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Don’t Worry: It’s Only One of Two Posts about America’s Next Top Model

9/17/2008 in books, hair, television | 5 comments

I realized today that I only have to watch tonight’s The Makeover episode of cycle 11 of America’s Next Top Model, which I am not so much watching as, well, scrubbing off in the shower, and then I don’t have to watch any other episodes until the season finale. Because the rest is just silly filler.

(Incidentally, as this is Cycle 11, do you think that means that after Cycle 12 we will have completed one Tyra year?)

Having seen half of it, the best things about The Makeover Episode are:

- Tyra hosts a princess pizza party for the hopefuls and tells everyone that she is awesome. Also, she is wearing a pantsuit.
- A pantsuit.
- Then, everyone on set drops big bowls of acid (wait for it to load, you will see what I mean) and Miss Tyra eats a poison apple and goes to sleep. Mr Jay kisses her and takes her away. She won’t be back till judging. Do we dare cheer?
- No, of course we do not. We are sad! No Tyra!
- Makeovers are interesting but I am mostly interested that they gave Elina MY HAIR and she is complaining about it.
- Although I am also fascinated that it took two fancy salon people to make hair that I did with a home bleaching kit and a bottle of red hair dye.
- I guess I will be applying for a job at Neil George salon post haste.

In other news, America’s First Next Top Model – no, not Miss Tyra, but Adrianne Curry – has a stalker who sent her expensive shoes. Pish! Stop it! Keep the shoes at your house!

That’s what I would say to my expensive-shoe-sending stalker. If I had one.

All right, y’all, farewell. I must go continue reading an excellent novel by Ivan E. Coyote called “Bow Grip.”

Post 1099 Has No Title

9/1/2008 in everything, funny, hair, new westminster | 2 comments

As part of the eternal quest for ME TIME, I went out today in search of a nice little salon where I could get my hair highlighted. I seem to have this bad habit of coming up with random schemes and then trying to make them happen on a shoestring. Yesterday I decided all I wanted was highlights, today I tried to make it happen.

Though this is New Westminster, land of a thousand hair salons, it is also The Mizzle, where nothing is open on Monday even when it’s NOT a holiday. So I soldiered on to Burnaby and there I also found precisely nothing. I was avoiding malls because it is the last day before school starts. Suddenly realizing I was squandering my ME TIME, I went into the closest Shopper’s Drug Mart and bought a home highlighting kit for $14.99. Suck it, salons of The Mizzle and Burnaby.

Of course by the time I got home to play with my highlighting kit, I had precious little time to do the work so the bleach got left on a little longer than it might have been at a real salon. I was cooking chili while the bleach was bleaching and then the baby woke up from his nap and wanted food and then I was concentrating on burping him without giving him a mouthful of peroxide and by the time I looked at the clock, it was Oh! I Must Go Rinse Immediately o’clock.

Blonde streaks do go a long way towards making a person think she is making a fresh start.

I also needed a new facial moisturizer which is how I came to an isle of the drug store that I do not usually frequent: skin care. My favourite facial moisturizer is a Body Shop brand but I figured: why not, I’m at a drug store and I have Points to use so let’s you and me pick something real special. I think I’m Worth It.

I probably don’t have to tell most of you how many insane combinations of herbs, spices, flavours and oxides there are in the facial care arena. You can be preserved, rejuvenated, invigorated, detoxified, de-linified, plumped and protected from sun, all for only $50 a jar. It’s wild. The new thing appears to be caffeine, which Sarah wrote about the other day. There were a lot of products that contained caffeine, none of them edible.

There were two lightweight L’Oreal moisturizers on sale. I had a really hard time deciding. Would it be the Hydrafresh gel-creme “charged with multi-minerals”? The Advanced Revitalift? Skin Genesis Multilayer Skin Strengthening Formula? (Sadly I did not see the moisturizer named “Happyderm” that I just now found on the L’Oreal website because Happyderm would have been a shoe-in.) After much pondering, I went with the Hydrafresh, in part because of its “exhilarating citrus fragrance.” I hope it was the right decision. If I am writing next week that I have no skin on my face, you are all my witnesses.

In the clearance isle I made a spectacle of myself laughing at a product by Curel, a company I tend to associate with Real Science for whatever reason. It was on for half price at $4 and it was called Pregnancy and Motherhood cream. It’s OB-GYN tested! (I am assuming tested by not tested on.)

I am not lying. Look here. See, when you’re pregnant, your skin is stretching. So you should moisturize it. With special pregnant lady cream. Sure – I’ve heard of pregnant belly cream. Because the Industry wants you to think you can cure or prevent stretch marks. (Insert loud buzzer noise here.)

What confused me was the “motherhood” part of the equation. Motherhood cream? No one told me there was a cream for motherhood! The website explains: “[our cream] also relieves dry, tight skin, making it soft and comfortable, including postpartum skin.” Hi, Curel! My postpartum skin is neither tight nor dry. It is loose from the stretching and moist from all the baby saliva I am doused with whenever I go within 4 feet of my baby. But thanks. Nice try.

Curel also makes the next two steps of cream for women. They call it their “Life’s Stages” line. Next stage: anti-aging and then, super-menopause. I would bet dollars to donuts each of those bottles contains exactly the same moisturizer as every other bottle of moisturizer in the world. Except for my Hydrafresh. It’s different.

I did not buy the Pregnancy and Motherhood cream. Even though it was only $4. I think this shows remarkable restraint and proves that I am a changed woman now that it is September.

The Value of Time, or, The Difference Two Years Makes

7/12/2008 in Fresco, bloggity!, hair, two! children! | 4 comments

Is it like this the more children you have? You just constantly wonder what the hell you were doing all the time when you had no kids / just one kid / just two kids / just 16 kids? Luckily I don’t have to wonder, I have this ‘blog to remind me what crazy trivial things I had to think about before I had only 10 minutes a day to myself. Which is not a “oh now that I’m a mother I only think about my precious children because they are the future and everything else is trivial” thing but more a “I don’t have the time or energy to think about anything that doesn’t directly involve the things that are right in front of me demanding all my time and energy” thing.

Thank goodness in my former work life I was a fairly skilled administrative assistant. This means that when I suddenly find myself in the glorious environment that is My House with Only Me and One Other Child In It because the first child has gone out with its father I waste no time prioritizing the things I want to do and then getting right down to doing them. I make a game of it. It’s like a more trivial form of “what would you do now if you knew you would die tomorrow.” “What would you do now if you knew your sleeping infant could wake up at any moment.” Sometimes I hum the Chariots of Fire theme song to help myself stay focused.

1. shower. first time in three days. oh dear me.
2. check on sleeping infant, who is now awake but not unhappy, just listening to the opera on the CBC French FM. make mental note to be flabbergasted by this later.
3. tell infant I will be right back to pick him up after I comb my hair
4. in the time it takes to comb hair (approx 10 minutes) decide to get a haircut. TODAY.
5. check on awake infant, who has, miraculously, gone back to sleep. make mental note to buy infant a beer someday when he’s old enough.
6. eat some pizza
7. finish coffee
8. start some laundry
9. check on sleeping infant, who is still sleeping
10. call mother and chat
11. eat more pizza while staring at sleeping infant, who starts waking up
12. feed infant. he goes back to sleep.
13. decide not to risk waking him by changing his diaper. prioritize myself over child’s wet bum. do not stop to berate self for this. will buy him two beers when he’s old enough to make up for this terribly lax parenting.
14. check email and ‘blog
15. remember laundry which drying should come next. de-prioritize that until after finished ‘blog entry.

Long-time readers of this ‘blog will remember that almost two years ago I got a monumental haircut. It was during the November festival that is National Blog Posting Month so I was posting an entry to this blog every day and I milked the haircut for I think three or four daily entries. Now it is July and I really don’t need to write any more about my hair. I just need it to be shorter because a) it is very hot b) it doesn’t look like I am going to get to shower every day for another two months c) it is coming out in big handfuls and I don’t have time to comb my hair for that long d) this is boring and you’ve heard it all before. Look you’ve all gone to sleep in your little chairs!

This afternoon, infant gods willing, I am going to walk to the closest place that will cut my hair. Luckily I live in the Mizzle, where there are more places that cut hair than there are places that sell groceries so I am sure to have success. Where success = less hair. Style mileage may vary.

No time to edit! Must put laundry in dryer and then remove toenail polish from the pedicure I got 3 months ago!

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