My last post noted that I was in a hum-bug mood, I’m better thank you, only because I’m certifiably twisted. Not that I really need a sign to proclaim this. It is very evident with just one look at me. Okay, not all of it is visible.
As you may remember from my first blog, everything around our house has decided to break, this past week makes three times on the garage door!or needs to be replaced: our bed and the living room furniture. Hey, it survived 5 kids & 4 dogs for over 10 years.
Thursday was the delivery day & I knew I had a HUGE task in front of me, cleaning under the bed. There were dust monsters with fangs, worthy of any that Mrs. Weasley ever faced in HP 5! With the old bed out of the way, I notice how dirty the wall was. The idea struck me to PAINT it. This would have been all right had I also come up the brilliant, or so I thought at the time, notion to dye my hair. (already permed & colored)
Two hours later, I had one medium blue wall & black hair. Both came out the wrong. The wall was supposed to be robin’s egg & my hair a nice shade of dark blond. I didn’t recognize myself in the mirror & Boomer-dog #4, growled at me. Think Bellatrix Lestrange. Ack!!! Wrong holiday. Worse, I still had gray roots!
A good friend told me that if you can laugh later at a situation, then you can laugh now. I did while snatching a box of platinum blond from the pantry. Black & blond don’t make brown, but a nice shade of maroon. Nice way to be remembered at the Christmas party that afternoon where I met a group of women who are influential in our community. Oh well. There are worse things, right?
Don came home, gave me my hello kiss, then walked into the bedroom & back out to where I’m sitting on the floor drinking a tumbler of red wine. “No furniture, huh?” He looked at me with that perplexed man stare.
“Did you paint the bedroom? Uh, good job?”
“And dear, what else do you notice?”
“Uh, your hair?”
“And?”
“You want me to find a ukulele?” (For those youngsters, this is in reference to a wacky & weird singer, Tiny Tim. “Tiptoe through the Tulips” Google or You-tube him.) “How ‘bout another glass of wine?”
I gotta give the man credit for what he didn’t say What were YOU thinking? OR I can’t believe you did this!
Life around me is never dull for long!
Fess up. Have you had any ‘What were you thinking?’ moments?
I need another good laugh.
Happy Holidays!!
The Twisted Sister Meg
Smart Women 
When my sons were in grade school, I decided to introduce them to different kinds of vegetables. At the time, their favorites were corn on the cob and green beans. I tried serving creamed potatoes, asparagus in a ceeam sauce, cauliflower with a cheese sauce, etc. After many comments like How come we can’t have green beans? I decided ok, that’s what you will get.
So every night I opened a can of green beans, heated and sat on table. I wondered how long it would be before anything was said and after about 8 days had passed, finally one of them said ” Mom, did you get a good price on all those cans of green beans? Can you see if they have as good a price on the corn?
They are grown now but we still laugh about that incident which was one of many.
Hope this made you laugh.
Hey, Joy!! You did make me laugh. What a great trick. Thanks for posting.
My kids wouldn’t even eat green beans. If it was green, then it was for horses not kids.
At one point, my book collection was sorted by author, but as time went on, books ended up wherever there was room. I decided that I really needed to restore some sort of order, so I started gathering and sorting. The problem was, I would come across a book I hadn’t read in a while and then would stop to read parts of it. I would remind myself that this wasn’t gettting me anywhere, so I would put the book in the appropriate pile and continue. Unfortunately, my stopping to read bits and pieces of other books continued to happen. Needless to say, this project ended up taking many days to complete. The good news is I went back and reread some old favorites. Of course, this does’t help the TBR pile!
Isn’t it great to have a partner that accepts things as they come? I’ve been lucky that way also. This is the first year since before kids that we will be alone all day on Christmas and are we looking forward to it – especially since family descends on Friday and Sunday – and always at our house. Here I thought everything was under control and I had two more days to get things in order. Then came today and every time I start to make something I run out of an ingredient. Oh well, guess the house cleaning comes first after all. At least I don’t have to vacuum – that was the agreement when my husband retired and I let my cleaning service go. He vacuums and does the heavy scrubbing and I do the pick up, dusting, etc.
Hope you all have a great holiday…
Oh, Mary, I do that too. Pick up a book & read. In October, we had a major garage sale, so I went through the house sorting. My keep pile stayed almost as big as when I started. Thanks for your story.
Karen, we’ will have 2 of the 5 here on Christmas day & my daughter is having to work the day shift.
I’m glad you have a partner who helps out around the house. Mine cooks most of the time & does the vacuuming. Even before retirement, he is helping with half the chores. We do split going out in the cold to feed the big critters. I appreciate your story.
One of the many reasons I love my husband is how he puts up with me. I once decided that the already mixed “oops” paint on sale would be good enough for us. I left him painting our bedroom and chased the little kids for a couple of hours. I walked into the bilious blue room and just said, “I can’t sleep in this room!” He went out, bought some more paint and slapped another coat up on the wall before bedtime. He’s a prince and I don’t deserve him. Oh, I had my hair turned purple by a PROFESSIONAL once. spw
Your DH is awesome!!! OK, so I don’t feel quite so bad about maroon hair. It is better now after 4 hours at the salon on Friday–a brassy sassy strawberry blond with about 3 different colored highlights. Found out that I hadn’t quite gotten the box blonde dye all the way through to the back of my head. :snort:
Hair color stories? Oh, honey, let’s talk.
Back in college, when I had more hair than brains, I let my roomie color my hair. Now my natural color is auburn, though a tad more on the red side, and I have the redhead’s pale porcelain skin. (And, damn it all, the redhead’s freckles.) Not only did I let another female with more hair than brains color my hair, I let her bleach it. Blond. Blond is a freakin’ god-awful color for me. I scared people just by looking at them. (Something I do these days on purpose, but now it has more to do with moi than my hair color.)
Not only did I look ghastly, but she didn’t get all the solution rinsed out, so my scalp, after about eight hours, turned to mush. Freaky blond hair with a — this is so gross — bloody and pus-draining scalp. I rushed to my hair stylist who said sorry, can’t do a thing until all those sores heal.
I coated my scalp with antibiotic cream (which gave me horrid greasy blond locks) and wore a babushka-type scarf for a solid week — taking it off only long enough to switch to a clean one. The day my pro was able to turn it back to a normal color was the happiest day of my life to that point. I swore to never again let an amateur mess with my hair.
Which means, yupper, that it was a professional who put on a brown rinse to hide the red (I wasn’t as happy being a redhead back then as I am now). Nice color, no problem. Until I went swimming in treated water and my hair turned that nice shiny dark green that you see on ducks. Aargh!
Hair color? I’m a professional amateur… put so many different boxes on my head that I finally had a professional do it once and explain the mix and the difference with getting a box. And an 18 year old male getting his hair baked under a dome draws a few glares at the beauty salon, let me just tell you what…
So, I no longer buy the boxes. I go to a Sally’s and buy my own product and mix. Hair’s been just about every color you can imagine. The only one that got me kicked out of class was tennis ball green (my bad – is that a 10 year rule story?). Reds, yellows, oranges, browns, green, blue, and white (real bleach, not just peroxide). Never did black, but just about everything else I could think of.
Hi Ladies!!
Loved the stories! I’m sure I’ve got plenty of what was I thinking stories – but right now can’t think of a one! Any way I enjoyed the laughs. Hope ya’ll have a Merry Christmas and a happy New Year.
I lost my DH 15 years ago to a drunk driver and I miss him every day. He was the MOST unflappable man! Not easy when you are married to a professional opera singer – very temperamental.
I let a beautician talk me into a short haircut – a HUGE MISTAKE!! I HATED it! My DH came home, looked me over carefully, smiled and said “I like your haircut.” I burst into tears. He didn’t miss a beat. He said “O..kay… I DON’T like your haircut?” He was willing to go with whatever I felt about it. He was always like that. Is it any wonder I have never remarried? You don’t get that lucky twice!
Oh, Louisa, you definitely had a keeper. It should be in the law somewhere that we artistic types MUST have unflappable and supportive spouses. So sorry about your loss.
I’ve had hair stylists who love me and some who dread seeing me for the same reason: I don’t much care what they do to my hair. “Surprise me, ” I say. “If I don’t like it, it’ll always grow back.” So far — knock wood — it has.
Though it’s looked pretty odd in the process a few times.
Zack, my son dyed his hair yellow one time. I hated it. Asked and pleaded and begged him to turn it back to brown, but he refused. Then he started dating a pretty little girl who said, “I’d love to see your hair in its natural color,” and wham, it was brown the next day.
Marilyn, isn’t it amazing the power these little girlfriends have?? Hairstylists hate to see me coming for another reason. Since that one bad haircut I am a real hair prima donna! I watch them like hawks to make sure they don’t trim more than I want. I just had my hair colored for the very first time before RWA National Conference this year. (And I will be 50 Dec. 29th so that is a lot of years with NO color.) The only reason I did it this time was because I didn’t want to pitch to an editor with gray hairs shining in my hair! It turned out really well. It matched my natural hair color, which my late DH loved and I didn’t want to change it. So glad I didn’t end up with green or maroon hair!!
You’re not kidding, Louisa. From the time the kiddo started dressing himself, he had really bad taste in clothes. Well, not so bad, really — just everything was at least two sizes too big. The only way to get him to look the tiniest bit neat was to coerce him into wearing his Army uniform. Then he got orders to Italy and dated a girl for a while who liked her guys looking sharp. She taught him a lot about not just fashion but style, and I was so grateful for it.
I’m a L’Oreal girl, too — #6RB. Granted, I’ve tried every reddish shade L’Oreal makes and liked most, but I’m happiest with the nice medium reddish brown of #6.
Rachel, on the other hand, loves the super bold, brassy, sassy, hussy copper red. I have to keep her under tight control when I hit the L’Oreal counter.
Hey, if you can wear red hair GO FOR IT!! The heroine of my latest WIP is a redhead and she gets lucky in the first 30 pages. She is also a bold, brassy kind of lady and that is unusual for the Regency period. Now if she can just get that pesky murder charge dropped!
I can’t stand that “These clothes were handed down from my brother who is three times my size look.” Thank goodness for women who like a sharp dressed man!
I feel so left out, I’ve never dyed my hair ever. I was always happy with my dark brown hair, and now with streaks of white, it looks kind of frosted (that’s my story and I’m sticking to it). I think I’m just too lazy to go through all the hassle for uncertain results. Great stories though, I had some good chuckles over them.
Me, too. I had a professional hairdresser talk me into trying a “fashionable” burgandy color. Looked great at the shop and at home, but under fluorescent lights, it flat looked purple. Needless to say, I went back to auburn the next week.
I started dyeing my hair when I was 19. I started getting gray at age 9 (family history: grandma started at 15, mom started at 12. We’ve always wondered if I had had a daughter if she would have started graying at 6 years old.) so by the time I was 19, I had a nice little streak in the front going. I got a summer job working evening at a local cafe. For some reason, the boss didn’t realize my birthdate meant I was only 19; she hired me because my looks made her think I was 35. She hired me because she thought I wouldn’t flirt with the customers like some of her younger waitresses would. Once I reallized she thought I was 35, I immediately started coloring my hair. Only time I was ever self-conscious about my age.
Oh, Barbara, what’s hair without a little uncertainty (like whether it’s going to still be there when you wake up in the morning)?? LOL.
I used to hit the salon every four weeks for a trim, color or root touch-up and highlights. Then I decided to let my hair grow so I could donate to Locks of Love. And since I wasn’t going to the salon, I started playing the color game. Every month for a long time, my hair was a different color.
The worst, imo, was the red with a maroonish tinge. {{Shudder}} I loved the super-bold, brassy, sassy, hussy copper-red, but my family (who pretty universally dislike red hair even though some of them are hiding it under other colors) hated it. Of course, they’d be happy if my hair was wallflower brown. Not as long as there’s breath in this body!
Louisa, I read the blurbs on your books on your site. Sorry I forgot the name, but the one on the left has such a cool Gothic-y feel to it. Sounds like a great story.
Rachel, thanks for the compliments on The Raven’s Heart. It is a Gothic / paranormal / Regency story with a murdered wife, a heroine who can “see” the memories of animals, a child who hasn’t spoken since the night of her mother’s death and a hero everyone believes killed his wife. I have been SO lucky with this one. It won the Royal Ascot, the Daphne du Maurier and placed second in the Golden Pen. It is my entry for this year’s Golden Heart. I had fun writing it and am now doing what will hopefully be final revisions!
Cool!! Here’s hoping that you win the Golden Heart and the Big Red Guy brings you a contract in 2009!
Fun in writing is sooo important. I went through a freakin’ long period where I’d rather stick my head in a boys’ toilet than write. I’m proud of the books I produced during that time (though sometimes they feel more like someone else’s than mine), but lord, it was like salvation when I finally sat down to write something and enjoyed it again. I had just told my agent a few weeks earlier that I was afraid I’d lost all confidence and, worse, all joy in my writing, so I practically cried as I sat at the computer that day and loved what I was doing.
I know a couple of writers who say they have to write but would quit if they could. I also knew an author who believed if you didn’t suffer over your work, it was worthless. Those folks are aliens in my world. I’m not into suffering (though some of my characters might be!). If it’s not fun, I’m gonna do it long enough to get out of that contract, and then I’m outta there. WalMart is always hiring.