Disorganized R Us!

I've been having a little trouble getting back into the swing of things since getting home from Massachusetts late Sunday night.  I know for a fact that I am not making the best use of my time and yet, I can't seem to help myself.  I just want to sit mindlessly in front of the computer playing Farkle and Lexulous on Facebook or curl up on the couch and watch bad movies or DVR'd TV shows that have been waiting patiently in the queue.

There's probably really nothing wrong with that except that I have a ton of pictures I should be editing as well as a few posts to write about this past weekend, a few posts that I still want to write about Baltimore, other assorted posts that I want to write, blogging friends that I need to pay a visit to, and never mind the housework that has piled up!  I'm sure Jamie would love it if I'd help her clean up and organize Amanda's stuff a little bit so she could feel more settled into her new room but the best I've done so far is go to the Home Depot to buy a few more boxes and storage bins.

Sheesh ... and I call myself a Virgo!  I should be ashamed of my formerly immaculate and organized self!

On a positive note, I did get Jamie over to the hair salon today so that she could get her hair cut - something she has been asking me about since last week.  It's kind of funny that one of the first things that both she and Amanda did when they no longer lived with their father was request new hair styles which just goes to prove that they really are sisters whether they want to admit it or not!


I think her new cut looks great and the stylist assured her that it's very easy to get that spiky look in the back with very little effort. There's plenty of styling product left around the house that Amanda didn't pack off to college with her that she can use so we should be all set there and Lisa - bless her heart! - sent Jamie a box of make-up and jewelry and things yesterday that she absolutely loves so she's good in the "trendy" department, too. Now if I could just get motivated enough to help her straighten out her "new" room ... maybe tomorrow??

Oh, and is it just me or does Jamie look a bit like Sarah Palin in the picture with her hands up?  I mean, maybe it was just the moose antlers she was making over her head or maybe it's her glasses or maybe it's just that I need to wear my glasses more often or maybe I'm just crazy- always a distinct possibility!

Recovering a Little Style

For quite some time I had been thinking about getting my hair cut as it had reached that "it's driving me crazy!" stage but I was honestly too scared to actually go to a stylist and have it done. Having had my fair share of bad cuts over the years, I am a firm believer in a person suffering from post-traumatic stress syndrome whenever h/she steps into a styling salon and that was what appeared to be my problem.

For years I hadn't had to worry about a bad cut as my friend Trisha, who used to be a professional stylist, still did cuts for her friends out of her house until returning to school full-time while also juggling a full-time job.  Without Trisha I found myself wandering through the wilderness with an unkempt mane and no idea for which direction my hair should take. It had really gotten out of hand and into my face and I knew something had to be done but what?  Not that it always looked quite as bad as it did here at the Jersey Shore back at the beginning of October but still ... with hair like that, it was't just the zombies that were there for the Asbury Park Zombie Walk that were frightening! 

A couple months ago I stopped in at at the local Smart Styles in Lisbon to get my split ends taken care of and ran into exactly that of which I was afraid of - a bad stylist!  The woman who "cut" my hair did an absolutely horrible job but I didn't complain, gave her a tip anyway, and then kicked myself for my lack of a backbone for days later.  Obviously that experience hadn't helped the situation any and so I let my hair go for even longer - dull, lifeless, lank, and getting in my face way too often for my liking!

Finally the time had come to take my fears in hand so I set off yesterday morning for the newly opened Hair Cuttery - again in Lisbon - and hoped for the best.  As I sat nervously waiting for my turn in the chair I kept hoping that I was doing the right thing and that I wasn't going to walk out looking like my hair had been done by Ash Williams and his chainsaw hand from the The Evil Dead movie! Thank the heavens and all the stars above that I got a stylist who actually knew what she was doing and I emerged with a cut and style I like, a little bounce in my previously lifeless hair, and the stylist's business card which is going in a place of honor on the refrigerator door!

I will be the very first one to tell you that I have absolutely no clue what to do when it comes to "fixing" my hair and am a complete and total inept klutz when it comes to hairstyling appliances like curling irons and even blow dryers so a simple style is essential.  If I can't wash, towel dry, and throw a little mousse in my hair before calling it good, I am pretty much done for.  Rebecca, my new-found stylist, grasped that completely and gave me hair I can work with - thank you, thank you, thank you!

I'm always going to miss having Trisha as my personal and favorite stylist who offered up tea and friendship along with a great cut but I'm finally out of the wilderness and can get my hair into some semblance of order and out of my face!

What's a Girl to "Do"?

It's kind of depressing when you're 16 years old and you just don't like the way your hair looks - especially when your hair looks 'normal' and you just aren't a 'normal' hair kind of girl like Amanda has proven to be. So ... what's a girl to do in a case like this??

There's nothing to do but get a new 'do', of course! And that's exactly what Amanda did this past Saturday - got her hair cut Mohawk-style.

At first, I was pretty resistant to the whole idea as I just couldn't envision the hairstyle Amanda was trying to describe. To me, a Mohawk is completely shaved on the sides with a just a strip of hair in the middle that sticks straight up (hey, I've seen "Last of the Mohicans"!) but apparently that's not exactly the case anymore. As the stylist clipped and cut and shaped Amanda's massive mane of hair, I could finally see what she was talking about and had to grudgingly admit that it wasn't bad at all. In fact, it was kind of a good look for her.

It's short on the sides, still long over the left side of her face, and has a longer section that goes from the top of her head down the back which can be teased and sculpted with a ton of hair products to form the Mohawk part of the cut. To me it kind of looks like a spiked pony's mane or something but Amanda is quite happy with it and has gotten lots of compliments from the kids at school.

Oh, and she's promised me no more funky colors if you can believe that! Right now her hair is sort of black with a little bit of last summer's pink still showing through in places and then her normal color on the sides. Eventually she'd like to go all black again but for now, I rather like the different colors and highlights.

Next up for a new look - an eye doctor's appointment next Thursday with the challenge of picking out a new set of specs! She's had this pair for two years so it's time for a change of probably both lenses and frames. This could be interesting ...

Oh, speaking of interesting, I've had to turn comment moderation on for a little while but hopefully it won't have to be for too long and not to worry, there's still no dreaded word verification to slow you down from leaving a comment!

Hair We Go Again ...

With the big Mindless Self Indulgence concert coming up in New York City, there has been a lot of preparation going on around here between Amanda, Darci, and Cate because - heaven forbid - they just put on a pair of jeans and a t-shirt to wear to the concert. Nope - they have to have costumes complete with drawn on tattoos, make-up, and - of course - hair. Frankly, the whole thing has worn me down but that's probably because I'm old and never even went to a concert until I was over 18 and I certainly never went to one that inspired me to dress up like the band members. If the excitement of these three teenage girls could somehow be harnessed and used for energy, I wouldn't have to worry about an electric bill for a very long time!

Yesterday and today turned out to be the major prep days for the concert as yesterday was when my friend and trusted hair stylist Trisha was coming over armed with bleach, hair clips, scissors, and a couple tubes of hair color that will never see a shaft of hair on my head thank you very much! Trisha will happily bleach Amanda's hair for me but when it comes to applying her choice of outrageous colors she lets me take over as "it's just too messy". Gee, thanks, Trish!

As you might recall, Amanda's had blue hair for quite some time now and wanted to change it to pink and green in order to match the jacket that we had made as part of her costume for the concert. The first trick was to get her hair bleached out so that we'd have a clean slate to work with when it came to the new colors but there was a bit of trepidation as to whether or not Trish would be able to get all of the color out. After a fashion she was able to get most of it and that left me with a blonde for a night as we needed to let Amanda's hair rest for a bit before putting it through the rigors of coloring.

In the meantime, Darci had talked her mother into letting her have a couple of pink chunks in her hair so Trisha bleached out two spots on the top front of her hair and two spots in the back so that when she puts her hair up in ponytails as part of her costume, the color chunks are in the right places. This was Darci's first ever foray into bleach and color so she was quite excited and in the end, her pink chunks came out very pink but very nice! Hopefully her mother will approve but if not ... uhm ... yeah, give it time and it'll fade out!

Fast forward to earlier this evening and my adventures with applying color to Amanda's hair. The pink side went on quite easily and was definitely the right shade but we ran into problems with the green hair dye as once we got it on part of her hair, it became quite evident that it wasn't really what one could call green at all but more like a dark aquamarine or teal. Amanda had her heart set on green so was pretty disappointed with the color but she eventually came around and decided that she was just going to have to deal with it. I really do wish that the green dye had actually been green as it would have matched her jacket better but in the end I'm sure it will be okay. Not perfect but okay. I think a letter to the manufacturer is going to be in order, though, as the tube is clearly marked 'green' and it was definitely not green.

Being that you weren't here to share in the "fun" I have put together a little slideshow for you to enjoy a shortened version of the whole process (a small pun intended for those who know hairdressing terminology!) ...


Now if you'll excuse me, I'm feeling somewhat harried (no pun intended there at all!) and there's still a ton of stuff to do before we leave for New York City in the morning and our great adventure. Myself, Amy, and three teenage girls take on The Big Apple ... this should be interesting! Especially considering I'm not wearing a costume to this concert and have no clue what to wear. Whatever it is, I'm sure I'm going to be quite blah compared to at least three teenagers I know!

Adventures in Teenage Hair Dying

One of the things on my "to-do" list for this weekend was to do something about Amanda's hair as it was starting to look a little - well ... uhm, shall we say, faded? It had been quite some time since it was dyed blue (Projekt Revolution was on August 26th and that was over three months ago) and the color had gone from a pretty blue to a nice turquoise to a rather sickly shade of green. The time had most definitely come to do something about Amanda's hair but the question was what?

Normally I would turn to my good friend and long-time hair stylist Trisha but she's juggling quite the course load at college this semester as well as trying to keep up with her full-time job so her time is very limited. Add on to that the fact that my finance are very limited (sigh - story of my life!) and I was hoping to get away with something a little less expensive that still might do the trick. However, I have little to no experience in hair styling or dying or anything else

After giving it some thought I suggested to Amanda that perhaps we could color her hair black and that would cover all of the various and assorted colors that it had become ... brown in the back, faded blue in the front, Lord knows what color in other places ...! She thought that would be okay as long as we could add a little bit of color to it elsewhere as she didn't want it to be just black. The kid has just got to be different, doesn't she??

We went to our local Sally's Beauty Supply last night and picked up a few supplies (as seen on tv) that I thought should do the job - a bleaching kit, a cap for pulling hair through and bleaching/dying a limited number of strands, and a bottle of pink hair dye that we hoped would do the trick. I told Amanda to not get mad at me if her hair didn't turn out exactly the way she wanted it to as I've never done this sort of thing before but she was hopeful that what she had in mind would come to fruition. First things first, we dyed her hair black all over last night and I thought that part came out pretty good myself. It definitely covered all the hodgepodge of colors that her hair had become and it was nice to see her with just one color for a change!

Today brought the next steps in the process with the first being to bleach out some of the hair that I had just colored last night. Seems kind of silly, doesn't it? I know there are probably better ways to have done this but the thing is, I'm not talented/smart enough to know how to dye certain chunks of hair and not others so this was the best I could do. We left the bleach on for close to two hours and then rinsed it out and applied the pink dye that we had gotten. I left that on for well over an hour but even with that long on her hair Amanda didn't get the pink results that she wanted.

Instead what she ended up with was a small amount of color that frames her face and it's most definitely not the pink that she was hoping for though in places it looks pink, you just can't see that in these pictures. It most definitely broke up the pure black color and personally I think it looks pretty good and is 110% better than what she had going into this whole thing. Okay, so it's not hot pink but it flatters her and goes great with her skin tone. At least that's what I keep telling her but she's afraid that she now looks like everyone else. I applaud her for wanting to be different but for now, maybe she could get used to being just a little different instead of over-the-top different?
Oh, and memo to self - be sure to discard of the leftover bleaching agent properly next time before it has a chance to burst and end up a mess all over the kitchen counter! Sometimes it's too easy to forget that when bleaching and dying hair you're working with chemicals that might be best left to a science lab! And I am certainly no Mister Wizard or the next famous hair stylist to the stars! Still, I think I do okay with what few talents I have and I give myself props for not having all my daughter's hair fall out all over the floor! Of course, then we wouldn't have to worry about what color it was going to be, would we?!?

Mane-ly Amanda

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Amanda and I went up to visit my good friend and favorite hair stylist Trisha the other evening in order to get something done with our hair. I can't exactly remember when we'd had our hair done last (do you think if I bought a stick of IBM memory and installed it in my brain I might remember things better??) but I know that mine was looking pretty bad and Amanda's ... well, let's just say that Amanda's was in desperate need of a cut.

I don't know where she got it from but that child has got the thickest hair I have ever seen and if she doesn't get it thinned on a regular basis it gets way out of control. Generally by the time Trisha is done thinning Amanda's hair, there's enough on the floor to make a good-sized throw pillow! My hair isn't thin, it's probably average, and her father's is virtually non-existent but Amanda - well, Amanda has hair!

One of the biggest drawbacks to having such thick hair, though, is that a lot of the styles she'd like to have aren't really possible. Not only does she have a thick mane of hair but it's got a natural wave to it also that drives her completely nuts most of the time and again makes some of the styles she'd like out of the question. It's enough to make a 15-year old cry!

Amanda's hair was a constant argument between her father and I, one thing of many, as he insisted that she keep it long "in according with God's wishes". I always told him that God wasn't the one who had to deal with it but that never mattered to him; he wanted it long and so she kept it long and hated it. When she came out to live with me two years ago one of the first things she wanted to do was cut her hair and so I took her to see Trisha. Since then she's had a lot of different cuts and several strange colors but at least now she has some say in what her hair looks like. My mother generally tends to look at it and shake her head in disbelief but I give Amanda a lot of credit for not only wanting to be a little different from everyone else but daring to be so. She's creative and artistic and I don't want to squash that in her like her father always seemed to do. I'm not sure if that makes me a pushover as a mother or not, I hope not.

When we left Trisha's this time I really liked Amanda's new hairstyle and she was quite happy with it also. She's going for a certain look that is going to take some time to achieve because it needs to grow out more in the back but her hair grows very quickly so that shouldn't take too long and in the meantime, I can actually see her eyes and her face! Trisha and I both tell her she's got a very pretty face but just like when I tell her that her artwork is good, she doesn't believe me. Gee, I hope we run into Gerard Way again sometime so he can tell her it looks good and then maybe she'll believe it!

Amanda's Latest Style