an instrument?
No. I tried the flute, fiddled with a guitar now and then and wanted to learn the piano, but the cold, hard truth is that I just don't have the talent. I knew my notes and mostly learned to read easy music between school chorus sight reading and church, but reading music and moving my fingers and breathing all at once is more of a challenge than I'm up to.

Wrapping up, the birds are rapidly stripping cat fur from the shrub and I'm running out of cat fur. I saved it for a month and had a lot of it, but they really seem to love the magic cat fur tree for trimming their nests.

Birds need me? Craaazy!

Circle of life: Henry and the party-hat birds

I have been storing up cat hair for a month and putting a little bit at a time out on the shrub by the deck. This morning I noticed there were four gray and brown birds with black party hats (black-capped chickadees?) swarming the shrub and I watched them pulling the fur off the shrub and flying off with it in their beaks. Then they returned. 

I was so excited! 

I put more out and left to get some NyQuil (I have strep throat or some such nonsense) and when I came back, the second batch was gone!

I was so excited!

I put out more hair on the shrub and some on one of the pine trees in the back of the yard.

This is Henry, who pulls out his fur and has contributed 90% of the fur the birds are using.

I just saw another bird with a bunch of white fur in his beak. I can't get there to take a photo without scaring the birds. !!!!!