If she had the proper words to say,

Raise your hand, here. How many people either got their hair cut/trimmed today, or posted about a new cut/trim today?

*raises hand, as well as those of both my munchkins*

In skimming my flist, it seems like EVERYONE cut their hair today!

I wash my hair every other day, usually. If I'm going out for a 'date night' or something a bit more classy, I'll wash it two days in a row so that the actual date will have "fresh" hair. But typically, I only wash my hair every other day.

That being said, I washed it yesterday morning. I went into work early for some training, and I left it down until my "usual" working hours during lunch, when I pulled it back at the nape of my neck with a scrunchie. At 2pm when I left work, I let it down again, and I wore it that way for the remainder of the day.

This morning, I woke early again, and I headed in to train once more. I was at the store by 8am, just barely awake, really, so naturally, I'd not washed my hair nor done anything with it. I took the boys with me this morning, and we headed to A.J.'s swim lessons immediately after leaving work. From that point on, I never got around to doing anything with my hair, though I had intended to put it up in a ponytail of some sort.

I had planned on washing my hair around 4pm this afternoon, in anticipation of church tonight at 5:30. As 4pm rolled around, however, I was highly unmotivated to actually do it. Since the Saturday night service at our church is very relaxed, laid-back, and with no expectations held (it's called the "Come As You Are" service, in fact), I continued lazing about. At 4:40, I fell into a crazy frenzy, deciding right that moment that I wanted to clean the boys' bathroom. Again, I pulled my hair back loosely at the nape, and I scrubbed the toilet, counters, and floor.

I was rinsing out the sponge when Philip came home from work, and he changed from his uniform into clothes for church. I finished up in the bathroom, yanked the scrunchie from my hair, and we all headed off to church then. I hadn't even bothered to check the mirror one last time before leaving. I was thinking as we drove, "Gosh, I love this service. I love that no one will care that my hair is dirty, and I love that I feel comfortable enough to come just like this - straight from scrubbing a bathroom."

We scooted into the sanctuary, grabbing a pew near the in the third row, and we became engrossed in the message. Not another thought of my hair passed my mind, until quite suddenly, as the congregation stood to sing the last song before leaving, a girl across the aisle tagged me on the arm, surprising me. (I'd been leaned into Philip, facing his direction, not hers.) She leaned in close to my ear, and said, "You have absolutely beautiful, gorgeous hair!" I smiled broadly, issued her with a heartfelt, "Thanks!" and then she quickly went back to her seat.

It just came out of nowhere! I didn't know her, didn't recognize her from the around the church before, and I was pleasantly bewildered!

Not only *did* someone notice my dirty, unwashed hair... they found it gorgeous! I was on Cloud Nine as we exited the service a minute later. :-)

Alrightee, here are the pics that I was goaded into taking tonight. *wink*

Keep in mind that I'm wearing two shirts because I'm absolutely freakin' cold this evening. *shivers*



( Five more. )

I have gorgeous hair this morning, and there ain't a soul around to see it.

Poo.

Edited to add: So you guys have to look: ( Pics x 2. )

My hair stayed put in a perfect bun all day long. I am so proud of it. As a reward, I shall pull it down and let it dance and be free while I sleep.

I've been feeling blah about my hair for a little while now. I put it up in a ponytail every day, and it's so rough on the ends that it almost hurts as it scratches against the bottom of my neck (where my neck meets my back, really). So I figured it was all the split-ends making it so rough, and I went in today to have a trim and the ends taken care of.

Only to find out that I'm just crazy. In fact, my stylist pulled over two others, and they all explained to me that I don't actually have ANY split-ends. That I have extremely strong, healthy hair, and that I have the kind of hair people pay for or look for in a wig. "How is this possible?" my mind boggled. "I don't even LIKE my hair!"

And so they refused to cut or "trim" it. I didn't actually want it shorter, and I'd explained that at length that I didn't want to go any shorter than necessary. But the truth was that no trim was necessary. So how do I fix the rough ends?

I have to actually use product. Ugh, just thinking it puts a bad taste in my mouth. I hate doing anything to my hair. I like to hop out of the shower and leave for work with my hair still wet, and I toss it into a ponytail about 15-20 minutes after I get there. I don't want to actually DO something with my hair on a daily basis, and I explained this.

My stylist was like, "But you don't want to keep running around like a hippie, do you? With nothing to smooth this down? You've got GORGEOUS hair, babe; you just need to work it!" And then he said, "If you never dry it, style it or use product, why in the world would you even THINK it was damaged or split?"

Seriously - ugh. I'm so lazy when it comes to beauty regime. As in, I have none whatsoever, and I am not beautiful. But I hate the scratchy feel at the end of my hair. And I do understand now, after looking in detail at my hair with three other people, that there are no split-ends, and that my hair is not brittle in any way. It's just strong, healthy, but raw hair.

So my options to smooth out the ends involved either using a flat-iron and smoothing gel/mousse each day or curling it. Both of those are no-go's. I don't have the time or inclination to go to such lengths. My stylist said the frizzy feel comes from having too much hair that's naturally wavy, and the rest just being straight (something I did know and already disliked about my hair). So he recommended a perm of some sort to make it all wavy instead, in a soft curl.

And if I did that, all I'd have to do each day was spray in some "scrunching" spray and go. I'm leaning towards this option.

They wouldn't allow me to pay for anything today, since they refused to cut my hair. I never imagined such a scenario when I walked in there. I mean, it had been 44 weeks since I'd last had my hair trimmed (according to their computer) - I figured I surely needed SOMETHING done!

Today is a "naturally wavy" day. For the first time in months, I did not dry and straigten my hair. Nor am I going to curl it (an occurrence that only really happens about once every three weeks anyway). I'm just letting it dry naturally, and I didn't even comb it out when I left the shower.

Which means it's very wavy. I don't care too much - I've got no amazing plans for today and no need to dress up.

It's kinda liberating, though.

I'm very sneezy tonight. I'm feeling a lot like a dwarf.

My first shift today at Runza went well, and it went FAST! I was surprised at that. I do feel a bit like my head is swimming with information, and I expect it to take a few more days to begin settling down. I knew two customers, and it was nice to see friendly faces while trying to figure stuff out. :-)

I've got pictures of Josie from yesterday afternoon that I need to send to her mommy. I'm sure she's missing her something awful right now, having been gone for six weeks now. I'll probably put up a few here as well - she's just too cute!

I made fajitas for a late lunch for me, and then the boys and I had the leftovers tonight for dinner. No one spilled any of their fajita on their plate - that's success where I come from! Of course, the house smells strongly of fajita right now, despite my best efforts to mask it using candles...

I'm losing at life right now, unable to find a place that might have Harry Potter tickers. Really, why doesn't someone make these? I see tickers EVERYWHERE I look, it seems, and I can't believe that out of 394 zillion fans, no one has created a website of tickers for HP events! I want a countdown until the 5th movie comes out next summer - maybe not even to display, but just so that I know how many more days I've got to wait. In the time I've spent looking for an HP ticker online, I could've counted up the days myself!

*headdesk*

I had perfect hair today. Perfectly straight, my layers were perfectly placed. I almost hate to go to bed tonight, as I'm sure it won't happen again tomorrow.

I never sneeze just once. Typically, my sneezes come in sets of two - every once in a while, there will be three. But never just one.

I don't think that makes me weird at all.

I had a Perfect Ponytail today. I put my hair up this morning when I got dressed (at 9am - crazy!), and it was Perfect. It stayed Perfect all day long, too. I was very, very happy. I'm sure other gals know what I'm talking about when I say "Perfect Ponytail." We've all had one, right?

I was über-sad to have to take down Perfect Ponytail to take a shower tonight. Boo.

We had a long and leisurely lunch today at Summer Kitchen. We'd never been there before, and we took our time. Everyone really enjoyed their meals except me - I'd ordered roast turkey and the trimmings, but when my meal arrived, all the meat was dark meat. Blech. I soldiered through as much as I could, but I still left a lot on my plate. My caramel apple pie a la mode was heavenly, though. A.J. had snickerdoodles, Jack had a frosted sugar cookie, and Philip treated himself to a heaping slice of lemon meringue pie.

We meandered around Wal*Mart for a bit after lunch, buying some more cleaning supplies and toilet paper (why do those things always run out at the same time?). We bought a nifty new tool for keeping Philip's shower clean - it holds a bottle of cleaning solution, and he just presses a button as he leaves the shower to start a 12-second 360° spray of all the shower walls. It's amazing too - he tried it out this afternoon, and we could already see a difference in his shower by tonight!

We found some more Cars collectible cars for the boys, ones not yet in their collection. There were four cars we'd been looking for, but Philip and I agreed to only buy them one each. You could see the boys working through the horrible scenario of leaving the two cars behind, and they decided to pay for the cars themselves with the money they'd counted out for the ice cream man at the beginning of summer (who, incidentally, hasn't come around since the day we prepared for him to arrive). When we arrived at home, the boys ran to their rooms for their money and brought it to Philip (who was holding the cars). After Jack handed him his coins, he even said to Philip (complete with open hand, palm up), "Pay up, Dad!" Heehee.

We all watched Around the World in 80 Days tonight together. A.J. and I shared one spare comforter on the couch, and Philip and Jack shared another while laying on big floor pillows in front of the couch. All the kitties stopped by intermittently for some skritches throughout the show. It was good, and we all really enjoyed it. Philip had caught the end of it on television earlier today, and he asked if I'd like to watch it when it came on later (at 8:20pm). I thought, why not? So we made it a family date.

I picked a ton of green beans last night, and then I picked several more this afternoon. We'll be having fresh green beans with our meal tomorrow, I'm sure of it. I'm excited for that. I also baked two more loaves of zucchini bread this afternoon, and I'm baking more tomorrow (Philip already grated the zucchini for me, even). There are still FIVE more zucchini in the fridge, plus two more that should be picked from the garden tomorrow. Those will make a total of THIRTEEN zucchini so far! I also picked the first three green peppers tonight, and I'm looking forward to tossing at least one into a fresh salad tomorrow. :-)

Yay! The Pampered Chef party was great fun! Seven lovely ladies showed up, plus Jan, my consultant, and we had a great time until about 10 minutes ago (and the party was at 5:00pm, by the way). I love when parties turn into girls' night chat-fests afterwards - it's the best part of the party!

I have two outside orders right now, and 6 more promised, so my show is looking really good. I only needed $70 in sales to get what *I* wanted for free, and I'm WAY above that. Whee!

Jan put on a wonderful show for me, and she made a Barbecue Chicken Ring for the appetizer and Banana Split Brownie Squares for the dessert. Both recipes were much too yummy. She forgot her Medium Bar Pan on the way out, and she called me later to tell me. I told her I'd bring it tomorrow to the scrapbooking group. Then, just minutes ago, I was cleaning up and I found a large black shoulder bag full of PC stuff and a tan and brown purse. I knew that if it was Jan's, she'd be frantic for it in the morning, so I went ahead and called her even though it was late - I woke her up, but she said she was so glad I'd called because YES - she would have been a mess. So I'll take all of her leftover things to church with me in the morning. :-)

I went on a Magic Eraser® trip earlier today. I wanted to hang up all of my bats for Halloween, and then I decided that I wanted to wash the fronts of the overhead cabinets first. That quickly turned into also washing the bottom cabinets, which then turned into scrubbing the outside and then also the inside of the refrigerator, which then led to scrubbing the closet doors and front door. I just kept going, and I couldn't stop! I ♥ my Magic Eraser®.

I'm ready for the humid, muggy weather to go away for real. It did disappear for a week or so there, and I was happily back into the swing of curling and styling my hair again every other day. But no - now we're back to this muggy, awful, icky, wet weather again, and there's no point curling my hair when I'm going to walk through a gallon of water in the air with each step. Ugh.

Oof. Time to go do some work for MuggleNet. :-)