Christmas Haircut

What, like you don't do something special for yourself to get ready for Christmas? Shae got a haircut. (I'm getting a pedicure later today, if I get out of work early.)

And I am the crazy idiot parent who documents the whole thing for "posterity." Or, you know, "the blog."

It's kind of a good thing that my kid is a total dorky ham who loves to get her picture taken while she is doing things she's not supposed to.

Like gnawing on a comb. (Not her fault -- it was past dinnertime and I didn't pack any snacks in my purse.)

I don't blame her for loving to sit under the dryer. When I am at the salon, the dryer is my happy place. They could leave me there all day with foils on my head and back issues of the gossip rags and a cup of tea. But I'd never leave.

It was a pretty standard haircut -- not much we can do with her head except make it less bushy and 'fro-like. Maybe I should learn how to braid; she really liked that.

Then we went home and ate two peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and posed for a "proof of life picture" with my old Santa Claus bank, the end.

Big Reveal

So ... here's my new haircut.

Taa-daa!

I had a good 8-10 inches hacked off, and lowlights added. Those bright streaks, where a normal person would have highlights? That's my hair's "natural" color. I went darker -- part auburn, and part light bronzy-brown. If my hair stylist is correct (and I have no reason to doubt her), the red will fade to about 1-1½ shades darker than the bronze she added. I really, really love the color.

Not sure about the cut yet. I mean, I am not unhappy with the length (just brushing my shoulders) and the layers, but to get my ends to curl under like that, she blew it all out and did fancy things with a blow dryer and a round brush, and I'll never be able to replicate that. I am criminally hairdo-deficient. For the last two days I just let my hair air-dry and do whatever it will, and it does this little flippy thing at the ends. It's not awful -- it's kind of cute, actually -- but it isn't the same.

Here is the great thing about having a good hair stylist, though: she knows that I like to put exactly zero effort into my hair -- because, HELLO, I have a wild-headed three-year-old to attend to in the mornings! -- and she gave me a cut that is intentionally low-maintenance. It's too short for my standard ponytail, but I can pull the front up and fasten it with one of Shae's hairclips, and it's still totally fine. And the color is so shiny! Even some of the guys at work complimented me.

I also got my eyebrows waxed, which you can't tell from the picture, but that is maybe the biggest single improvement, for serious. Brooke Shields can pull off a full natural brow, but not me. I just got everything shaped up and less American-werewolf-in-London-y, and it is lovely. My eyes are my favorite feature, and now you can actually see them, instead of trying to find them under the caterpillars that live on my forehead.

There you go. The new me (which is basically only the new me, except partially red-headed). Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. Now if only I could find pants that fit.

What Am I About To Do?

In 12 hours and 50 minutes, I will be chopping off my hair. Well, not all of it, and I won't be cutting it. But I am having my hair cut tomorrow morning, and getting it colored, and I am TERRIFIED.

Every time I get a haircut, I hate it. HATE. Violently hate. And the last time I changed my hair color, I might have kind of gone a little berserk and maybe cried myself to sleep for a week.

But here I go again. Right now my hair goes down to the middle of my back and is a sort of shade that is somewhere on the blonde continuum, with a bunch of random leftover highlights from spending the summer at the pool. The last time I paid someone to color my hair, it was last July, and I do mean LAST July, like 2009 July, just before my sister's wedding. I have had trims since then, but no new style, and my roots are past my ears at this point.

I have some ideas about what haircut I want, and I think I know what I want to do with the color -- a bob, and lowlights in some kind of amber-copper-auburn-red -- but we'll see what I actually decide. If I even go through with it, which is potentially doubtful at this point. If I do what I am thinking about doing, I'm going to be getting about a foot of hair lopped off. I am psyching myself right out, even though I trust my hairdresser and know she would never steer me wrong.

Wish me luck. And Valium. And be prepared to hold me if this all goes terribly, terribly wrong.

Head Over Feet

Know what else you can do when you're three years old? Ride around your grandparents' backyard on your bicycle while still in your pajamas.

I wish I were three years old again.

Running Amok

My sister Jaime, her husband, and my delicious nephew arrived very early on Sunday -- the night before, Shae said she was "tired" early, and asked to go to bed, because we kept telling her that Joey would be there when she woke up in the morning. That was the only day of the entire trip where she was in bed at anywhere near her regularly-scheduled time. In the morning, after a brief fiasco involving a missing measuring cup and no vegetable oil and therefore no pancakes, we went to the beach.

(Gaaah ... I can't really recap this vacation like I normally do because basically just about everybody who would care about the recap was already there {hi, everybody!} so let me sum up: We had a hell of a lot of fun, the end. On to the pictures!)

(By the way, those are my dad's shoes in the background. I also have a pair in a smaller size. This is not just a useless piece of information - I believe there are pictures of my Phillies Crocs coming up in later pictures. Just a little FYI for you.)

We came home, stuffed ourselves full of hot dogs and peanut butter sandwiches (note: two separate foods, not hot-dog-and-peanut-butter sandwiches, which even Elvis would not eat), and took a nice long nap, after which we went to the park to run around, in an attempt to possibly get our children to go to sleep at a reasonable hour. No such luck.

I made exactly one attempt to get nice pictures with the pretty pre-sunset lighting, to no avail. Basically the most powerful force in the Universe, aside from the irresistible pull of perfectly cooked bacon, is the momentum of small children having the time of their lives.

I did get a nice new wallpaper for my computer monitor, though. So there's that.

And then the kids took a bath together, and Shae washed Joey's feet. I wish there was some special significance to that, but there isn't; it's just "ironical" because I am still scrubbing the dirt out of my own kid's toenails. That kid attracts dirt from other planets. Meanwhile, Joey has adorable little clean feet.

Shenanigans

We are now getting down to the part of the-week-before where I basically have nothing to say that makes any kind of damn sense because everything that spews out of my mouth at this point is basically a random list of random things, and even if you can make out what I am SAYING -- like, if the words sound like words, and not zombie-like grunts and groans -- you're still probably not going to make out WHAT I'm saying, you know? Like, what in the holy hell does "pistachiostoothpastepajamasflipflopsWiiremote" even mean any more? I can identify the things, but I'll be buggered if I can come up with any possible context in which that string of syllables together has any kind of significance.

So. Ahem. Pictures from the weekend.

I don't exactly miss the Snowpocalypse that we had back in February but I really wish the weather was a little more ... moderate around here. The snow melted, then we had the barest hint of springs, and then 100°F weather. It's bananas. I have imagines in my head of driving to my grandmother's and driving past one of those digital time/date displays outside a bank, and seeing a temperature of 88°F, and thinking, "Wow, that's HOT."

88°F = HOT. Amateur.

Shae was up to her usual shenanigans. You've seen them before.

I SAID SHENANIGANS.

Oh, and there was a different kind of shenanigans -- my sister's new hair color. Very nice. I've been this color before, a few times, and I dug it, until I washed towels and couldn't get the dye out. But everybody needs a change once in a while, and it's very liberating to look at the world through the eyes of a redhead. I approve. Very sassy.

A Typical Day in Dogpatch, U.S.A.

Since my husband got laid off last year, he's been in charge of getting Shae up in the morning, getting her dressed and fed, and getting her to school, all so that I can hit the snooze button for 28 minutes and then rush around to get ready for work in under 20 minutes so I can hurry up and go sit in traffic already.

Actually, he hits the snooze button for me, too. Because the alarm clock is on his side of the bed. Because I planned it that way. Because I am lazy in the morning. And because I whine if he doesn't smack that button for me. Because I think alarm clocks are the work of the devil.

Also, we have no idea why our snooze feature is 7 minutes, but it is, and we don't argue. Except when he hits the "off" button by mistake and I wake up 20 minutes after I was supposed to have left for work already. Dun-dun-DUUUUN.

{Secretly, I think he might enjoy that particular aspect of unemployment: the not-having-to-run-your-life-at-the-mercy-of-the-alarm-clock-all-the-time aspect. Also, the being-able-to-sit-at-home-and-play-video-games-in-your-underpants aspect. I know I would. Although the broke-as-a-joke aspect is not quite as much fun.}

Anyway. My point is -- or was, I don't even remember what verb tense I'm supposed to be using any more -- that most mornings I don't get to be part of Shae's routine, because I am gone before she gets up and starts grumping. Our daughter is not a morning person, and sometimes he has trouble getting her to cooperate.

Hey, don't look at me. I don't know where that stubbornness comes from. It's not my fault. She's adopted, so she doesn't get it from me. And also, she's an Aries. The only people I know who are anywhere near as stubborn as Arieses are Tauruses, and there are none of those in my house.

(SPOILER ALERT: I am a Taurus. And also, this kid is so much like me it's not even funny.)

This morning I peeked in on her before I left the house, and she was already up, so while my husband was still in the shower, I got Shae up and dressed. I miss being home in the mornings. We used to have such fun together. She was all smiles for me, although she was a bit disappointed that the strawberry-banana yogurt was already gone. We made up for it with cherry yogurt and two pieces of dried pineapple.

But there is one thing I won't miss: having to comb out that hair. What's funny is, even with these special iPhone camera effects, that's exactly what her head looks like in the morning. Good luck, babe.

Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough

It's raining today, and it's supposed to rain all weekend -- yaaaaaay! -- so now I'm really glad we went to the park the other day and let Shae run around. Even though I took a whole buttload of pictures that look like this mess:

This kid, you guys. She's made of Jello and rubber bands and hair and, apparently, Energizer batteries. Gogogogogogogo! She ran the bases on the ball field, ran through open grass, ran to look at the ducks, just runrunrun everywhere, nonstop.

And even here, even though her feet are not moving, you can practically see the gears in her brain churning away, while she tries to figure out how she can get in the water. "What if I keep my jacket on, Mommy? Will it be warm enough then?"

The only way we could keep her "under control" (if you could even pretend to call it that) was by asking her to do silly things that required her to run somewhere else. Like, when we asked her to hide behind a tree, she took off for the one furthest away.

My god, THIS KID. She's so EXHUASTING. And MAGNIFICENT.

Get a Haircut (and Get a Real Job)

We got a haircut today. It was desperately needed -- trust me. The mop was getting out of control, and when your own kid complains that her hair is "so big," you know it's time.

I didn't even bother attempting to detangle her muppethead before we left the house -- that is what the trained paid professionals are for, right? Plus I secretly love watching her trying to process how everything works in there.

Never ceases to amaze me how we can get her to scream bloody guts when we try to get a generous detangler through her hair, but the hairdressers attack her head with one of those fine-tooth combs and ... nothing.

The little pink nozzle you see in the background is something new that we're trying, recommended by the stylist. It's supposed to basically fix everything that's wrong with her head at once. We'll see.

She was very good in the chair, sitting still when asked and moving her head when asked and basically soaking up the compliments and the promises of lollipops when everything was done. She made a lot of faces in the mirror.

The finished look. Now, we won't do this all the time, or maybe even ever, since it requires blowing dry and round brushes and techniques that I can't seem to master, but everybody feels better now, even Shae, who keeps telling us how pretty she is.

Lazy Sunday

We stayed in Pittsburgh later than we originally planned to, until more than halfway through what turned out to be the Steelers last game of the season (damn you, Baltimore!), and since we've been back I've spent more time at work than at home (damn you, year end close!), so these pictures are a reminder of ... well, not sure what exactly, but maybe how much I hate my life sometimes?

Probably "hate" is the wrong word -- obviously I don't hate my life. My life is perfectly fine, better than many, even if too congested with the responsibilities that everyone has. Maybe I am just too tired to appreciate the Sturm und Drang of the mundane. I'm working all the overtime I can while it's available, partly because I need to, but also because I am hoping maybe I will be able to squirrel enough away for a small vacation. That probably won't happen, but I am going to try.

At home our Sundays are really lazy, laundry and something in the crockpot and football all day, and while we do play of course, our house is old and small and dark, so it was nice to be able to spread out and fool around with different toys and make a mess and let our hair down a little, with no agenda and no hurry to do something or be somewhere -- except away from the dinosaur robot.

It was also really nice to hang around with other parents while Shae hang around with other kids. Sure, she's at school all day, but while she's there we can't see how she is interacting with her friends, and we only really get reports when something goes wrong. So it was nice to see her being just as charming and clever and curious as she is at home. And because we're related to these people, I didn't have to hide the layers of crazy that I usually do.

Oh, but that hair! We're calling it "Polamalu Hair" because we don't know what else to call it. And before you even ask: yes, it is EXACTLY as hard to do her hair in the morning as it looks like it would be.

Wordless Wednesday: Are You Ready For Some FOOTBALL?

She Runs Away

The pictures from yesterday did not come out all that great because the light was bad -- rainy and twilight -- plus I am not feeling 100% today so I don't have anything witty to say, so this will have to tide you over until I get my groove back.

You can barely tell, but these pictures are post-haircut. And yes, she is wearing a dress -- a little Laura Ashley number that I picked up at TJ Maxx.

Shave and a Haircut

We took Shae in to get a haircut this morning. Yes, I do appreciate the irony of doing this after school picture day. But that's one the of things about being a terrible, inappopriate parent, isn't it? Having the gift of cosmically bad timing?

She posed for this mugshot before we left. She was actually very excited about getting a haircut, and she asked us when Mommy and Daddy were going to get haircuts. Like, good going, kid, like your mother isn't already neurotic enough, now I need to worry about what you think of my hair?

Last time she got her hair cut, it was before her birthday. This time they gave her a shampoo and condition in the big sink, because her hair is just so coarse and curly and damaged from the sun and chlorine all summer that a spray bottle wasn't going to cut it. Shae thought this was hysterically funny.

This time, she sat on the booster seat all by herself. She really was phenomenal; every time we go out somewhere, I am impressed with how well-behaved she is. Complete strangers were fawning over her. It's always great to see and hear (especially after the morning we had, which was ... not good).

She didn't cry, she wasn't scared of the scissors, nothing. She wouldn't sit completely still, of course, but she did a decent job, even after she got the hiccups, which kept cracking her up.

And I didn't realize how much she really needed that haircut. Look how long her hair was! And if you look carefully (and perhaps click in the picture to blow it u), you can see her split ends.

Oh, and you know what I didn't take pictures of? THE AFTER.Worst. Parent. EVER!

Coolin' At The Playground

Saturday was a nice day, one of those gorgeous late-spring-slash-early-autumn days that makes you forget what season it actually is. Kind of like most of this summer has been: clear, cool, clean.

So I really have no excuse for taking my child out in public with this ridiculous clown hair action that she's got going on in some of these pictures. I'd like to blame my husband, but that isn't fair: he's a boy, and he has his limitations. He doesn't really know how to work barrettes, even if he is an engineer. It's like knowing all the words to "I Will Survive" by heart: there are just some things that we girls have embedded in our DNA.

I think maybe it's time for a haircut. I know split ends when I see them, since that's my hair's default condition. (That, and roots halfway down my head.) It's been a while, anyway -- I don't think Shae's gotten a trim since before her birthday. She's got great hair, but it is a little dry from spending so much time in the sun and the chlorine.

These pictures were taken at the playground at March Elementary School, a couple of blocks from my mother-in-law's house. They recently did major renovations to the school, and while I am not crazy about what they did to the building (I was a huge fan of the original native stone façade, and the new light brick exterior looks too bright and modern, and out-of-place in a neighborhood filled with old "painted ladies"), the revamped playground is pretty cool. And I do love the mosaic in the background here -- not sure if this is new, or what, but I really dig it.

WTF!? Friday: Gleaming, Streaming, Flaxen, Waxen

I'm usually not really sure what I'm going to blog about until I actually start writing, but I assure you, I never in a million bajillion years thought that I would ever take up valuable bandwith talking about ... oh my God, I can't even say it, so here: let me show you instead.

This lovely woman is Shannon Waters, and she's a contestant on "Survivor: Samoa," the current (19th!!) season of one of my favorite shows. She's 45, from Renton, Washington, and she is the first female Marine Sergeant to play the game. At the moment, she does not annoy me, so she is allowed to live.

And let's not avoid the elephant in the room: she is also rocking one of the world's most spectacular fe-mullets.

Is this ... a thing, now? Because I am seeing more and more fe-mullets in the wild (if you can consider my office building in the suburbs, just off the Main Line, to be the "the wild"), and I would be remiss if I did not admit to being more than a little bit ... horrified. Scared for my life, even.

I am not really one to judge people on the basis of their hair; I myself have locks that are, on a good day, the approximate color and texture of moldy hay. My hair is baby-fine and poker-straight and, lately, ponytail-resistant. The Guinness people have not yet certified my collection, but I believe that I have one of the largest collections of scrunchies still in captivity, and I don't care if they "went out of style" five or five hundred years ago -- they can have them when they pry them from my cold, dead hands.

Damn dirty apes.

But this whole mullet thing, I just do not understand. A girl I know, who is young and tall and thin and stylish and probably lovely enough to win "America's Next Top Model," she recently got her hair cut into a sort of mullet-y ... thing. I don't know how else to describe it. She loves it, so I am in no position to judge, but I just don't get it. Like, she deliberately paid someone large American dollars to do that to her head? She wants people to mistake her for a hockey fan -- or worse, for a Canadian?

And don't even get me started on the return of leggings and, for the love of God, fucking stirrup pants. No, thank you. If this is what is passing for style these days, then I will continue to dress like Dorothy Zbornak in a bad Ann Jillian wig. Plus, everybody knows that there is really only one woman on Earth who actually looks good in a mullet, anyway: