Not sparkly.

I found some old photos at my mom's house recently and just had to overshare.  The first two are from October 1996, I think.  Toby and I had been dating about six months.  I had latent goth/hippie/punk tendencies.  He had definite surfer/hippie leanings. Don't we look cool?  I'm talking as cool as two senior band students can get.


And this was October a year later.  We'd both graduated and were engaged to be married in January.  I was going to college in Springfield, and Toby was probably still living at home.  You can see that my goth tendencies came to a head at this time.  I inflicted white makeup and my polyester polka dotted shirt onto my betrothed.

You're welcome. 

This is how Edward should have looked, if he'd had a sense of humor.  

Henna Day.

I'd been thinking about letting the henna grow out of my hair.  I haven't dyed it for several months, and it's fairly short, so it was about half and half my natural color (a mousy ashy light brown).  Then Lucy invited me to a henna party at her house, and that changed my mind.

I'm glad I did.  I forgot how much I like the texture it gives my hair, and how shiny it looks.  Plus, the red is just bright and awesome.  Henna adds a natural redhead cast to the existing color of hair, so I've got a medium auburn.  Someone with darker hair ends up with mahogany, and any grays become strawberry-blonde highlights.

It's not a "Nice and Easy" project.  Henna makes hair red, but it is an olive-drab green powder.  We mix it with lemon juice and oil and some tea and spices and let it sit for several hours to develop the dye.  This makes a really gross green/brown paste with tiny strawy chunks from the spices and tea.  Being a country girl and raised on a farm, I can authoritatively inform you that it looks EXACTLY like cow manure.

Henna alone has a very strong smell like alfalfa hay, which also, I've been told, smells much like pot.  To me, it also smells sort of like vegetal, like carrots or pumpkins, but in a more obnoxious way.  We add ginger and cinnamon and cloves, so it mostly smells like gingerbread instead.

So, when the paste is mixed and aged, we get together in our oldest and rattiest stretchy pants and shirts and trowel piles of the glop all over our hair.  The buddy system makes this easier.  Even with help, I always get earsfull of the junk.  EWWWWW.  After application, we wait 1-2 hours.  Also a bit gross, since even though we wrap our heads with grocery bags, the mix weeps poo juice out the edges the whole time.

Break for snacks:  We always make crepes when we have a henna party.  Yum!  We had ham and cheese and chives crepes for lunch, then chocolate and banana for dessert.  We also shared the joys of Nutella with two friends.

We rinse and shampoo for about five minutes over Lucy's kitchen sink, then stagger about dizzily while everyone compliments us. It's the best when the hair dries and it's sunny outside, then everyone has a gorgeous gleaming copper head of hair. 

A picture, since it wasn't sunny outside:

What's Going On?

I've been quite restless about the fact that even though breastfeeding *supposedly* uses five hundred calories a day, I am pretty much stuck weighing five pounds more than I did before the Loch-pregnancy. Okay, I've actually been restless about a lot of things, but I can't control any of the others much.

I've been faithfully working out on the treadmill for about two and a half weeks and keeping track of my "progress" with a free online fitness journal. I've lost, then regained, then lost again, about two pounds. I'm trying to motivate myself with things like more energy, less depression, etc... It's mostly vanity.

I checked my measurements for the first time since starting, and there is a difference. My bum is about an inch and a half smaller. Bust, an inch smaller. Thighs, also an inch smaller. Waist? No change. Just the flippin' place where I need to lose weight the most. I'm already shaped like the ice cream cone above, if it looked like it had also gestated five kids. Also, it's half Nutella-flavored, just like me.

Where does that leave me? Holding my pants up with a belt, and worried that if I lose more weight, I might not be able to sell corsets anymore, if you know what I mean. I knew I'd been working hard, but was not aware that I've literally been working my a** off.

Halloween Wistful, Life Wistful.

I'm seeing all these awesome ideas online for Halloween parties, and decorations, and costumes, and food. Sigh. If only I wasn't so burned out from the costuming rush. Toby and I didn't even dress up for the kids' Halloween parties at school.

I did dress up for the church's annual Trunk or Treat event. My corset that fit at this time last year (when I was very early pregnant with Loch), doesn't fit anymore. I weigh the same, but things are obviously distributed differently now. Also sigh. I thought my body was already a fairly fluffy mom-style. It's the first one or two pregnancies that take that huge toll. Apparently, you can destroy your person just a little more every time.

It's not that I'm knocking motherhood at all. It's not the kids' fault I like food, and my fave "activity" is reading, preferably curled up in a chair with a blanket and hot tea. Live like a hobbit, look like a hobbit.

We purchased a treadmill off Craigslist recently, and I'm trying to put it to good use. I always forget how much good exercising does me. Not just physically, but mentally. I have a tendency to depression, and all the endorphins help my black moods immensely. I KNOW that mentally. But some part of me inside is always telling me it's not worth it, and I'd much rather nap.