Everybody knows, some Nyquil and some misteltoe, help to make the season bright

Merry Christmas bloggy friends! I hope your holiday is holly and jolly and free of sniffles. So far mine is holly and jolly but loaded with sniffles and other assorted cold symptoms, but I'm making the most of it by getting cozy on the couch, admiting my tree, and watching White Christmas with The Lounging Party.

You can't tell from the photo, but it is loaded with bird ornaments... ;-) Sent from my iPhone. Testing the blogger email app.

Getting in touch with my roots

Let’s talk about gray hair. I gots me some. I gots me a lot actually. And by gray hairs I don’t mean a bunch of long ones mixed in with the rest of my hair, or in a cool stripe, a la Lily Munster:

And I don’t mean steely-gray-almost-mousy-brown. I mean bright shiny gray. Noticeable gray. You know when you see photos of Jessica Simpson and it is clear she needs to touch up her brunette roots?

Imagine that but with the lights and darks reversed (I’m showing only the top of the image because the rest of the photo reversed is downright creepy):

 

I can go no more than four weeks before my roots need a touchup. In fact, four weeks is kinda pushing it, I could probably do three but I actually pay a professional to do this and when I think about what I already spend annually on my hair… well, I get another gray hair. Come Day 22 or so, I am pretty much relegated to wearing my hair in a ponytail and touching up the hairline with eyebrow powder to hide the evidence. Yes, I am that vain. The roots are so glaring you could probably see them from where you are.

 

My grays started when I was in college. Not a lot, just a few here and there, and I used to (gasp) pull them out. I didn’t believe that old wives’ tale that for each one you pull out, seven more grow in its place. They started growing in a patch just north of my ears and back a bit from my temples. Then they migrated to the top of my head, and just kept on going. Yesterday morning (Day 28) I made the mistake of looking at the back of my head in the medicine chest mirror via my makeup mirror to see how far back they went. I instantly regretted it. The only part of my hairline that is not gray is from the nape of my neck up about three inches on each side.

The Devil Wears No Miss Clairol

At 43 I feel I’m too young for Meryl Streep’s “Miranda” look, but I hope that when the day comes that I am ready to stop dyeing it, my hair comes in this white so I can sport this haircut. I think it would be pretty chic, and very freeing (not to mention cheaper!). In the meantime, to quote my friend Christine (who is very blond), “the grayer you get, the blonder you get”. So buh-bye grays and hello increasing number of blond foils…

Every dog has his day. And then some have owners who do this:

Why America? Why?

Maybe I should change the name of the blog to “posts only on the last day of the month”

This is what’s happened since my last post: work, work, a week of travel for work, work, Thanksgiving, recover from food coma, and blam, it’s the end of the month.
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I wonder if people who learn English As A Second Language from some snotty American recent college grad end up with terrible American accents.
This thought came to me as I watched a documentary about the Eurovision Junior song contest, which is broadcast in English, and all the contestants spoke great English, some with British accents and some with odd American accents. (And nice job, Sundance channel, with your constant ads for some program that airs next Tuesday taking up the right side of the screen and blocking part of the subtitles).
In a Where Are They Now wrap-up at the end of the film it was noted that the contest winner and her family had to flee their home during the Georgian-Russian conflict and hoped to someday safely move to Tbilisi. Now there’s a story you just don’t hear on American Idol.
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I miss Lost. And Mad Men. I’ve been watching The Walking Dead and I do like it but I confess I have to watch HGTV afterward to help stave off the nightmares. I don’t “do” horror movies. The last one I watched was The Ring and I was so creeped out (and it was 3 in the afternoon with the sun out) that I could not watch the last two minutes. The last two minutes! I’ve been told they were key. Oh well.
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I hate those mascara ads that feature models who are clearly wearing fake eyelashes and promise that their product will give you those kind of lashes. False advertising! (pun intended)
And speaking of cosmetic companies, why is it so hard for them to make a nice shade of dark red nail polish that matches the one in my head?
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For Thanksgiving I made this kick-ass pecan pie recipe, except I doubled the nuts, and I toasted them in the oven first. Make it. Even if you think you don’t like pecan pie, make it. Your people will love you.
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More random Tuesday here. Ciao blog babies.

Ten little pumpkins, sitting on a stair...

 

The above jack-o-lantern peanut gallery is on the street behind me. They look even better at night all lit up, but of course every time I’ve seen them lit I didn’t have my camera on me.

I had a quiet Halloween, no costume parties this year, very low-key, but after a crazy month at work (including a week – while suffering a horrible cold – in my home-away-from-home Chicago), a night with bad movies and laundry folding is a welcome respite.

In related Halloween news, one of my neighbors is again secretly leaving candy in a bowl by the elevator on my floor. Yum!

Hope you all had a Happy Halloween, with only good goblins and lots of candy from the upper hierarchy.