This post is for Javamom, who asked for photos of my Rapunzel-like (artificially) golden flowing tresses, as described in yesterday’s post.

I took over 30 shots for this post, trying to get a picture of myself reflected in our front hallway mirror. Most of them look like this one:

Or this one:

Or this one, an attempt to capture the back of my head, like taking a blind basketball shot:

As you can see, I won’t be putting “great at selfies” on my resume any time soon. I kind of liked this one, but you can’t see my hair at all:

Finally I ended up with these two, where you can see my hair, and my roots, and, if you look closely, the oil stains on my favourite shirt from making dinner last week and (NATURALLY) not wearing an apron. HOT.

Dorothy Hamill, eat your heart out.

I always wanted to have long hair, as a kid. My mother was a firm believer in short, sensible hairstyles – I had the Dorothy Hamill for all of my youth. She said it was because she couldn’t stand it when kids whined and complained about knots while having their hair brushed, and now that I have several long-haired kids of my own, I can see where she’s coming from.

But oh, how I dreamed of having long, flowing locks, just like Rapunzel. I loved hair washing day, because I’d get to wear a towel on my head for upwards of two hours at a time, pretending it was hair. Even as a teen, I’d dramatically flop myself on my bed, my towel-hair splayed all around, dreaming of being a princess/model/muse/moll, my flailing tresses evidence of my deep passion and spirited nature.

Man oh man, was I a teenaged joy to have around, I’m so sure.

Once I got a bit older and earned some greater hair freedom, I let it grow out a bit, but it was always about shoulder length. A few times in university I let it get a bit longer, but I had no idea what to do with it. The world of braids, curls, even ponytails was completely foreign to me. I’d wash it, brush it out, and it’d just hang there all day, until I finally couldn’t stand it and went back to my steadfast shoulder-length layered look.

Over the past few years I’ve gotten lazier and lazier with the hair upkeep, until I was in a cycle where it would grow out for about a year, then I’d go for a big chop, repeat. This past year was no different…except suddenly, my hair itself changed. It’s the growing amounts of grey in it, I think, that are suddenly making my hair…wavy. Curly, even, in places. Out of nowhere, I have body and movement (if I can control the frizziness, that is).

It’s like…supermodel hair. Well, as close as I’m going to get, anyway.

So last time I went in for my big chop, I just got a trim instead. My hairdresser actually squealed with delight that I was going to leave it long. And now, it’s long. Long enough to require TWO boxes of hair colour on hair colour day. Long enough to make a ponytail look like a real style, and not just a desperate attempt to keep layered locks from falling in my face. Long enough for a bun, for spontaneous ringlets, for gentle brushing against the middle of my back when I’m wearing a bathing suit.

Conclusion: long hair is AWESOME.

I consider this my last hurrah at youth, really. The two-boxes-of-dye can only go on for so long before I throw in the towel and go grey. That’ll probably mean a big cut, and from there it’s a slippery slope down to the aging-gracefully-super-short-water-aerobics styles of the getting-on-in-years. I find myself looking at ladies sporting the standard above-the-ears look and wondering why they don’t go for a longer style – the few I see with long grey hair really look outstanding. There must be something I don’t know, some new horror of aging that waits for me…thinning hair? Coarse hair that curls all over? Hair that needs to stay out of the water during water aerobics or it turns green?

Whatever the reason, I’m happy to let it run wild for the time being. Years from now we can refer to these as my supermodel years. It’s funny, don’t you think, how when you were 20 and gorgeous, every little imperfection seemed like such a HUGE and OBVIOUS flaw, and now that I’m 40 and fabulous, yet much more wrinkly and scarred and with several root canals, I find one thing I like about myself and that’s what I choose to focus on?

I think we call that maturity.

Or maybe that’s how all the supermodels feel. BRING IT.

Man, I had forgotten how hard the first two months are of Grade One. The sheer exhaustion of being in school all day long leaves them cranky, explosive, and so, so tired at the end of the day.

Poor Little Miss Sunshine can barely function – she comes skipping out of school each day, cheerfully hugging me and telling me school was, “GREAT!”, and then, within 10 minutes, she’s a blubbering mass who can barely make it home. Once there, she’s snappish and mean and every single thing is the “worst thing ever” or the “hardest thing ever” or the “meanest thing ever,” and oh Lord, am I ever counting the seconds to bedtime. GAH.

Yesterday at pickup this happened:

Her, bursting into tears three minutes after telling me she had a GREAT! day at school: I’m so sad!

Me: What’s wrong, honey?

Her: They [meaning her sick brother and sister] got to stay home, and I had to go to school!

Me: Well, they also had to feel terrible all day. And I thought you liked school?

Her: No, it is HORRIBLE. I hate school!

[A group of spirited young boys runs past us…]

Her, sobbing: And why are those boys RUNNING?

Me: I’m pretty sure they are playing some sort of tag.

Her: I HATE TAG.

Me: Good thing they didn’t ask you to play, then.

Her: What you even SAYING? THEY DON’T EVEN KNOW ME.

Me: That’s lucky then, isn’t it?

Her: Now you are just being FARTASTIC.

Me: What’s that now?

Her: FAR. TAS. TIC.

Me: Ooooooookay.

Her: I want to be home RIGHT NOW!

[Collapses on the ground wailing.]

Me: So do I, honey, so do I.

Eventually I dragged her to the car and we made it home, where I offered her a snack (met with hysterics), tried to help her with her homework (met with wails about how it’s all just TOO MUCH and NOT FAIR), and even attempted piano practice (which ended with her being sent upstairs for jammies a whole half hour early).

Holy Hannah, Grade Two cannot come soon enough.

I started a post this morning about how we didn’t quite manage to go two weeks into the school year before picking up a bug, when I had to stop writing to take a phone call from the school, letting me know that another soldier had fallen. I had to bundle up the Captain – on day three of being curled up on the couch with a ridiculous fever – to go over and pick up Gal Smiley. The Little Miss was actually the one who started it all – she unfairly and unjustly spent the weekend feeling rotten, only to be declared well enough to go back to school on Monday, poor dear.

While I’ve been stuck at home with sick children I’ve been doing a bit of a fall cleanout, getting rid of old art projects and sorting the Lego into its appropriate bins and tossing out – sigh – so very much stuff. I’ve put the winter blankets on the beds, packed away the sunscreen and summer hats. Yesterday I had to get out toques for the girls to wear to school, and I’m frantically ordering more pants for everyone as everyone is suddenly six inches taller. It’s the usual autumn routine; it’s only a matter of time before I’m back into crockpot soups and afgans.

I’m always sad to see summer leave and fall begin, and but this year I’m doing okay (although the morning lunch-making did reduce me to tears once already, in the 12 short days I’ve been back on the job, which does not bode well). I turned the heat on the in house and dug out my warm slippers and thought about pulling the sweaters out of the back of the closet and it all seemed just fine, just fine thanks. There’s something about September sunshine that doesn’t let you feel sad about the cooler temperatures, just happy to be alive and living in such a lovely country and fully, deeply appreciative of homemade applesauce.

Happy autumn.

Over the summer, we did a lot of reality TV watching, and I’m totally not ashamed of that (don’t look at me, I’m hideous!). We also let the kids watch a lot of it too, and as a family we really enjoyed American Ninja Warrior…

(Aside about ANW: it is not a fighting show. It’s an obstacle course show with amazing feats of agility and strength and your kids will all want to become rock climbers and get into parkour. I highly recommend it – the finale is on Monday on NBC. You will not be disappointed!)

…and also we watched The Amazing Race Canada, Dance! Show!, and Masterchef. We had extensive family discussions about all these shows, who would win, who should win, who would get eliminated this week. There was also some questionable behaviour on Masterchef in particular, so we talked a lot about how to conduct yourself in a competition and how people might react when faced with conflict, so that was good.

Now all of these have ended, or are ending this week, and poor Captain Jelly Belly in particular is feeling lost. He said to us the other day, “What are we going to watch now? Everything is over!” Don’t get me wrong, he loves a good episode of Phineas and Ferb or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, but what he really loves is a competition show, where we can all follow along and pick favourites and make predictions.

Happily, football season is starting and he and Sir Monkeypants do a picks-pool thing where they predict the winners every week, and he likes that. But I thought it might be nice to find him another reality show to watch – what would you recommend for a 10-year-old? I personally am not that interested in the singing competition shows; I find Survivor to be too much of a bad model of human behaviour.

We used to watch a kids’ reality show, In Real Life – maybe it will have a fourth season. And we are no longer regular watchers of The Amazing Race, but I’d let the Captain have another go at that one. Any other suggestions?

So it’s been two full weeks now of my carefree and indulgent life as a full-time stay-at-home-mom with no actual kids to take care of, all day long. Whee! It’s been great, but also it is becoming very clear to me that I need some structure in my day.

It is just too easy to fall down the black hole of The Internets and then BAM, next thing you know it’s six hours later and all you’ve done is read blogs and look up things in Wikipedia. Meanwhile, the breakfast dishes are still on the table, I haven’t eaten anything since 7 a.m. and I still have to drive the 800 meters to the school because I haven’t left myself enough time to walk. EEP.

Here are some things I absolutely need to find time for (and yet, have not found time for, despite having six hours a day to throw around):

• Work – I have about six money-making ventures on the go, all with various deadlines
• General household upkeep – including things like dishes, laundry, groceries
• Errands – I need at least one day a week to run around and do things like the library, or natural foods store, or Christmas shopping, etc.
• Exercise – seriously, or I will be dead in two years from complete body atrophy

That’s the minimum. I’d also like to find time for:

• Baking – so my poor allergic children don’t have to go to school with nothing but applesauce and carrot sticks every day
• Personal writing projects – I have about four book ideas I have been “meaning to get to,” as well as making more blog books
• Bigger house projects – like cleaning out every kitchen cupboard, clearing at least one layer of crap out of the kids’ rooms (shhhhhh), cleaning the windows (SHUDDER – they are like little squares of horror, anyone have any tips?)
• Having in-person conversations with other adults – oh, how easy it is to just stay home and disappear into my computer all day long, but then I’m like a freakish zombie/ogre when I finally see daylight
• Volunteering – I’d love to be able to do more at the kids’ school

Progress report so far: Watched several movies, learned a bunch of stuff from Wikipedia, blogged.

FAIL.

So, yes, I feel a schedule is in order. Some work time, some play time, some chores time, in a nice balance.

I’ll probably get around to making one on…maybe Tuesday? or Wednesday? These movies aren’t going to watch themselves, you know.

So yesterday I curled up on the couch, ready to settle in for two glorious hours of Dance! Show! Finale! when, to my horror, I noticed that only one hour had been recorded. It turns out that President Obama (clearly a dance hater) gave a speech about important world crises and whatnot at 9, so the show was aired in two halves, and I missed the second half.

If this also happened to you, Fox is re-airing the finale on Friday night at 8. I’d like to say that I was all restrained and staying away from the internets and stuff, but you KNOW that 30 seconds after I discovered I did not have the ending of the show I raced over to Entertainment Weekly’s website to find out who had won. I hate surprises and I love me some spoilers, so I don’t feel like it will take away from watching the finale when I finally get around to it on Friday night.

In other news, I was making quesadillas last night and every SINGLE time I flipped one of them, I splattered myself with oil. I am down to like, two t-shirts now, because everything else I own has been stained with oil or salad dressing or barbecue sauce or some other cooking/eating disaster. I am at a point in my life now where I need to completely replace all my tops every two years due to staining, and yet, I cannot seem to make the intellectual leap to WEARING AN APRON. Memo to self: put aprons on my Christmas list.

And in further news, our summer/fall of appliance breakage continues. Today I am taking the van in for servicing as not one, but BOTH sliding doors are acting up. Meanwhile, when I brought the groceries home on Sunday, I asked the kids to help me put them away, and two days later, Sir Monkeypants discovered a very cold, wet box of spaghetti propping open the door of our downstairs freezer. OOPS. So later today, assuming I can have the van back to drive home and don’t have to hike through the thunderstorms we’re having, I will be cleaning out and defrosting the freezer.

Oh, the life of a stay-at-home-mom is SO GLAMOROUS.

I just got back from the dentist’s office, where we spent 10 minutes comparing our trips to PEI this summer (TOLD you everyone from Ottawa was there), and then 10 minutes talking about our kids’ first week at school, then 3 minutes replacing the world’s smallest filling. I love my dentist, she’s just so incredibly nice and friendly, and also, so gentle I could practically sleep in the chair.

Sadly, however, my hygienist, while being a super, super nice lady, is a little too aggressive with my teeth, I find, and often after a cleaning I am sore afterwards. Right now I have an aching tooth that has been bothering me for six weeks, since (bingo!) I had my last cleaning, but the dentist today couldn’t find anything wrong with it, just general inflammation. You know how Elaine on Seinfeld got a reputation for being a “difficult patient” and then no doctor in New York would see her? I’m on like, my fifth dentist in this town and I am not interested in changing, but I do wish switching to one of the other hygienists – all five of us in the family have a different hygienist – wasn’t such an awkward etiquette issue, you know?

Also, it is REMOTELY possible I am an overly sensitive Problem Patient. But I DOUBT IT.

(Sideline to this post: discovered that I have been spelling “hygienist” wrong for the past 40 years. MY LIFE HAS NO MEANING.)

In other traumas, Sir Monkeypants and I started watching Orange is the New Black last night. It’s an excellent show, gripping and engrossing and compelling, and yet, SO FREAKING HORRIFYING. I would definitely be dead after three days in jail. Dead from the stress alone. I now live in complete fear that I’m going to randomly touch a stranger’s bag in a store and end up with cocaine on my hands and have to go to prison. THEY DON’T LET YOU BLOG FROM PRISON. Dead, I tell you. Three days max.

(But I wonder if they have a good dentist. Hm.)

Gal Smiley brought home a note from school yesterday from her teacher, asking parents to email her so she can put together a class news distribution list. Then she signed the note with her full name, like “Jane Smith,” and her email address is also “jane.smith@theboard.ca,” which left me with quite the quandry. Should I address the email to “Madame Smith”? Or perhaps “Ms. Smith”?

I have real trouble referring to the kids’ teachers by their first name. Sending an email saying, “Hi Jane!” seems way too informal, especially considering we haven’t really ever met yet. But we’re both adults, so if I did meet her, wouldn’t I call her Jane? The rules-follower and brown-noser in me just can’t do it, though. GAH.

Once I had settled on, “Hi Mrs. Smith…” as an opening, then I had to work on writing out, “Here is my email address” by sounding nice, and helpful, but not TOO bubbly, because that would be weird. And I struggled for ages on how to say, “And could you also add my husband to the list, here is his email” without implying that there was some sort of odd custody arrangement I was trying to work around.

At least I signed my own name correctly…I think. How is it that one can reach the age of 42 and yet be so socially inept?

I think it is my own ineptitude that made me be all freaked out about the first day yesterday. Just like last year, things went very well for two out of three (ain’t bad!), but crappy for the third. This year it’s Gal Smiley who has been cut off from all of her friends, and I mean seriously ALL her friends. GAH. She was brave-facing it yesterday morning which is THE WORST, and I consider it a personal triumph that I didn’t just come home and cry.

She makes friends pretty easily though, and her teacher seems really great, and when this happened last year to the Captain he did adapt eventually – it took a few months but by the end of the year he’d developed some awesome best buds, all of whom are in his class this year again.

So I’m clinging to the idea of a happy ending, assuming the Gal’s teacher doesn’t blacklist her for the crappy/weird/awkward email her mother sent in. GAH.