It's National Blog Posting Month (NaNoBloPo) and National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). A couple of times I've registered for these challenges and failed. Who has time to write 50K words in a month? Who has time to blog every day?
So, this year I'll do something different. I'll SAY I'm going to blog every day, but I won't register for anything and I won't make any promises, so that if I fail, I haven't let anyone down. And, worst case scenario, I crank out a few blog posts, since my blog has been a little quiet lately.
So, why the "gray hair" in the title? Because today I washed away my grays. Except, they didn't all wash away. Damn it. I just did this two weeks ago. This is my life now - every two weeks, I get visible gray, no, WHITE hair at my roots and I have to "do my roots" again. EVERY TWO WEEKS! I'm so sick of this but I'm not ready to embrace my gray. NOT READY AT ALL. I've let it grow a few inches before and.....oh my gosh, it's scary. I mean, I can actually get a glimpse of what I will look like as an old lady and it frightens me. I'm 47. Maybe when I'm over 60 I'll cave to the gray, but not now. I just wish there was something that would prevent this from happening every two weeks. Does my hair really grow that fast? Do the gray roots just resist the color? I can't afford to see my hairdresser that often. I've pretty much stopped going because I have to take care of my roots every two weeks, so what's the point? Even when she does my hair, I see gray in two weeks. I hate it! After I colored, I decided I needed to cut and thin my hair too. Which basically just involves me cutting randomly and dragging the thinning shears through my hair. You can't tell if I did a bad job because my hair is so curly and thick. But you also can't tell if I did a good job because my hair is so curly and thick.
Yesterday was Halloween and we have leftover candy. Which is so bad because I don't even really like candy but since it's RIGHT THERE I've been eating it randomly. I mean, I pretty much never just buy a candy bar. But I'll eat five of the bite-size ones out of the Halloween bucket. Why? They're not even very good. Hopefully the kids will eliminate the excess calories by the end of the week. I'm trying to cut back on sugar but it's hard with all the candy, the soda we were gifted when we got "Boo-ed" the other night, and the SIX varieties of ice cream my husband bought when he went to the store for ONE half-gallon of vanilla because "it was one sale" (trust me, it was not a great sale).
Today was daylight savings time (FALL BACK!) so I got an extra hour of sleep, I guess. Except I got up at 5:30 a.m....on the one day I could sleep in. I put away all the Halloween decorations, put a roast in the crock pot, did all my laundry, planned (in detail) an upcoming trip, put up all the Thanksgiving decorations, dusted, and gave away stuff on my Buy Nothing site. It feels like 9 p.m. but it's only 6. And, true to form, I started panicking about the holidays. I mean, Thanksgiving is only four weeks away and Christmas is like one minute after that, so it's time to panic, right?
Planning holidays with older kids is tough. Everyone drives, has a job, lives their own life. It took us almost the whole month of October to plan a short trip to the pumpkin patch. We spent $70 on pumpkins we didn't even carve! What was the point? Thanksgiving is tough because, since we're a blended family, we have three households to consider. I booked a plane ticket for one kid to spend Thanksgiving with her mom, and figured the other three kids would be spending the holiday with their dad and his fiancee at their new house. This might actually be the first Thanksgiving I really do have tacos for dinner, since it will just be Jeff and I, and we can do whatever we want. We can't leave town because he's on call for work, so it might just be really low-key. It's bittersweet because there's nothing I love more than a big family Thanksgiving, but I won't miss the big family dinner because I'll just do it the weekend before.
Christmas is fun, but also a nightmare of logistics. Plus, every year I think we'll do something "different" and every year I end up buying too much, and it's all over in a matter of minutes. I much prefer all the fun activities leading up to Christmas. It's the "stuff" that gets me. Recently, all of my kids have produced boxes of "giveaway" items that included unopened Christmas gifts. How much do they really need? I think the whole holiday needs a major overhaul, especially as the kids get older. But what changes should I make?
These are the things on my mind on November 1. We'll see what the week brings!
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