I'm glad to see that Miss Scarlets have found a good home with you.  Gorgeous! I wanted to buy them myself, and the only thing that prevented me was knowledge that bright red hairsticks don't really go with anything I own.

I'm trying to find ways to wear my Bronze Jeweler's spiderweb slide.  It holds my hair in a simple ponytail, which puts it head and shoulders above any other slide I've ever worn, but I don't like wearing a ponytail.  It's hot and my hair gets tangly.  I tried using it to hold up a french twist, but it won't hold the hair when I double it up on the top and tuck it under, so yesterday I twisted my hair up as far as I could, put the slide at the top, the brought the remaining hair down around the slide and tucked it in--success!  Barely!  I wore it like that again today, but with me being a non-morning person, I managed to put the slide in about halfway down my head, leaving much too much tail to tuck.  I formed it into a little bun.  It's ok from the left, but if viewed from the right it's pointy and slightly obscene looking.  I doubt anyone's noticed.  I really don't think anyone notices my hair much, which is good and bad.  Bad since no compliments (so I like compliments--sue me  ) .  Good since no one gives me crap about being too old for long hair.  I guess it balances out.

I was trying to get ready for bed last night and Rumpole kept jumping up on the sink for attention.  He's a persistant little bugger when he wants to be.  I finally picked him up around the middle and held him against my hip.  All of his legs were hanging down and most cats would have left in a huff.  Rumpole, however, just sighed in irritation, pivoted his shoulders around and put his front paws on my stomach and started to climb.  I had to give him a boost if I didn't want 14 pounds of black cat climbing up my thin sleepshirt.  He ended up on my shoulder which is where he wanted to be in the first place.  Rotten.   8) 

My cousin is getting married this fall.  Yay!  I'm thinking birdsnest bun with my Winter Sunset Geisha stick.  I'll need a dress to match, though.

I don't really like ballet.  There, I've said it.  I've tried and tried but nope, nothing doing.  Well, I do like the men in their little tights. 8) I like watching dancing, but a whole ballet seems to be too much for my tiny attention span.  I like opera and I thought ballet was the next natural step, but...(of course, I'm a rather rowdy opera lover.  Oh, I can behave myself in public, confining my enthusiasm to a round of applause, a standing ovation, or a discreet "bravo" or "brava", but I really want to scream "You sang the hell out of that aria, Leporello!"  or "Woohoo! Sing it again!"  But anyway.)  Monday I was flipping channels (doesn't take too long at my house.  I get CBS, 2 PBS stations, and ABC when the wind's right; and occasionally the WB but I don't speak to them anymore since they cancelled Angel.) and the cream of the crop was a ballet on Great Performances.  I tried to figure things out.  I guessed the guy in the blue (doublet?  Fancy shirt thingy ) trimmed with red ribbons who had the bulletproof news anchor hair was a prince and he and a bunch of people were in a courtyard of some sort.  The prince danced, then sat down.  Then the women danced (hair parted in the middle and slicked back into a tight knot at the nape.  On a ballerina it worked.  Also they were wearing gold wire headdresses which had 2 basket things over the ears and connected over the head by a band, making them look like fancy earmuffs.  Again, on a ballerina it worked.)  Then the prince's friend danced (I'm guessing he was the prince's friend.  He acted awfully familiar otherwise.)  Then a woman danced, then the friend danced with one woman, then he danced with 2 women, then a queen came down the stairs (big wire headdress with a veil, seemed to be a bit older than the others, long dress---3 to 1 probability she was a queen).  The prince gets a crossbow and holds it up over his head.  I figure he'll dance about his crossbow for a while so I switch over to Two and a Half Men.  I told you I was a barbarian.  CSI:Miami came on--the ballet was better.  Now everyone is in a castle, prince dancing with a woman, queen on throne looking on.  Next to the throne is a bearded man in red.  Suddenly everyone is really unhappy for some reason  and the bearded man turns into a demon!  If there were more demons in ballet I'm sure I"d like it better.  Suddenly I'm in the mood to watch Buffy.  I'll have to search out my DVDs.  Scene change!  Lots of women in white tutus, looks like a lake.  So this is likely Swan Lake.  Yes, I recognize the music.  Prince dances with white tutu woman--since this is Swan Lake she must be Odette--then the demon shows up (yay!), the prince kills himself, then the swans kill the demon (boo!).  Curtain.  The dancing is amazing and heaven knows I couldn't do it if you filled me with amphetamines and held a gun on me, but I just don't get it.  I wonder when Great Performances is doing an opera again?  A whole opera, not just bits and pieces.  They could also rerun Kiss Me Kate.  Ok, it's not an opera, but double yay for Cole Porter. (it's too, too, too darn hot....)

The hair was heathenish today.  Wouldn't do a thing, and when I finally got it into some semblance of a bun, using about 10 hairpins, it suddenly sprouted all of these loops and tails and looked awful.  I wanted so much to wear my new Fire Storm Holosticks but it was impossible.  I got out my fob bun cage and camouflaged it as best I could.  I'm glad I insisted on the large sized fob when I ordered it--it just fit around my bun today.  

Agatha kind of ignored me last night, so she must be feeling better.  

I love Mozart's Marriage of Fiagaro!  You'll have to take pictures! 

They didn't show the whole ballet?  No wonder I had a hard time following the action.  I agree with you--I hate abridged anything.  If I like something, I want to see/read/hear it all; if I don't like the whole thing, who's to say I'll like only part of it?

French twist with spider slide today.  I put the slide up higher this time and wound up with a left-over tail that was too short to bun and too long to tuck in.  I was running late as it was so I just left it hanging right behind my left ear where it has annoyed my all day by just grazing the back of my ear and I keep thinking that it's a fly or my updo has come down.  It looks kind of cute, though.

I finally used my Chagrin Valley Summer Citrus shampoo bar.  Very nice indeed--cleans well and doesn't overcondition.  So far the are nettle, herb garden, summer citrus, and rosemary lavender aloe work well.

It's a good thing my hair is basically low-maintance in the way of products, because I have 2 more pairs of sticks on the way--Pearl Plumeria and Violet Vining Perlisticks.  I don't wear purple, but I am a sucker for those big lampwork lentil beads, and that is a gorgeous deep shade of violet.  I do have a winter outfit in slate grey they should go nicely with.  Or I can wear them with red.  In my world everything goes with red. 

I wish there was spell-check here.  I'm getting lazy--I'm tired of reaching for the dictionary all the time.  I have the worst time with -ables and -ibles and -ances and -ences, etc.  I do know i before e except after c or when sounded like a as in neighbor and weigh.  Or weird, which is weird.

I think the P (Agatha) wants out again.  I fell asleep during our petting time yesterday and she was a bit put out.  Gory is still all bloody, poor thing.  He won't even stay on the porch when I'm outside, but he sits on the steps and mrroowwwss at me if I'm not putting his food out fast enough.    Bogie meowed in my ear very loudly at 6:30 this morning and became offended when I fussed at him, and Rumpole seems to have fallen prey to a rare type of muscle spasm that compels him to jump up on the sink every single time I'm standing in front of it for more than 30 seconds.  Sometimes I think I should have brought my dog up here in the first place, and fled shrieking into the hills when that workman handed me the tiny tabby kitten now known as Bogie.   8)

Vengance is mine, saith the cat.  Bogie scratched the @@$% out of me, the little weasel.   Of course, after he scratched me, he was fine again, and tried to bump my leg so I'd brush him.  I moved my leg and refused.   We've made up, but now I'm going to have red marks on my hand and wrist for months; seriously, I still have the post-inflammatory pigmentation from a scratch back in Dec. '04.  My skin is so pale and translucent anything like that lingers forever.  I've been slathering the scratches with shea butter, aloe, and lavender and tea tree eo's--not at the same time--in hopes that something will make them fade faster.

Met Mom and Dad in Chas. on Fri;  we had dinner and stayed the night.  I gave Dad his belated Father's Day present--a new purple siutcase.  Dad loves purple and doesn't care who knows it, and his old suitcase is HUGE.  He could climb inside and ride in the cargo hold if he wanted to.  It kind of reminds me of Groucho's trunk in A Night at the Opera.  Dad went home Saturday morning because Mom and I had to shop.  There was a huge sale going on at the mall.   The Burdock root skin mattifier at Bath and Body Works was 2 for the price of 1.  (It kind of works on me, but the only thing that could get all of the oil out of my skin would be the Republicans.  )  They also had Green Tea and Cucumber body spray for 75% off--it's been discontinued   so I stocked up.  The best was Kaufmanns--most everything was 50% + and extra 30% off.  I got a couple of pocketbooks and some earrings.  The makeup wasn't on sale, sigh, so I didn't get a Chanel kabuki brush for my MMU.

Speaking of MMU, I'm on my period and my face has never been this clear during my monthly visit from Aunt Flo, the red hag.  I was telling a friend of mine this today (the one who's trying MMU now) and she peered at my face and said she didn't believe I was on my period.  It's kind of embarassing to realize everyone knew it was my time of the month from the acne on my face, but hopefully that's all over now.  I made up Mom with the mineral makeup this weekend and now she wants to try it.  I should get a comission from Aromaleigh.  

I didn't run across any good hairtoys while shopping.  The best stuff is still online.  Speaking of the best stuff, my Vining Violet and Pearl Plumeria sticks came in.  Gorgeous, simply gorgeous!  In the pic, the Plumeria sticks looked a bit green, but in RL they're as pink and black as they can be.  Perfect for my pink/black reversible skirt.  The Vining Violet is a lovely shade of very dark purple and they will go with my charcoal grey outfit.  I'll have to keep them in mind when I do my Fall clothes shopping.  Dad said I was just like my Grandma--"Buy a 50 cent pin and then buy a whole outfit to match."  I just laughed and informed him that those nice purple hairsticks he was holding cost more than the outfit I was wearing.  He handed them back very carefully.  

I left my vitamins in the car while shopping Saturday, the temp went up to 103 deg F, and my gel caps ruptured and spilled all over the other vitamins.  I took 'em anyway--I figured the oil had soaked into the other pills and I hate to waste anything.

Watched The Road to Bali, with Bing Crosby, Bob Hope, and Dorothy Lamour yesterday.  I love the Road movies.  Anyway, Dorothy Lamour's hair was gorgeous.  Thick, black, dead straight, and down to her tailbone.  I wonder if it was real?  She wore it in a ponytail, gripped in 3 places by gold bands, in a loose ponytail, in a crown braid with the ponytail and the 3 gold bands, and slicked back into a huge knot on the back of her head.  Beautiful.

Hair--chopstick twist, loose tail.  I didn't feel like fiddling with it today.

The reason a hair style won't work for an extended period of time is ................



Congratulations! 

Tried to wear a pony bun today, but it just slid down the back of my head.  Then I tried wrapping the ponytail around the bun, but it just looked stupid, so I ended up taking the whole mess down at work and making a (fat) cinnabun.  Sigh.  I've had a bad hair week.  At least my Morrocan Twilight sticks looked good.

Got some eyeshadow samples from Aromaleigh--their "Carolina Summer" matte colors.  I think I've finally found blue eyeshadow I'll wear.  I wore lagoon--heathered turquoise according to the description, and dolphin--a blue-grey.  I think they looked nice, if a teensy bit dark.  Plus, I french-braided the top of my hair today, and that always highlights my greys, so with my normal paleness, the blue-grey eyeshadow and the grey streaking I reminded myself (much more than I"d like to admit) of the mom on The Munsters.  Oh well, it's an idea for Halloween.

My garbage people (excuse me, my waste-management company )  are changing my pickup day again.  This is a good thing, though, because now it's on Thurs, which means taking the trash out on Weds, and that is the worst time of the week for me.  So, for once, change is good.  The letter they sent telling me this was hilarious--we're changing pick up day again, blah, blah, blah, better serve you, yak, yak, yak; ah, here we go--this change will take place as of July 4th; however, as you know garbage pick up always runs a day late after a holiday, so that week your pick up will still be on Thurday.     WTF??  Why start during a holiday week at all?  Why not the week after?  I laughed all evening over that one.    

Miss P is still losing some fur, but her appetite's fantastic and she's getting fatter.  The hot weather I think is what's keeping her in.  I'm never going to get my skirts made.  Just as well, Bogie thinks that when I set up my machine it's a sign for him to jump up, snuggle next to the sewing machine, put his head in my hand and go to sleep.  I'm so tempted to put a screen door in the sewing room and I could sew, and they could see inside.....nope.  I'd probably pay dearly for that one. 

Monday's the Fourth.  I get to sleep late.