What happens when I'm home for too long: hair dye and nail polish. Also? Boredom and depression.

It's always bright colors with sloppy application. But it seems to work out alright in the end.I was making a weird face in that last picture but I like the way my hair looks. Solution? Pixels! Except, as a facebook friend of mine has pointed out, you can just cross your eyes and see through the pixels. Weird but true.

Life as an invalid is not all it's cracked up to be. You'd think that even a small part of me would look upon this week and a half of doing nothing as some kind of a blessing, but none of it is fun. Entire days have flown by, and I have accomplished nothing. I sit and stare at the tv. I feel bad about myself and try not to spend money or eat too much out of boredom. It's not a good time and I'm not using the time to my advantage. 

I tried getting drunk one day and just ended up feeling gross and sad. I dyed my hair, which is okay but it didn't make me feel better about myself. I tried learning how to make a chevron pattern friendship bracelet, which I fucking mastered, by the way, but even that amazing accomplishment hasn't improved my sense of self worth. 

I feel like a shitty human being, just sitting here all the time. Maybe it's just the lack of exercise making me feel that way. Or that I'm bored. I thought books, the internet and a tv would be enough to sustain my entire human existance but I guess I was wrong.

Here's to next week being less dismal and more vibrant! Salut.

Four Stories: "Hairdoo's" (update)

LA over at FreckledNest.com does a fun thingy I just discovered called "four stories". You can all join in if you like, there are instructions HERE and you can see all the ones she's done so far HERE.

ONE: The terrible perm

I was in grade two. You hear me? Grade two! I know this because I have naturally straight hair but I've seen the curly-head school photos and on the back, in my mother's handwriting it says "Nova. Grade two." I think I thought I looked really pretty though with the perm. So ... good for me. I don't remember much about this hairdo, but those photos still come back to haunt me once in a while. Not only did I have a (bad) mushroom-cut perm, I also had gigantic red-frame glasses and buck teeth. Yikes.

But seriously, who gives a seven year old a perm?

TWO: The blond

Around the age of thirteen or fourteen my mom remarried and we all moved from the city where I had relatively no friends to a small town. I got contacts, I got braces to straighten whatever the hell was going on in my mouth at the time, and I was finally allowed to dye my hair. Oh it did wonders for my social life, I tell ya. I also grew it super long. I kept this bleach blonde "style" into my early twenties, and at one point my super long hair was almost down to my butt. Here's a picture of blonde me really enjoying a hamburguesa in Tepoztlan, Mexico. 

You can see how long my hair is if you look really hard at my back. (That's what he said?)

THREE:The dreadlocks

Honestly, I finally made the connection to a lot of the sexual harassment I was getting, and people assuming I was dumb, to my long blonde hair. I was going through a transitional period where I took a year off of University, and for a while lived in a truck with a man and a cat and drove around Northern B.C. and Vancouver Island. Oh, and took a train across Canada. Like, for months. With no job really, except helping my mom remodel her basement for pay and I worked as a beekeeper until it started snowing. 

I actually really liked having dredlocks and just cut them off a couple years ago. They were fun because they were easy and I didn't care about having "healthy" hair so I was free to dye them all the colors of the rainbow.Manic Panic even used photos of me on their website in exchange for free hair dye and a t-shirt, and I was all like "Yes! Free stuff". I'm totally a model now. Here's a super fancy montage of photos I whipped up from my Facebook photos.

FOUR: The short

I'm searching everywhere but I can't find the photos of the day(s) I decided to comb my dreds out. 

Trust me, it was NOT easy. But it was also not impossible like you may think. It helps that my hair is naturally bone-straight, probably. Anyway, one day I was just like "meh, I'm bored of having this hair" and cut my dreds to shoulder length. Many people asked what I did with the hair. I threw it in the kitchen garbage can, that's what. I'm not one of those creepy people who saves their dreadlocks in ziplock bags.

(YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE!!)

I walked around for two days with weird half-combed out dreadlocks, the "saved" hair was so weird! It was all kinked and broken and some stuck out at right angles from my head. Finally, thanks to my fantastic bosses who paid for me to finally "get a haircut, you hippie" (that's what the card said...it was a major occasion that warranted greeting cards and everything) I was introduced to Ashley at The Lab. I haven't gone to anyone else since except for that one time when someone gave me a terrible terrible a-symmetrical thing. But we won't go there. 

After my first haircut I looked like this at the bowling alley:

And, to the relief of pretty much everyone I know, the dreds are gone. 

I haven't had long hair since then.

Short hair styles are more fun.


********UPDATE*********

I found a tiny photo of me holding my dreds
as though they were a mustache

directly after I cut them off.

Ta daah!

NEW HAIR CUT!

The unstyle-able, unshape-able self cut mess I had before:

Yeah, maybe I messed it up extra good for the picture to make it seem even more unruly, but seriously, it was just bad all around and I always always always had it in a ponytail or up somehow.

Ashley from The Lab is so fantastic. Not only is she excellent at hair stuff, she's a genuinely nice person, she somehow remembers small details of my life I told her six months ago which makes me feel special, and she's an intelligent person who knows all the cool stuff that's going on in the city. I wouldn't say I have a non-sexual crush on her exactly, but I am definitely intimidated by her awesomeness every time I go see her.

Anyway,
on with the show!

(Trying to look nonchalant
while taking a picture
of the side of my own head.)

It looks kind of weird in this picture
but in real life it's fabulous.

I specifically asked for
"cool shaved bits, like on the side"
and I got 'em!

My favorite part!

I'm so happy. I feel like a new woman!

goodbye vertigo

I started writing a post about how I felt super weird on Sunday and went home from work because I was all dizzy and fainty-ish but as I re-read what I wrote I realized it was very, um, how should I put this?
Boring. That's it.

Nobody cares about the specifics.

Nothing really happened except I was uncharacteristically grouchy and then I had weird vertigo for a couple days and slept a lot and didn't go to work which sounds like an awesome holiday but trust me, it wasn't as glamorous as it sounds. And in the end I'm fine. I considered going to the doctor, then downgraded to considering an antihistamine to clear up my ears and, like I said, just ended up sleeping for like 86,400 seconds and whatever was going on stopped on its own.
So yeah, there's that.

Anyway, you know what today is?
HAIRCUT DAY!

Ahh yeah!

I'm gonna be a whole new woman.

Goodbye terrible hair
that I always have to have in a ponytail because I hate it so much!

Goodbye bangs I hate
because I totally cut them myself even though they really aren't that bad!

Hello fancypants new me!