Bears

I hope you are not having a bad day, but just in case you are, please see below:

I hope that makes you smile as much as it makes me. :)

My Hair Looked Good Yesterday

I have an interesting relationship with my hair. I'm not gonna go all crazy and say that my hair is more difficult than anyone else's and its so hard to be me with my curly red hair, but I am gonna be honest - sometimes my hair looks pretty, but unless it's cut perfectly, most times its a pain in the ass.

Over the last few weeks it's been just that - finally getting long and sometimes pretty, but awkwardly kinky in the back to remind me that I have middle eastern roots. The last few days, I "semi-straightened" it because the tight/kinky curls in the back were driving me crazy. I've been semi-casually throwing around the idea of cutting it off - even going as short as a pixie, but I've seen some disastrous short cuts over the years and I didn't want to be one of those girls.

I've done this before. My senior year of college, my hair was down to the middle of my back and I was so over it. There's only so much you can do with hair when its that thick and kinky and curly and all you want is hair that's easy to manage. I wanted "throw in some goop and walk out the door" hair, but with this mass, the only fast and easy way to walk out the door was to put it in a ponytail.

Returning to the present, I got up yesterday morning and took the obligatory "I'm getting my hair cut today" before pictures.

My pain in the ass hair picked the day I was getting it cut to look cute. (at least I though so anyway. you're entitled to your opinion) It was even relatively easy to manage yesterday. Bah humbug. It's like it knew I was planning to cut it and was trying to convince me not to go through with it.

Regardless, I drove myself and my hair out to the salon after work and told the wonderful girl cutting it that I wanted to go as short as possible without it looking stupid. I'm pretty sure those were my actual words. I didn't really know what that meant, since I don't know if I have the bone structure to pull off a pixie or to completely shave my head. My sister and I talked about shaving our heads years ago in solidarity when our youngest sis found out she was/is Alopecian (that's right. I just sent you to Wikipedia), but we kept making excuses to not go through with it. Mine was "I have to look professional when I'm giving speeches (in competition)". Of course, in retrospect, that was dumb. If anyone on the competitive speech circuit judged me for shaving my head, I should have been able to tell them to suck it and not face any real consequences.

After a few minutes of chatting and trying to figure out what to do, she started cutting away. It was different than last time when the woman who cut my hair just put it all back in a ponytail and cut it off. This time she cut each piece one at a time, starting with the back/bottom and working up and out towards the front/sides - maybe because it started out shorter? I don't know. I didn't ask.

It was important to both of us that I didn't end up with "mom" hair, but the way my hair curls, that is a pretty big challenge. When I got home, I wasn't sure about it. The cut was cute, but the curls were funny. Though in my teens I may have been the type of person to cry when something about my hair was not perfect, I can happily say that I am much more relaxed about my hair now. I played with my flat iron and took out a lot of the curl that said "I have 3 kids to drop off at school before I head to the gym in 1993", and ended up with this:

*sidenote: I will not pretend I am a model and make ridiculous "modeling" faces for these pictures. I will stick to these "regular" ridiculous faces.

It's a smidgy-smidge longer in the front to help combat "mom-ism" - stylist's idea - and the weirdest part is now that it's the shortest its ever been, it actually feels thicker. When I run my fingers through it, it doesn't just fall back down where it was, it stays poofed out. I don't really understand. Maybe it has something to do with my product I put in it, but it didn't do that before...so...I think it has to do with the length and not having all that extra weight putting it down.

Since I haven't even had this haircut for 24 hours, I am very much still getting used to it.

Clean Your Room!

I hate when I give in and clean up after my husband, and then once everything is cleaned, I'm super protective of my work. Like if I just Pledge'd the normally cluttered and dish/drinking glass covered coffee table, I have to fight the urge to actually snarl when plates and glasses start to collect on my once perfectly clean coffee table.

Our bedroom, however, is a different story. We live in a Escheresque split level townhome with the bedroom on the top level and the washer and dryer in the garage at the very bottom. This is roughly what our house looks like from the side:

Obviously, this is not to scale, but you get the idea. It takes a lot of walking up stairs for things to make it into our room, so once there, they usually just get thrown somewhere - the floor, a dresser, wherever. 

So - because I am embarrassed to post a photo of what it actually looked like - here is a paintbrush sketch of what one would see when they walked into our room (not to scale): 

What it should have looked like

What it did look like

Something I couldn't quite get the right look of in paint was the clumps of dog hair floating around on the floor and embedded into the area rug (which doesn't actually look like puke, by the way. I'm just too lazy to attempt actual detailed designs)

Last weekend we decided to do something about this embarrassment mess. If we have people over, we should be able to instruct them how to get to the second bathroom without thinking, "maybe I can stall them long enough that the downstairs bathroom will open up."

It took the two of us most of the day to get all the clothes/junk picked up off the floor and put away or thrown in the wash, clear off the dressers and end tables, sweep/mop/vacuum up the dog hair, pull the sheet/dog hair cover off the papasan chair, put on a new one and wash the old one, change the sheets/pillow cases, rearrange the furniture.

It is so great to finally have a clean room. It's been nearly spotless for over a week and we've been working hard to keep it that way. Clothes aren't getting left on the floor. The get immediately put away or into one of two strategically placed hampers. When the hampers are downstairs because I'm doing laundry, we have a designated pile where the clothes go until a hamper becomes available. 

I'm really trying to stay on top of the dog hair clumps. I noticed a few accumulating behind Panda's bed (the papasan chair), so I made a note to myself to get those picked up when I get home today. 

This morning my husband left the ironing board out in the middle of the room. I was about to leave it there out of lazy-stubbornness, but I looked at it and all I could see were imaginary piles of clothes and other junk accumulating on and around it, so I folded it up and put it in the closet. 

When I left this morning, our room looked more like this:

And this...I like. 

Sidenote: Yes, the walls are actually two different shades of red, and no, we did not paint them that way. We just have not had a chance to repaint them yet. 

Yoga Teacher Training

When I took my first yoga class, I was 15 years old and I thought "holy heck, this is difficult AND boring"

12 years later, getting my sh*t together, I'm thinking "what a silly girl I was" now that yoga had helped shape me into the person I am today. It didn't take very long at all for me to begin to love the practice that I had once rolled my eyes at. 

By 19, I was telling myself that if I just had a little more practice, I could become an instructor - and for the next several years I kept telling myself this was something I should do. In the midst of college and job finding, my dream of becoming a yoga instructor got lost. It was still there, but less prominent. I thought maybe it was something I could do on the side. 

Well, now I'm 27 - turning 28 too soon - and its time. I truly love yoga. It makes me feel fit and at peace all at once. So, I've done my research. I know where the yoga teacher training programs are and how much they cost. Some are at studios I've tried and loved, and some are at places I've never been to, but they are all...expensive. Such is life. 

But I am not discouraged. Maybe this is something that's taken me a long time to do, but it is definitely not something I am going to give up on. 

In hopes that I can save the money a little faster with my good friend, Mark., I have decided to put every penny I earn through my Mark. sales towards my yoga teacher training. 

So, I have written this post to ask for your help. Please register and shop or continue to shop at my mark. eboutique. The products are really amazing and affordable. So, if you haven't already, replace your drug store mascara with Lash All You Want, and your daily moisturizer with Calm & Composed or For Goodness Face. Same price, better quality, and you'll be helping a lifelong yogi achieve her dreams.

You can email me at calyssajean@gmail.com if you have any questions at all. I am always looking for party hostesses, and Mark. has some really amazing hostess incentives right now.