Entries Tagged 'Daily Maybe Photo' ↓

I don’t have expensive taste. Well, I don’t indulge any expensive taste I have.

I’m generally pretty happy to waste my money on soy rooibos and chai lattés, books and meals out. We read a lot, so I’m certainly not going to start encouraging Isobel to stop wanting to collect books, any time soon. I cook and bake a lot, so meals out? Are my freaking moments off. And the compulsion for coffeeshop visits started with her colic. Actually, with the horrendously boring and depressing final four months of my pregnancy.

Point being, I don’t spend a lot of money on anything other than bills, and outside of those habits and maintaining our grocery supply in the least expensive way possible.

Or, at least, I didn’t.

I decided about six months ago that I’d start growing my hair out. To mermaid length. We’re talking waist-long, could walk topless and no one’d see my goodies mermaid length. Considering that my hair grows about an inch a month, I think it should take about 14 years.

And then, I decided to go darker in the spring. Really, I should have given my head a firm slap upside itself, since this strawberry blonde with her inch-a-month-growth has to undergo maintenance every five weeks or so. Roots. I get them, they’re obvious when I do, and they must be extinguished immediately.

It’s a pricey habit, dyeing your hair every five or six weeks. It’s priciest when you’ve developed a love of stylists at a certain boutique who do magical things which mean you don’t have to contort yourself at 2am in the morning, when your kid is sleeping, with a box of what said stylists call the devil sitting on the back of the toilet, and your shower curtain dangerously within three inches.

Dyeing my hair myself makes me stressed, takes too long, I’m never happy with it since I’m totally feeble at the process, and it’s just not worth the tears. But damn, do I like my hair freshly dyed. And flat-ironed. And trimmed.

I’ve got an addiction that gets fed twice every three months and it makes me feel absolutely fucking fabulous. So much so that I’m willing to put photos on the Internet of me without makeup. The horror!

Hello, my name is Terra, and I’m a hair-shopaholic.

So, for about six months now, I’ve been playing into Isobel’s emerging personality. This is one of many, but what makes it different is that it’s into vandalizing. This kid stops at every single tag on every single telephone pole, bus stop, garbage can, wall and electrical box. She tries to figure it out, she traces the lines, she asks what it says. She knows that people are marking what they perceive to be their territory. She wants in on it.

She also, some evenings, has a hard time unwinding at bed time. On those nights, when I’m not frantic to dump her into bed with a quick kiss on the forehead and an I love you while backing out of the room, I cater to this by allowing her to do something that relaxes her – preening over me.

When I’m especially tired, or in need of some physical contact (yes, it does so happen) or I’m sick, like tonight, it’s all kinds of awesome that I’ve taught her some basic massage, and that she likes to comb my hair and to draw pictures on my back with her fingers.

My life is so hard, right?

Usually, she nails me in the head with the comb a few times, the drawings are merely scribbles with an unleaded finger that may feel more like poking and stabbing, and the massage is never longer than three seconds as she chants sauge sauge sauge, but still, I lie there, and she goes to town, and all the while both of our breaths are getting longer and further apart from the last.

It’s zen-ish, really.

Mr Lady gave me the great idea to put something in her hand that would make a mark when she drew. In her post, she talked about using pens. I’m not that brave, but I do have an abundance of eyeliner pencils kicking around – because you know I wear so much makeup, right? – so I figured, might as well. Maybe she’d be more focused for longer, and I could just lie there and do nothing.

I’m all for lying there and doing nothing. Sometimes.

Half an hour later, I was combed, relaxed and very aware that she kinda rocks free-hand straight lines, for a kid who usually just scribbles in circles.

What I want to know is, how the fuck am I supposed to get this shit off of my back?