Plopping

Ok. I'm cheating. I took these pictures the same day I tried on the Mrs. Roper shirt, but I didn't want to NOT use these! There's a theme to this one. An order! Education, perhaps! (and this weekend has been really busy and I haven't taken a single photo!) So, I follow the Curly Girl program. Well, I follow it for the most part. I followed it religiously for about 5 months, but when it got cold, I started straightening my hair again now and then, simply because it takes so long to dry by itself. Also, I'm out of the conditioner I like the most, and it's $17/bottle, so I've been making do with Suave ($1.79!). I like the other stuff much better though.

Anyway, I followed the no-poo, condition, no brushing, no heat, clear gel protocol, but the one thing that I didnt' do was plopping. The written explanation didn't make enough sense to me, but I finally checked out a couple of youtube videos and figured it out. I do it every now and then. I don't know that I see much greater results, but I suppose it does help maximize the curl in the winter that humidity takes care of in the summer.

I use an old t-shirt that I never liked that much for my plopping. The best thing about plopping is I can actually lay down and nap while my hair is still wet and I don't mess anything up. Anything that doesn't hinder a nap is great! The worst thing about plopping is I look like this while doing it...



but my hair looks like this when it's all done!

I leave it in the t-shirt for about an hour and then let it down to dry the rest of the way. That still takes another couple of hours to completely dry.

Hair Sticks

Just trying to get a couple of shots of the hair sticks Dax made me. Just a week ago, these were a piece of firewood. :)

Come and Knock on our Door

I got to go out for lunch with Angel today and we took some time to go browsing at Macy's. I found a shirt I loved, but it was out of my price range. It also smacks of TV's Mrs. Roper.

This might be becoming a pattern with me. Last March I bought a dress with a similar "look". And yes, I did hang a sheet as a backdrop and take pictures of me in it. I had sent the store link to my sister who hated the dress, and I was determined to prove it was cute. She continued to disagree.

I love that dress. It's so easy to wear. I think I would love that shirt just as much. Maybe I'll treat myself for my birthday next month. I suspect Mrs. Roper was onto something!

Edited to add: After seeing this blog, Dax informed me that he's very glad I didn't buy the Mrs. Roper shirt.

Trying to keep a good attitude.

We wanted to go on a hike today. Kenny (our dog) gets a chance to be off-leash, and we get some much needed exercise and fresh air. However, I hurt my knee in December, and have re-injured it at least once per week since. I need the thing to heal so I can do fun stuff! The most recent time, I hurt it getting into the car. I didn't slip or anything. It's my left knee and apparently it doesn't take much lateral movement for me to be in some pretty bad pain for (fortunately) a relatively short time. So. I decided I'd try to hike. I put my knee brace on and we were headed to a trail that Dax and Kenny went to a couple of weeks ago. When we got to the van, we noticed the GPS was gone. Yesterday, I went to my friend's house to take some photos. Dax asked me to leave him the GPS in case he needed to go pick up our son from a playdate. I took it out of the car and tossed it on the seat of the van...and didn't lock it. Turns out, the playdate dad brought Jack home, so Dax never needed to go anywhere...and I certainly didn't think to lock the van. Fortunately, just the GPS is missing. We have a portable DVD player in there too, along with my mp3 player (which is cheap, I admit), and a nice tripod. Some (not all) of my change was missing as well, so we assume that whoever took it, heard something and didn't take the time to really clean the van out.

Anyway, this all meant that we couldn't go to the trail we planned on because Dax didn't know how to get there. He had programmed it into the GPS. Plan B was to go to a nearby lake (small) with a trail around it. I was very upset and it a horrible mood (and nervous about my knee), but I tried very hard to keep a good attitude about everything. It only worked so well.

It was cold! Much colder than we had planned on (so it's probably good we didn't go to the big trail), and there were some icy sections, so I couldn't even walk most of the trail. We weren't there long, and I didn't walk much. I did watch some people playing hockey on the lake.

Mazzy loves ice skating, and I feel really bad that she hasn't done it much this year. I can't imagine how I could possibly skate this year though, if I'm hurting myself getting into my car! And how cool is it that I live in the capital city of New York and about a mile away from my house is a pond we can skate on! It's just like Little Women!

Crazy Clown Eye

Sometimes if I really laugh, the right eye closes completely and I look like Popeye.

Sometimes I Try

The company Dax works for had their annual fancy party tonight. I love the chance to dress up! It's like putting on a costume and costumes are fun!

Yep that's me.

Catching up

Saturday, bride meeting at Starbucks.

Sunday, daiquiri break at work. I'm a wedding photographer. It was cocktail hour.

Monday, trying for a photo with the cat. She was uninterested.

Age. It's all about the number.

I don't like this picture. I got sick of taking shots of myself that I didn't like. This one was at least somewhat pleasant. I wore my contacts tonight, which I rarely do. We were going to see Avatar though, and I didn't want to have 3D glasses on top of my own. I'm really beginning to dislike how I look without my glasses. They are a terrific accessory to hide behind, and they can help you create a character, and make yourself feel interesting. Without mine now, I think I mostly look old. My face is changing so much. Some of that is weight, but most of it is just age and it's weird. It's not like we just keep our regular face and it gets wrinklier. Whole freaking planes shift or something, and we start to look weird. It's really really odd watching your face slowly shift towards what the older You will look like.

Next month is my birthday, and I'll be 39. I like my birthday. I always have. I may not be thrilled all the time with getting older, but that doesn't mean I shouldn't want to celebrate it too! Recently I said to Dax, "I'm almost 39. That means almost 40." "Hey," he said, "If you live as long as your Aunt Eliza has, you'll have another good 65 in front of you." I paused for a moment and said, "Or I could live as long as my mom did and have around 20." "Well," Dax said, "Who do you want to be when you grow up?"

How We Keep the Dog Alive

This is one of my "Kenny is outside going pee" hats. Dax and I are easily distracted people, and we constantly worry that we're going to let the dog out to go to the bathroom and then forget he's out there, and it is COLD outside! Kenny rarely barks so there's no guarantee that he'd let us know if he wanted in. Dax came up with the solution that whoever lets the dog out, puts on a hat until we let him back in. It works like a charm, and I get a moment to be stylish too! ;)

Wow. I'm boring myself!

From Saturday...

After taking this one, I realized every single picture so far is from inside my house. Yes, it's cold, I haven't been going anywhere, but sheesh! I'm a little surprised at how boring I am. So today I decided to mix it up a bit and take a cell phone pic from the McDonalds drive-thru. Still boring, but boring with a different background.

Some may notice the absence of a Sunday photo. Let's all just assume that I looked fabulous and was far too busy with my exciting life to stop for a snapshot!

Wugh.

From last night...



Dax and I went to dinner. It was nothing fancy, but we'd been planning on going for awhile and looking forward to it. The photo above was taken by my best friend before we left the house, and unfortunately, was the happiest I was all night. We fought on the way there, talked about stressful stuff while we were there, and pretty much did our own thing for the rest of the night when we got home.

Me tonight....

still not feeling terribly happy.

Mii

I dusted off the Wii Fit today. As you can see, I've had it a long time, but most of those days, the balance board just hung out under the couch with dead batteries. I pulled it out and dusted it off today though. It's time to start exercising again. I hurt my left knee twice within the last couple of weeks, so I need to start slow, and the Wii Fit is perfect for that! My favorite is Rhythm Boxing.

Tough girl.

Cleaning Up

Today I had to help out at chess club, so that means I had to be presentable. Yay! My hair is naturally curly, and I have grown to like it best that way, but I'm out of my good curly hair stuff and it's kind of pricey. Plus, it takes my hair three hours to dry, and it's COLD here! So I straightened it which has the added benefit of looking decent for a few days before I have to wash it again. I have crazy dry hair....

This is what it looks like right after I blow dry it. Every time. I even brushed it down before the picture so it wouldn't look toooo crazy. lol. I have always thought that one day I should go as Magenta from Rocky Horror Picture Show for Halloween. But only if Dax goes as Dr. Frankenfurter.

You Say You Want a Resolution?

Inspired by the 365 projects I see floating around (where you take a photo a day of something/anything) and my own slovenliness, I've decided to perhaps go the self-absorbed route and take a photo of myself everyday.

What can I learn from this? Well, I'm hoping I learn something more about me. I've neglected to post to this blog like I hoped I would, mostly because I've been neglecting to live my life like I want. As time goes by, I see myself settling into more and more bad habits of laziness and convenience. I'm not creating the me I want to be. I'm wallowing in old patterns and heading down a path towards a place I do not want to go. Maybe at the end of the year, this project will have shown me if I'm happy, if I'm making the most of myself and my life, and if I ever bother to brush my hair unless I have "plans". If I really look at how I look, maybe I'll see what other people must see and maybe I'll make some changes. I hope my end of the year photo is better than this one. And I also hope that this isn't the ONLY photo I ever bother to post.

So this is the first picture (and not surprisingly, I apparently did NOT start with photos on January 1st like I hoped I would. I mean seriously, I haven't even sent out my Christmas cards yet. I'm not exactly "on the ball" about things.). This picture was taken right before I started writing this entry, so probably around 4:30 in the afternoon. I slept in my clothes last night because I had to get up at 4:15 am to take my brother to the airport. I also had my hair in braids and slept in them too. This was all to hopefully trick my brain into thinking that I was really taking a nap last night rather than an actual night's sleep. It worked pretty well too! After the kids went to school, I went back to bed, still in my clothes, still in the braids. It is unlikely at this point that I will shower or anything today. This is how I look and I look awful.