the affects of letting a fasion sense-less kid dress herself.

well i'm about to make myself laugh hysterically embarrass myself here.

even as a child, i always had a bit of way too much dramatic flare.  i think i was taking my cues from all those old movies my dad watched (not that he doesn't still watch them today.)  so i think the below picture was my interpretation of some scene in Hello, Dolly! 

also, note the results of letting me pick my own coats, in the eighties.  (and the fact that i'd outgrown it a year ago...)

 

i was terribly blonde as a child, despite having been born with a shock of red hair.  i would show you some terrible baby pictures too, but my mom still has custody of those, and isn't giving them up until i pry them out of her attic while she's sleeping.

 

my love of cats began pretty much as soon as i saw one.  (before that, it was trying to befriend dead pigeons on the side of the road.)  i was constantly begging my mom for a cat.  it didn't work so well, until i was so persistent that she finally gave in, just to shut me up.

above, i'm holding my best friend's cat.  his name was Sally.  i have no idea how i still remember that.  people used to mistake J and i for twins or sisters, in this time period.  we were both insanely blonde, to be sure.  and our mothers had been close friends since before we were even born.   but i'm going on a tangent, here.

this is me and my grandmother (mom's side) here.  above is my beloved Stevenson Panthers shirt.  that's the elementary school i went to.  wish i'd gotten that large enough to swim in.  i cried when i outgrew it.  no, really.  i did.  i would still be reasonably thrilled to own that shirt.  after all, i own a softball hoodie from my high school.  and i never even played softball.  it was one of my friend's.  has her name & number on it and all.  

 

as far as i was concerned as a kid, one of the best things my parents ever did was move us out of the reasonable city of Louisville, KY into a teeny tiny small town in rural Kentucky, the likes of which i've never lived in again, thankfully.  but it was great as a kid - i mean, LOOK AT THAT HOUSE!  how many kids do you know who wouldn't give a limb to live there?  so many trees to climb.  and i'm pretty sure i scaled them all, each and every one.

 

my parents moved us into this house, and proceeded to completely renovate it.  before, it was filled with falling paint and gross beige carpet.  this is the after picture of the grand hall.  that's actual antique carpet that my dad found who knows where.  of course, my dad was an antiques dealer (still is) and had no problem finding antique fixtures, like those chandeliers there.  

 

 this here was the snooty parlor (with slightly less grand chandelier) which we kids really weren't supposed to be in, without supervision.  not that it stopped me.  and i have fond, fond memories of climbing onto antique sideboards to hang up heavy antique paintings, while my dad sat by, "a little to the left.  no no, LEFT!  okay, now a bit to the right..."  the other kids thought we were rich.  HA!  not a chance.  but, as they put it, "but you live in, like, a total MANSION!"  and in that, they were not wrong.

just in case you're ready to stab my in the face with a spork after seeing these pictures, did i mention that i was homeschooled in this house?  yeah.
(believe it or not, that didn't damage me for life.  my mom actually is a great teacher, yo.)

 

as you can see, i was your proverbial eighties child.  i certainly picked out this combination myself.  except for the belt.  because i hated belts.  that there shirt says "Cookie Magic," by the way.

one of the things that has stood the test of time, is that i am almost inevitably far, far whiter than all my friends could ever be (not that it's hard or anything, look at how ghost white i am.  only thing that has changed is now i'm completely covered in freckles).  i'm pretty sure that The Matt is the only person i've spent copious amounts of time with who has skin just as white as mine.

this is another of my very best friends A here.  we were always jealous of each other's barbies.  i wanted her pretty dark barbies, and she wanted my crazy-blonde ones.  we always meant to switch them around a bit, but it never happened.  i blame our moms, because we certainly would have done it.  she was also one of the first people to put my hair in copious amounts of braids.  (she also was the first person to cornrow my hair, so many years later...and she was really good at it!)

have i mentioned that the childhood bangs i was rocking scared me off bangs until i was in my twenties?  good going, MOM.

i've never been into team sports much (i was really terrible at softball, and quit after third grade.  that's what comes when you don't quite have binocular vision because your eyes are separate prescriptions, and you can't see in 3-D so well.  to this day, i still can't see those motherfucking Magic Eye 3-D thingys.  no, i'm not bitter or anything, why do you ask?)
but i was a very sporty child nonetheless.

i was completely obsessed with horses, like most Kentucky girls.  that's me to the left, J to the right.  the horse's name was Midnight.  he was a Tennessee Walker, and had originally been trained as a Performance horse.  he was trained to pick up his forelegs high as he walked and trotted.  it made for quite a beautiful gait.  he also had the amusing quality of trying to occasionally scrape a rider off against a tree.  and this is how i became very good at staying on a horse.  they can flat-out gallop, rear, or buck, and i'll still be on their backs like a burr. 

he also once stomped on my foot, accidentally, and just stood on it until a few adults came to my rescue.  did a hell of a number on my right big toe, i'll tell you that.  they told me my toenail was only saved by the fact that i was wearing cowboy boots.  whew!  never mind the bruising for weeks...

 

Kentucky has this habit of creating ice storms.  during one of these, this HUGE tree (of which you can only see half, in this picture) came crashing down, early in the morning.  i only know this because my parents told me.  even though the sucker shook the house so hard that everyone else awoke in a panic, i slept through it quite soundly.  (now i've also slept through hurricanes, tornados, earthquakes... no, really.)  

ooh, embarrassing family portraits, YES!  note my hair, carefully styled by a light socket crimper.

 

typical me, at the time:  girl scouts sweatshirt, check.  jean jacket?  check.  obligatory book?  check!  my mom pushed my little ass into sports, about this time, just to get me out of the damn house.  "Go!  Go Outside!  Get in a tree or something.  NO YOU CANNOT BRING YOUR BOOK!  Just go outside and Play!!!"  (whereupon we played mud pies and she rethought this staying inside with a book thing.)

my grandma (dad's side) was the real fashion influence in the family.  so when i rocked something she picked out, i looked pretty good.  i'd still wear this today. well, maybe not the jacket.  but the skirt, definitely.  it was velvet.  very cushy.  (note my mom's legs in eighties leggings, to the left...)

 

an "after" picture of the house, after my dad had his way with it.  way fewer trees, far more ornamentation.  he fixed the house's columns when the iron was too rusty to stay.  he also restored the brick walls on the property, and created the circle drive, and the fountain, and the...

my mom made me help her deliver xmas goodies.  as an elf.  she even made the costumes for my brother and i.  note the jingle bell necklace.  believe it or not, i was totally psyched to be an elf.

 

the aforementioned sports.  for a while, i was a competitive gymnast.  i was pretty damn good, in fact.  see those medals?  they were for competing at Kentucky's State level competitions.
by the time they were done handing them out, i had 2 gold, 1 silver, 2 bronze.  not bad, for a ten year old.  

"all i do is WIN, WIN WIN..."
when we moved i had to give up the gymnastics since there was no gym nearby.  that was a major bummer, dude.

 

ah, the "twins" again, J and i.   funny, no one ever asked us if we were twins in the summer... hmm.

 

oh, the sacred hallowed grounds of middle school (snerk!).  that's my ex-boyfriend and i, engaging in a pillow fight.  i think i was losing.  the most important part of this picture to point out, is that i still have those pajama pants.  i got them in seventh grade.  i think the real wonder is not that they've lasted this long, but that they still fit.

i have had a lifelong hatred of shorts, ever since about this time period.  can't stand the way they fit.  (ahem.  that may or may not be a Jonathan Taylor Thomas poster behind my head.  you know who he was, don't lie.  he was your teen crush, too.  Simba, remember?  i may or may not have forged love letters from him to me, sometime in between the crack of intermediate and middle school.  i told you i am a dork.)

 

 ahem.  this may or may not be me pretending to kiss JTT.  (also note the pajama pants...)

THIS IS NOT MY BEDROOM.  i repeat.  it's really not my bedroom.  it was my best friend B's bedroom.  (you're welcome, and i'm sorry, B...)

 

in middle school, for reasons unknown to pretty much anyone who's ever known me, i decided that i really, really needed to be a cheerleader.  i was a damn good cheerleader.  the gymnastics experience gave me a good edge.  our squad won state-wide competitions.  but the rest of the girls were total bitches (especially to me, since i wasn't "popular," more like infamous), and that's why i eventually quit.  i had no time to deal with that shit.  so instead...

 

oh yeah, that's right.  i was a ballerina.  (and a good one, though certainly not as good as most many others.)  here, i'm playing the lead role in Hansel & Gretel.  naturally, i was Hansel.  probably because i was the only one they could have shoehorned into that outfit.  and the socks.  and the hat.  (ohhhh, the hat...)

now at that point, i was no longer a flat kid, so guess how i looked even that flat.  if you guessed duct tape, you would be right... (over a white sports bra, lest i rip the skin off my nipples.)

this was also my first performance en pointe, but i was not Hansel while doing that.  i was a Licorice Whip.  if you don't know what that is, well, i don't either.  we were in black unitards with red sequins wrapped around us.  that's all i know.

 

i do NOT look good in yellow.  also this year was when i danced en pointe with a broken toe.  to be fair, i didn't know it was broken.  at the time.  notice i was OUT of the pointe shoes by this time (pic was taken by my mom after the show).

this is one of the many years i was in the Waltz of the Flowers, Nutcracker.  (ask a ballerina sometime about whether she ever wants to dance that ballet again, after doing it year after year after year after year...)

that video is not of my dance studio, fyi.  we had actual scenery.  and really good choreography.  we were the sort of studio that tries to groom young ballerinas to go professional, (aka pushing them too hard) but in the meantime creating really excellent full-length ballets.

as a very good example of my studio pushing young dancers - not the year of the terrible yellow tutu (but the year of the Very Nice purple tutu).  as we were in final rehearsals for this very same dance, another year, i managed to fall on one of the simplest moves in ballet, and tear every tendon in my left foot.  of course, i still danced the ballet.  (to be fair, i didn't have an understudy.)

i have actually had the fortune to be in very good programs - for ballet, cheerleading, ballet, marching/symphonic band, etcetera, despite how draconian a few of them might have been...

 

this is me as Little Bo Peep.  with one of my sheep.  (Shut. Up.)  my little sheep there was actually taller than me by far, hence me standing en pointe in this photo.

 

after so many injuries, i finally gave up being a ballerina.  but only after i'd irreversibly damaged my left foot, my knees and my hips...
there's a reason i'm such a creaky old lady at a young age.

 

 as i mentioned before, i went through a period in high school when my hair was burgundy/auburn.  not my best look, but hardly my worst... (me at 15)

my utterly fabulous dad and i, at a birthday.  my brother's birthday, probably.

 

my mom would love me forever if i wore my hair like this all the time.  16, here.  i would bet large amounts of money that this picture is sitting on my mom's desk at her office.

because every high school student needs a catholic school girl skirt... god, don't y'all know anything??!?!?

my school's terrible uniform policy is the single reason that i won't wear khaki ever again, so long as i live.  imagine four years of this:  khaki, navy, white.  khaki, navy white.  it's also the reason i tortured my school administration mercilessly by wearing black constantly, and then constantly getting sent up to the office for it. 

once upon a time, a long time ago, when i was a sixteen year old girl, i had the stupidity misfortune of having an utterly craptastic boyfriend, who i eventually got engaged to.  yeah.  and that's why i'm still reasonably unattached, ten years later.  the idea even now gives me the willies, that i could have been stuck with that controlling asshole.  shudder.
the reason that's topical is that this set of pictures were taken for us as "engagement photos."

if you'll notice here, i'm wearing a vintage velvet dress with a stud belt, bunny ears, and doc martins.  that about sums up high school.  in a good way, mind you.  i still have every single piece of clothing in that picture.  yes, even the bunny ears.

when i wasn't busy in marching band, or ballet, or whatever the hell else kind of trouble i was getting into, i was in Spanish Dance team.  we did flamenco, and other awesome things.  when we twirled around just right, those lacy skirts made a full circle.  pretty sweet.  for a year i was choreographing all of our dances.

if you ever wanted to know how Mobile Bay looks when a hurricane hits, well, this is it.  btw - that water is about ten feet high (or more maybe) than usual. 

my mom in back right, and me, caught coming down after a toe-touch.  i was still rockin' those cheerleading skillz.  i only wish i could have found the picture of my mom attempting that toe-touch, as well.  oh, man.  hil-A-rious!  note the cow socks.  i have an abhorrence for boring socks.  i don't own a single white sock.

oh yes, i was also in colorguard, as if my dork status wasn't already written in stone...  this is me as a junior captain, flagrantly breaking the (No! Fingernail! Polish!) rules.
at the time, we didn't like these outfits.  if only we'd known that next year...

 

...was going to be so horrific, that we would kill to get the previous ones back.  this is my senior year, by the way.  Head Captain.  oh, yeah.  i wanted to kill our instructor, for this terrible, ill-fitting costume.

as evidenced by this picture, i have never mastered the SexyLook.

during a typical day at high school, this is what i was wearing.  after all, they didn't say anything about ties in the dress code...

i still like ties.  i probably have 50 of them.

homecoming dress, senior year.  i was using it in senior portraits. 

i had some really good senior portraits.

they weren't boring, anyway. i sent this one in my grad cards, to my mother's confusion, creating the tradition of really weird grad photos.  this was the tame version, compared to my college grad picture.

if your question is "how the hell did you get up there?" then my answer is, very carefully.  through the water, with my skirt held above my knees.

well, this is obvious.

the advantages of getting too drunk at  a camp-out party, and stealing someone's hat...

for a long, long time in college, i rocked these vampire fangs.  in fact, i wore them almost constantly, to the point that when i got incredibly sick for a week and didn't wear them, a few of my teachers did a double-take, because they'd actually thought they were my real teeth.

ah, college.  some good times, yo.  my fashion sense probably didn't improve much from childhood, but at least i've managed to pick up a raging pot habit a few tips along the way.

oh, and by the way???

i still have those vampire fangs!

this post brought to you by booze.

for a while now i've been puzzling over a few billboards put up around this here city, new orleans.

one of them reads, "GOT DRUGS?!" and has a picture of all sorts of pills spilling out of a bottle.

my first reaction, of course, was something to the effect of "well yes actually, i DO have drugs, but you can't have them!"  naturally i was drunk when i first saw this billboard, so i didn't know if it *really* said "Got Drugs?" or if i was misreading it completely.  turns out yes, that is exactly what it said. 

i eventually figured out that what it was really advertising was the chance to "recycle" old prescriptions, for what purposes i have no earthly idea.  i'm imagining some industrious pill-head just decided to try to get people to give them shit, or buying their drugs wholesale or some shit.  i mean, it would be a great idea if i were popping lots of pills, but i only do that occasionally if you were into that pill-popping nonsense.

on to the next billboard:  this confused the everloving motherfuck out of us for weeks.  it was just these words, nothing else, on a blue billboard:  "YOUR WIFE IS HOT."

what.

and it stayed that way, for weeks.  we tried to figure out what the hell it was for.  my best guess was it was someone who really wanted to annoy his friend, or someone who lost a stupid bet, or... something.  someone was really drunk, with too much money?

well, we finally got our answer today, on that particular billboard.  finally, in addition to the original "Your Wife is Hot" slogan, they finally added "better get your A/C fixed!" with the name of the company.

touche, A/C service people.  now THAT's an ad that will get your attention, yo.

hairvolution: i have too much free time.

i uh, i get bored easily.  and when i do, my hair suffers changes.  sometimes drastically, and sometimes in smaller ways.  in fact, i can pretty much chart the year or period of my life in pictures, because of my hair.  soon, you'll see why. 

i was bored the other day, and i went digging through the huge dump of random photos on my hard drive.  and boy, did i find some doozies.

 

why hello junior year of high school, home of the burgundy hair.  it had the effect of highlighting my already ghost-white skin, but hey - it was a good look at the time.  i think.  i know you can't see very well since the photo is black & white, but it was a bit below my boobs at the time.  long.

i went back to my natural red, for senior year of high school.  (that's me and my best friend, there...) i didn't cut it... yet.  i've almost always had long hair.  except for when i get a little stir-crazy and do something like this...

i tend to change my hair the most when something drastic or weird happens in my life.  like a break-up, for example.  senior year of hs i had a very large, drastic break-up (of a relationship of 3 years...), and so my hair got short, quickly.  after this style, i cut my hair even shorter, to chin length.  (note to self:  chin length is NOT a good look.  don't ever do that again.) 

well, it might have been a bit shorter than chin length.  still, not my best look ever.  no, no, no.  (aside:  that there is my favorite t-shirt.  still have it.  it's a bit... hole-y.)

oh, freshman year of college.  xmas, 2003.  (i look so weirdly young in this photo.)  enter the terrible grow-out period.  this is what happens when you have completely black hair, and then try to bleach it out with blonde hair dye.  (no photos of the complete black hair look, unfortunately.  which is a shame, because for the first two weeks my hair had this crazy purple sheen you could see when i was in the sun.)

still freshman year, 2004 this time.  hard to see, but at least the color was a bit better by this time.  more red, less oh-fuck-what-the-hell-did-i-just-do.

2005, sometime.  good example of the "warrior braids" mentioned below.  gah, shoulder length.

2006.  like a yo-yo, i finally got my hair long again, because i've always been more comfortable with longer hair.  so by junior year of college, it looked like this.  (my ex-girlfriend was a photographer, and took this photo.  i likey.)  and bonus, this picture is probably the ONLY picture of me when my back-piece wasn't finished.  i rocked the wings without getting them filled in, because i had no money to get it filled, yet.  that, and they looked good anyway, so i wasn't in a hurry.



still 2006.  (not my bike.  i love cruisers.  i hate crotch rockets.)  notice my crazy white skin, which is the norm when i hide from the sun.  my hair looked great here.  i have thick hair naturally.  which is why it was such a fucking shame, when i went in for a nice professional dye job for once, and the stupid evil motherfucking hair-wrecking idiot stylist persuaded me to try a few layers.  i nervously said yes.  and then she did this to my hair:

she thinned the everloving SHIT out of my hair, and gave me layers so badly that i had more than 6 or 7 inches of hair above my lower layers.  worst hair cut EVER.  (notice:  wings shaded in by now.)
the terribleness is hard to see in this photo, but trust me:  it was terrible.  which is why i wrote a little note to myself as a reminder...

yeahhhh.  and boy, did i mean it.  to this day, i am the most picky person when it comes to people who cut my hair.  and i've only trusted ONE person to layer my hair, since this incident.  alas, she lives in portland.  damnit.
(PS, for any of you Portlandians, she works at Blades Hair Studio, look it up.  if you want to go, ask me for her name, and tell her Mel sent you.  she'd be floored.  we're still buddies.)

senior year of college, 2006.  look, my natural! color!  i've known people for years, who have yet to see my natural color.  i just get bored too often.  and i like it BRIGHT, BRIGHT red.  so bring on the hair dye!  but yeah, you see those shoulder-length layers?  and the rest of my hair was half-way down my back.  terrible look.  in my mind, i would have had to chop it alll off at shoulder length, (which i hate) and start over.  so, i just did this instead:

again, it's hard to see in this photo, but the longest part of my hair was about 5 or 6 inches long. 
(mmm, tasty clove.  back in the chain-smoking days.)
and thus, the years of braids had begun.  you might notice that they are more than a foot longer than the rest of my hair.  there is a story behind this:

since i almost always had long hair, and i'm a fidgety person, i always was braiding small sections of my hair.  i had one friend who always referred to them as my "warrior braids."  (see above pic...)  long ago it was a celtic tradition to put braids in the hair when going to war (so as to keep your long hair out of your damn face).  so when i told him i was chopping off all my hair, he moaned, "but what about your braaaiiiidsss???"   i was like, "eh, i'll keep them.  should look interesting." 
and thus, the four (almost five) years of braids had begun.

2006, super short.  i loved the short hair.  i could spike it up, or mash it under a hat if i didn't feel like dealing with the fact that it was sticking up all over the place, and i didn't want to brush it.  there was a lot of hat wearing in those days.

i was broke, so i let my hairs grow out for a bit.  heh, i almost look normal in this picture.

short aside, about this picture:  this was in January, 2007.  and what happened then?  i wrecked my car.  and when i did, i cracked three ribs, and separated the cartilage of one of them from my sternum.

i have never hurt so badly in my entire life.  combine three cracked ribs with a case of walking pneumonia and chain-smoking... well, let's just say it wasn't pretty. 
because of that, when i did this play (the Vagina Monologues, for the curious), i wore my corset - not because of the look, but so when i breathed, my ribs couldn't move much.  not a pleasant experience.

 anyway.  i got bored with my hair again, so then i did this:

(no, i have no idea what i'm doing in this picture either.)
spring, 2007.  short and messy, again.  i bleached the front part of my hair (and the braids), in order to shortly dye it a fabulous color (seen below).  it was only supposed to be like this for a few days.  but i loved the look so much, i kept it for another month.  who knew red bleached to that color?  not this girl.  

see, hat-worthy.  i have several cowlicks.  they annoy the hell out of amuse me.
it was a good look, i think.  almost kept it, but...

THIS was the color the bleaching was for.  it made the green POP.  which was awesome.  it's also a color i'm sure my mother was horrified by, when she arrived for my graduation and realized that yes, i really WAS going to be graduating with green hair.  and so my graduation announcements went out with this photo:

well that pretty much sums up how i felt about college, senior year.

the bad part about weird colors though, is this:



the horrible, inevitable leaching of your formerly bright crazy color.  and what DO you do, when you're trying to get green and black out of your hair?  well, you cut some of it out, and bleach it some more:



(this was the shortest that my hair has ever been.  ever.) 
yeah, that looked awful, too.  so, back to the black, with some color for good measure.

for the record, this was right after i dyed it.  probably the same day.  so no, my scalp was not permanently burgundy.  i swear. 

annnddd, this photo was after a long, drunken party night.  notice the lovely eyeliner smudges.  and this is what happens when you sleep in makeup, folks.

oh lookee, 2007.  summer.
one of my photographer friends, Charles, wanted a model.  and i got one of the best sets of photos that i've ever taken.  he was a fucking genius.  shot in an old ballroom - but this shot was while i was on a table, with a white backdrop.  most boring backdrop ever - but the picture still looks fantastic.
this is probably the most amazing shade of red that i've ever dyed my hair.  only problem was, i can't remember for the life of me what color, and i've never been able to find it since.
here, lemee find another picture of that in different lighting.



it was so different in daylight.  i mean, definitely not a believable color.  no one is going to think i grew that myself.  but hell, looks SO. AWESOME.

a bit shorter here, too. i really didn't know what to do with shorter hair, and i HATE the grow-out period, so i just kept chopping it off.  but eventually i wanted my longer hair back, so i started to deal with the grow-out mess.  AGAIN.

this picture stands as proof that you really CAN get black hair dye out of your hair without completely destroying it.  i don't care what the stylists say.  it is possible.

may, 2008.  i hate, hate hated this length.  i never know what to do with it.  just ends up frizzing all over the place.  ugh.

see?  frizzy hell.  my hair is just wavy enough to be a pain in the ass.

winter, early 2009, portland.  in the terrible stages of grow-out, still.  was working at a law office, so i kept the crazy hair to a minimum.  almost.  what you can't see in this photo, unfortunately,  is the fact that the braids were in fact the same shade of green that i'd dyed my hair in 2007.  and the law office didn't care.  i was floored.

(that skirt?  vintage seventies, it's from mexico.  it has a PATCHWORK IGUANA on it.  love!)

notice the lack of glasses.  that's because a certain ex-SOMEONE, who will not be named, stepped on my glasses and broke them.  i did eventually get a replacement pair, but not my usual green & black combo, because they didn't have it.  so, purple it was.  the same pair of glasses i still have today, actually.

this what happens when you get really, really bored with your short hair, and you're laid off in the middle of summer 2009, in Portland.  also the braids just get your hair off your neck.  it's a bit cooler, which was really nice.  i actually did these braids myself.  it's a pain.  most of the time i have other people do it.
for a while, i was selling jewelry and crafts and hanging out with a few other sellers.  we'd stake out a piece of the sidewalk, and just chill out. 

i sold beaded hair wraps too, and i had a TON of examples braided into my hair.  so if y'all are into hair wraps, i sell them for cheap, yo.  and they look like this in your hair.  pretty awesome, and i do say so myself.

2009, summer, working for the music festival.  backstage passes, bitches!  ohfuck, my white-ass legs.  eeek!!!  a good example of the omnipresent braids (and my hippie crystals in them) - those suckers stuck around.  and i LOVED them - but you guys have no idea how much of a pain in the ass they are to keep separated from the rest of your hair - and how annoying it is to brush your hair, when you haven't undone them.  it's an exercise in trying not to yank your head around when you catch the braid in your brush.  sheesh.

also, to this day, i have friends in portland who NEVER saw me without the braids.  they would probably be surprised to see me without them now.  most of the reason i finally evened them out with the rest of my hair is that when you aren't wearing them all braided up, they make your hair look uneven, like you had a really bad haircut.  so, no.

summer 2009, portland, oregon.  great example of what happens when you put bright red henna over naturally red hair.  yep.  you get an almost orange color.  and i love it.

back from portland, visiting family.  right before i moved to new orleans in 2010.
FINALLY getting a bit longer, there.

2010, back to green!  a different color of green, this time around.

it was summer, i was working on bourbon street (patooey!) and i was sweating my ass off, so i did this to get the hair off my neck:

ah, much cooler.  what you can't see from this picture is that the braids created a mohawk, which was THE AWESOME.  the green hair (braided up with black) was the underside of the hawk, and the red was on top.

 aha, see?  tell me that does not look fantastic.  one of my favorite looks.  which reminds me, i need to braid my hair up for the summer again.

after the braids, i tried to get the green out of my hair by bleaching, and if you guys remember, it was a really bad idea.  i hated this.  so, back to red.

and i got bored again, so pink!  and purple!  some of the few hair colors my hair had never been before.  

so now, my hair has been all manner of shades of red & burgundy, purple, black, green, pink, and orange (actually orange, not red - which is what happens when you mix red manic panic with a yellow manic panic color that i didn't realize was actually UV reactive, until my hair started glowing green under a black light...).  so i guess i'm missing blue.  blue, brown (never gonna happen, i'd look awful), and blonde.  i should really do that, once of these days.  maybe not together, but i should do it.  just for shits and giggles.

 

 recent photo, early spring 2011.  my friend Crystal took this set, and they look fabulous.  believe it or not, this was shot in a bedroom painted all black, with nothing but a spotlight or two.  no flash on the camera - which is actually why the light is so great in this photo.

of course, i DO get bored... about two days ago, i decided to trim the bottom of my hair a bit, to get rid of dead ends.  i've been cutting hair for about 8 years now - started experimenting on my friends in high school, and got pretty good at it.  so i've cut my friends' hair, my boss's hair once, several boyfriends, and i've gotten paid for it many times.  not a lot, because i don't have a license and i'm not a professional.  but i am good at it.

in honor of this ridiculous photo bonanza dedicated to my random hair, i decided to pep up my hair a bit:

what do you think?

i'm thinking about some weird colors again.  i have pink, purple, and that great peacock green seen way up above.  or should i do blue?  or blonde, or.......

Ahhhh-Choooooo!

i'm not the most normal person on the planet.

i'm assuming this, because my dad got me really, really drunk tonight, and it's not exactly far from the norm, in our daily interactions.  also, he expressed the opinion that he was surprised that i could keep up with him.  and of course, i said, "of course i can keep up with you.  i could beat you.  it's just that it wouldn't be a good idea."  and all that is true.  i could beat my dad.  it's just that i wold be in private puke-y hell if it happened. 

anyway, that's not what i am here to write about, although my dad is hil-AR-ious* and could spawn an entire blog's worth of quotes.  if i'd thought of "shit my dad says" before whoever thought of it did, i could have smacked his dad clear out of the water.  but that's all history. 

whatever.  there are more important things to discuss. 

i will assume that sneezing while pissing does happen to everyone.  i'm sure it's messier for dudes, if it happens.  but who cares.  it probably does happen to everyone.  but it's especially hilarious for the womens out there, because we can hear it happen, VERY clearly. 

we've all been there, don't lie to me.  while you're peeing, that sneeze will sneak up on you.  you're peeing, and all of a sudden -  aaaaahhhh -chooooo!!!!!!

and your pee stream goes from teenkle-tiiinkle to whoooooshhh-spahlOOOOshhh within 1.3 seconds. 

and then you're back to that whole tinkle shit, thinking, wow, if only that sneeze thing happened more often, i could pee three times as fast, only if it did, you'd probably piss all over the bathrooom.

ahem.   not that i'm in the habit of pissing all over the bathroom.  or for that matter, that it's happened at all when i wasn't drunk as shit. 



*points accrued if you get this reference.