Americanuck

Every so often I get a reminder why I, unlike my Mother, and even my Sister should not ‘do’ hair. My Mom was a professional for a number of years and my Sister started to study for it (but like everything else in her life quit after a few days,ugh another story) and had the knack for it. Me? I’m in banking. ‘Nuff said.

I’ve struggled with the hair monkey for years. I mean I WANT to be able to do it. I’ve always craved and embraced change and I never had the patience or the cash to go to a professional to make these changes always. Some of these ‘changes’ I don’t have any photos of, mostly because my Parents thought I looked hideous and had no desire to capture it for posterity. Luckily for them most of those inspired moments of change took place after the official school photo. I know for a fact there is no way my Dad would have paid for me looking weird… well except for my Grad photo. Yeah I decided to chop all my hair off in rebellion because my Dad wouldn’t lend me the money to get my hair professionally done and babysitting wasn’t paying a whole lot back then. What? I was 16…what did I know?

One of the few short hair pictures my parents took of me.

Grad Pic

I was a rotten child. The photographer commented on what he called my ‘lovely face’ and how unfortunate it was that I chose to have such short hair. It pissed me off that the guy had the balls to say this to me so I told him that I had just gone through Chemo. He looked all apologetic and shut up right away and I was smug. Yeah I know, I was 16 and a jerk with an attitude, now I’m nice (mostly).. with an attitude.

So it came to follow that I would grow and cut, grow and cut my hair many many different lengths all at a whim.

My hair colour also has changed radically over the years both naturally and by my own hand. I was born with a really light brown hair that gradually changed to a kind of chesnut colour that turned golden in the summer, especially toward the end of my very long hair.

As I got older it turned a darker almost red brown, then more mahogany. I’ve experimented with bleaching out sections of hair and dying them funky colours, the dreaded ‘Sun In’ experiment of 1985 before my first wedding (can we say Bozo the clown?)going a true redhead for a number of years with first Henna then various shades of dye and of course every possible combination of highlight/lowlight/frost there is. I also went from long to short to long to short, well you get the idea.

It got to the point I had no idea WHAT my natural colour was anymore and my hairdresser at the time had never seen it either. When I got pregnant with my second child I was advised by my doctor to not colour my hair. EEK!! I hadn’t ever gone a whole 9 months with no colour and nobody had mentioned this was a bad thing when I was pregnant with Chris, so I listened. I got frustrated and made an appointment with my hairdresser to just chop it all off again, but shorter than I’d been for a while. Nancy was shocked to see my natural colour which to my surprise was almost totally black, or as close as one can be and still be considered a brunette. Who knew? I asked her to chop it off to the colour line and I kind of liked the results at least for a while.

Pregnant with Sean 1991

Yeah so anyway, after a while, I hated it. I forgot how much I end up looking like Snow White and the dark hair, it’s way too harsh for my tastes. The minute I popped that kid out I was back to dying/streaking my hair again.

Fast forward to February 25th 2006 and add a bottle of semi-permanent (thank God!) hair dye in espresso. Which by the way, the drugstore lady after staring at my roots (under all that faded red/brown) told me to pick up and how “Great” it would be with my colouring. A nice dark brown but not TOO dark. I squinted at the box and held up the sample colour to my head and it seemed ok so I went for it.

Test strands? FOR WIMPS! I went ahead and slathered the shit on and left it for the 15 minutes it recommended on the box and rinsed expecting to see my hair in all that espresso awesomeness. What I did see was my hair back to being as dark was it was while I was pregnant with Sean. Brown to the point of blackishness ACK!

After trying some of the old wives tricks to ‘lift’ too dark colour (detergent and conditioner, don’t ask…) which kind of didn’t yanno, DO anything! I’ve resigned myself to my ‘fate’. So now, for the next 28 shampoos anyway (according to the box)…call me Snow White.

Out for a walk
Originally uploaded by beezzez.

The boys and I went out to eat today what was supposed to be breakfast, but by the time we woke up and got our asses in gear kinda turned into lunch.

Tom has the day off and was going to join us, but he’s still fighing off either the same cold he’s had or a nice layer of new cold over the old. He passed on going out to stay warm and try to keep it at bay. I call him a wimp. He’s ok with that.

It was COLD today, cold enough for snow which we did see while we were out, although it consisted of really fine drifting flakes here and there. Yuck, if it would stay away forever I would be happy.

While we were out and about we also dropped by Chris’ old workplace to pick up his tax info and a couple of last cheques he didn’t realize he had coming to him, BONUS. Of course being Chris we ended up waiting in the car for what seemed like FOREVER while he chatted with the Staff. Sean and I amused ourselves by taking pictures.

Sean has caught the photo ‘bug’ but has yet to master the whole composition thing, that and keeping his finger/thumb away from the lens. He did take this one though which made me laugh.

What it DOES illustrate to me however, is the need to dye my hair and get rid of those greys..blah! It’s so much more apparent in daylight and of course from another angle. Eeek. Ms Belinda has a date with Ms Clairol, ok I think it’s Loreal but you get the idea…

***later****

Well I did the first turning of the screw in Sean’s mouth. I think I was dreading it more than him if that’s possible. It wasn’t as bad as I thought but it still made me feel queasy. I don’t like the thought of inflicting pain on my own yanno? Anyway, he said it wasn’t as painful as the first two swings that they took at the Orthodontist’s office.

During these Olympics, several of the folks from CTV BC (Vancouver) were over there doing the local colour thing, especially important as we are the next to host in 2010. A couple of the Fellows have been blogging their experiences and it’s been fun to read.

Of almost Olympic Proportions Written by one of the Technical Directors at the station.
and
Worldwide Murman Written by one of the a flight camera Operators on the news Chopper.

I’ve enjoyed following their adventures (sometimes misadventures)and looking at the photos they’ve snagged over there.

THIS POST has to be my favourite though. It made me snort and I hate snorting. Good thing nobody was around.

But it’s the expander. Yeesh, I feel so bad for the kid, picture having to wear THAT for six months! The good part is that turning the thingie inside is only done once a day, mind you it’s two turns, and it’s only for 4-6 weeks depending on how fast things start spreading. After that they leave it on for another five months for the part that was stretched to knit up again. Sounds gruesome!!! As the Parent, I get the joy of doing the torturing, mostly because the kids won’t turn them far enough or open their mouth wide enough. They want things to move along faster, not go backwards. So in other words I’m going to feel REALLY MEAN. Mind you it’s a good way to keep him in line…”Do as you’re told or I will crank that thing THREE TIMES!” kidding.. kidding…

Other than the discomfort, another issue is the center piece gets in the way of Sean’s tongue and it’s effecting his speech. It’s supposed to get better when things start spreading as the centre piece moves up closer to the roof of his mouth. It’s also making him produce more ’spit’ which will supposedly diminish as he gets used to having it there. Good thing he’s well liked, it’s like wearing a kick-me sign to school.

I kept on saying to him, “I’m soooo sorry!! I feel so bad for you!!” He looked at me and said “It’s ok Mom it’s going to be worth it in the end, don’t worry!” He’s such a cool kid he’s trying to make ME feel better.

As a surprise I’ve ordered him the Parent and Son Serta sheep, the one where the kid sheep has braces. He probably will only appreciate it for a little while as he’s getting older, but I thought he would get a kick of out anyway. We both love those cute-ugly sheep.

We spent last night watching new movie 1 of 7, ‘Office Space’. For those of us that work in an office environment and live a good portion of our waking hours in cubicles it’s a highly amusing movie. Putting up with idiosyncrasies, voices that pierce into our brains, over bubbly people, oh yeah they exist everywhere in every workplace, people know at least ONE of those characters. I had no idea the main character was Berger in Sex in the City,Tom pointed it out to me. Freaky! I’d seen Office Space before and I’m a die-hard Sex in the City fan, but never put two and two together.

Favourite quote time:

Milton: “And I said, I don’t care if they lay me off either, because I told, I told Bill that if they move my desk one more time, then, then I’m, I’m quitting, I’m going to quit. And, and I told Don too, because they’ve moved my desk four times already this year, and I used to be over by the window, and I could see the squirrels, and they were married, but then, they switched from the Swingline to the Boston stapler, but I kept my Swingline stapler because it didn’t bind up as much, and I kept the staples for the Swingline stapler and it’s not okay because if they take my stapler then I’ll set the building on fire…”

While on the subject of the movie, I have a confession to make.I’m kind of Milton. Not a subversive mumbler/firebug or anything, but I have a jones for a particular stapler that I’ve had since 1988. Yeah see this stapler is metal, METAL PEOPLE!! There is no such thing as a run-of-the-mill office stapler that is made of metal these days, seems they are all plastic. My stapler also has a handy dandy staple remover on it’s back end. YES it’s built in!! No having to look for a staple remover. How cool is that??

Most people have learned to not try and separate me from my stapler (the hard way) because I would seriously freak out sad I know, but once when I came back from vacation I found it was missing. I went around from desk to desk peering trying to catch someone with it on their desks. As time went on I got more cranky and I threatened to use the stapler remover on anyone that took it as a joke and I even had some help looking for it (probably just to get me to shut the hell up) but nothing, nobody had it.

After mourning it’s apparent loss for a good part of the day I went to print something at a small printer that was between my desk and another and lo and behold there it was, tucked back almost out of sight, still with it’s little bee sticker on it. I pounced on it with pure joy and promptly LOCKED it in my desk. Yeah, that wasn’t going to happen again.

Turns out some out of town partners we had were working in the office while I was away and one had sat at my desk and had ‘borrowed’ my stapler neglecting to return it. The same dude came back a few weeks later and was working nearby. He walked over to my desk asking to borrow a stapler and I smiled sweetly and pointed at the one on the nearby desk. Well I think I smiled sweetly, ok maybe I bared my teeth.