This past week has been tough.
Was I busy at work? --No more than usual.....
Was I struggling through another Hell Week with a play? --Nope.
Were Rich and I at each other's throats? --Never.
The inevitable has happened.
Pip and her (now long-distance) boyfriend had a fight and went "on a break". Egad. The tears, the frustration, the heartbreak of it all. I'm SOOOO glad that I'm not 18 anymore.
In the end, the "break" lasted all of four days. He decided that studying on the pre-med track, trying to keep those grades in the A/B categories, being on his own at school, working a part-time job, trying to hang out with friends, and maintaining a long-distance relationship was too much for him to do. Since what he's actually enjoyed learning throughout high school was government, he's switching his major and is hoping to (eventually) teach government/ civics/ history at the high school level. Or possibly run for office someday.
Quite frankly, I had told Pip earlier that he didn't seem like any doctor I had ever known, let alone a SURGEON. (He had been hoping to go into neurosurgery.) I'm not saying that he wasn't smart enough (he is), it's the drive he was missing. I give doctors and surgeons a LOT of credit. In order to serve their patients, the MD misses out on a lot of life along the way. It's a very hard life that they're called to. I wouldn't want that job, nor would I particularly like to be married to one. (Thankfully, I'm not!)
So anyway, now that the tension is soothed home is a better place to be. Pip and Jefe have learned valuable lessons in communication, commitment, and (last but certainly not least) real life.
Thus endeth this week's Afterschool Special, "An Autumn Breakup".
Friday, November 9, 2007
Friday, November 2, 2007
The Shorn Q-Tip
I always feel kind of bad when I let slip the foibles my family members, so as part of the Parent Bloggers Network's current BlogBlast "Even Beauty Experts Make Mistakes" ( http://blog.parentbloggers.com), it's time to let off one of my own less than stellar moments.
Let me start by saying that I was a child of the 80's.
...I'm lying already.....
I was a TEENAGER of the 80's. ......now I'm not talking the mall-bang-Jon-Bon-Jovi-is-SO-mint late 80's. That era was for wussies. I'm talking the hardcore, punk/'New Romantic", we-just-bought-a-Wahl-and-aren't-afraid-to-use-it 1980's!! I suppose that I could write about the lovely lime-green Mohawk I strutted through the streets of Minneapolis with in my Mary Tyler Moore gone bad phase or my Robert Smith of the Cure black rat's nest that I ended the decade with, but I thought that I'd take y'all WAY back to the beginning of it all.
Grab a cup of cocoa, get settled in your chair, and prepare yourselves.......
My natural haircolor is a dark, dishwater blonde. It's not pretty. My personal opinion is that God gives people this haircolor when he runs out of ink in his special haircoloring markers. It's like a special dispensation to: "Ah, do what you can with it". So, by the time I was in eighth grade, I'd had enough. It wasn't light enough to be a pretty blonde and it had no sparkle like what brunettes have. I saved my babysitting money and in the summer of 1982 I went to Rexall Drugs and bought a box of "Deep Mahogany" Miss Clairol. While my parents were at work one Saturday morning, I transformed myself from drab to ......well..... kind of a 'dark grape' color.
Naturally, when my mom came home, she was furious. She took me to the salon to have the color stripped out of my hair. I remember that it was a long and smelly process and it left my hair remarkably straw-like afterwards. She forbade me from ever COLORING my hair again so long as I lived under her roof.
And I spent the summer babysitting to pay her back for the small fortune she had spent to turn my hair back to it's proper color.
*****If you think that this is the end of the story, just wait! It gets better!!*****
The salon used bleach back then to pull color out of hair. Now bleach doesn't just strip out artificially deposited color, mind you, it removes ALL color. It had taken them a couple of bleachings to pull out Miss Clairol (a tanacious woman, I tell you), then they had to put another color down to take the brassiness out. The color I left the salon with was NOT my natural. It was a deep golden with soft strawberry highlights. IT WAS NOT DRAB.
An awareness struck me. I was forbidden to PUT COLOR INTO my hair, by my mother's edict. However, TAKING THE COLOR OUT was an entirely different beast! And I looked gooood as a strawberry blonde!
So I proudly purchased my first bottle of Sun-In. From 1982-1983, I single handedly kept this company in business. Over the course of time (and 2-3 applications a week) my strawberry blonde went all the way to 'Nordic Blonde' without my mom ever remarking about it. Then, in the winter of 1983 I decided that I needed a perm.
***Cue axe-murderer music here***
The stylist asked what I'd used to bleach my hair and I told her of my great Plum experiment. Was it her fault that she just accepted what I'd said? No. I didn't hold any of what transpired against her. It was my own misguided attempt at fashion. God had given me a "Wild" card for my hair and I had overplayed it.......
She wrapped my hair on the perm rods and applied the solution. It stunk, but all perms stink. When the 20 minute processing time was over, she took me back to the sink to rinse it out. I heard a couple of "plinks" as some of the rods slipped out of my hair and I happened to open my eyes to see the stylist gasp as the color ran out of her face. She stopped the water and ran to get help.
When the older woman (the manager, I'm guessing) came over to the sink she shook her head in an "I've seen THIS before" way. She put a stopper in the drain and started filling the basin up with water. She questioned me about the chemicals on my head much like Torquemada of the Spanish Inquisition. Under that kind of stress, naturally I broke down like an AMC Gremlin and admitted what I'd been doing to myself. She then explained the damage I'd been doing to my hair and how the perm process does not react well to Sun-In. She then went on further to say that the "plinks" I'd been hearing had indeed been the rollers falling off of my head. However, MY HAIR WAS STILL WRAPPED AROUND THEM.
They did the best that they could, of course, but the Sun-In had broken down the proteins in my hair so badly that once the perm solution opened the cuticle, there was nothing left to the hairstrand. I lost all of the rollers on my head save for the three in the very front. I guess that that was God's way of showing a little mercy to the stupidity of (wo)man.
I left the salon with a bald head (perfect for a northern Iowa great plains winter!), bangs resembling an exploded Q-Tip, and a note to my mother stating that I hadn't gone into the salon asking for this particular outcome.
Oh yeah, I was grounded.
This BlogBlast is sponsored by Harper Collins and the new beauty guide by Nadine Haobsh, "Beauty Confidential". ( http://www.beautyconfidentialthebook.com).
What's YOUR beauty don't? Share it with the world, link the above sites, and you might be a winner!
Let me start by saying that I was a child of the 80's.
...I'm lying already.....
I was a TEENAGER of the 80's. ......now I'm not talking the mall-bang-Jon-Bon-Jovi-is-SO-mint late 80's. That era was for wussies. I'm talking the hardcore, punk/'New Romantic", we-just-bought-a-Wahl-and-aren't-afraid-to-use-it 1980's!! I suppose that I could write about the lovely lime-green Mohawk I strutted through the streets of Minneapolis with in my Mary Tyler Moore gone bad phase or my Robert Smith of the Cure black rat's nest that I ended the decade with, but I thought that I'd take y'all WAY back to the beginning of it all.
Grab a cup of cocoa, get settled in your chair, and prepare yourselves.......
My natural haircolor is a dark, dishwater blonde. It's not pretty. My personal opinion is that God gives people this haircolor when he runs out of ink in his special haircoloring markers. It's like a special dispensation to: "Ah, do what you can with it". So, by the time I was in eighth grade, I'd had enough. It wasn't light enough to be a pretty blonde and it had no sparkle like what brunettes have. I saved my babysitting money and in the summer of 1982 I went to Rexall Drugs and bought a box of "Deep Mahogany" Miss Clairol. While my parents were at work one Saturday morning, I transformed myself from drab to ......well..... kind of a 'dark grape' color.
Naturally, when my mom came home, she was furious. She took me to the salon to have the color stripped out of my hair. I remember that it was a long and smelly process and it left my hair remarkably straw-like afterwards. She forbade me from ever COLORING my hair again so long as I lived under her roof.
And I spent the summer babysitting to pay her back for the small fortune she had spent to turn my hair back to it's proper color.
*****If you think that this is the end of the story, just wait! It gets better!!*****
The salon used bleach back then to pull color out of hair. Now bleach doesn't just strip out artificially deposited color, mind you, it removes ALL color. It had taken them a couple of bleachings to pull out Miss Clairol (a tanacious woman, I tell you), then they had to put another color down to take the brassiness out. The color I left the salon with was NOT my natural. It was a deep golden with soft strawberry highlights. IT WAS NOT DRAB.
An awareness struck me. I was forbidden to PUT COLOR INTO my hair, by my mother's edict. However, TAKING THE COLOR OUT was an entirely different beast! And I looked gooood as a strawberry blonde!
So I proudly purchased my first bottle of Sun-In. From 1982-1983, I single handedly kept this company in business. Over the course of time (and 2-3 applications a week) my strawberry blonde went all the way to 'Nordic Blonde' without my mom ever remarking about it. Then, in the winter of 1983 I decided that I needed a perm.
***Cue axe-murderer music here***
The stylist asked what I'd used to bleach my hair and I told her of my great Plum experiment. Was it her fault that she just accepted what I'd said? No. I didn't hold any of what transpired against her. It was my own misguided attempt at fashion. God had given me a "Wild" card for my hair and I had overplayed it.......
She wrapped my hair on the perm rods and applied the solution. It stunk, but all perms stink. When the 20 minute processing time was over, she took me back to the sink to rinse it out. I heard a couple of "plinks" as some of the rods slipped out of my hair and I happened to open my eyes to see the stylist gasp as the color ran out of her face. She stopped the water and ran to get help.
When the older woman (the manager, I'm guessing) came over to the sink she shook her head in an "I've seen THIS before" way. She put a stopper in the drain and started filling the basin up with water. She questioned me about the chemicals on my head much like Torquemada of the Spanish Inquisition. Under that kind of stress, naturally I broke down like an AMC Gremlin and admitted what I'd been doing to myself. She then explained the damage I'd been doing to my hair and how the perm process does not react well to Sun-In. She then went on further to say that the "plinks" I'd been hearing had indeed been the rollers falling off of my head. However, MY HAIR WAS STILL WRAPPED AROUND THEM.
They did the best that they could, of course, but the Sun-In had broken down the proteins in my hair so badly that once the perm solution opened the cuticle, there was nothing left to the hairstrand. I lost all of the rollers on my head save for the three in the very front. I guess that that was God's way of showing a little mercy to the stupidity of (wo)man.
I left the salon with a bald head (perfect for a northern Iowa great plains winter!), bangs resembling an exploded Q-Tip, and a note to my mother stating that I hadn't gone into the salon asking for this particular outcome.
Oh yeah, I was grounded.
This BlogBlast is sponsored by Harper Collins and the new beauty guide by Nadine Haobsh, "Beauty Confidential". ( http://www.beautyconfidentialthebook.com).
What's YOUR beauty don't? Share it with the world, link the above sites, and you might be a winner!
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