Maybe the hairdryer was lined with diamonds

First, three cheers for a cancer-free kitty in Portland!

Second, I just got one of the most expensive haircuts of my life, and even though my co-worker pays $75 for her haircuts that doesn't deaden the sting of the $50 I had to shell out tonight for mine (plus $8 for tip, which is probably too much but I never know how much to tip and I don't want to be a cheapskate even though I'm essentially spending my entire food budget for the week on my haircut). Here are the photos: I had to have Doug take a couple of photos of me with this new 'do because it may be the first and last time my hair ever looks this expensive. But does it even look that good? I can't really say. I can say that I'm probably a good two inches taller after the blowdry (that I never even want, but for some reason hairdressers can never let you leave with wet hair, even though I leave my house each and every day with a head of wet hair and have no problem with it. This is another reason why my hairdresser can charge so much for a haircut!).

Why am I so surprised by the price of this haircut? After all, I got my last haircut from this woman, who works at this slightly fancy-pants salon in Dedham. The only reason why I decided to go here was because the salon was so close to my house, and at the time I was dissatisfied with my other hair salon and wanted to support local business. AND when I called and made my first appointment I was told that, Kristin, the lady who cut my hair, charged $38 for a cut. Perfect! That's what I was paying before (which is probably still too expensive, but to me there's a big difference between $38 and $50). Anyway, my first haircut was good; I was pleased. When I made the appointment this past week for the haircut I was expecting a repeat of nine weeks ago - a nice looking $38 haircut with a $6 tip. Not until I got into Kristin's chair and read the sign that was taped to her mirror did I realize that things would be different tonight. Apparently, Kristin has moved to the next level of haircutting and as of April 8th would be charging $50 for her haircuts. I asked Kristin what that meant - the next level of haircutting. She said that the salon owners every four months review each hairdresser in four categories - how many customers keep returning to her, how many new customers that she saw return to the salon (but not necessarily to her), how many retail products she sells, and one other category. If she attended any continuing ed classes or something like that (they have to attend two on cutting and two on coloring a year). Lucky for me, Kristin scored high on her test this time and has moved to the next level. I may have caused some of my own pain, though, because I returned to her, returned to the salon, and also purchased some conditioner from her last time I was there. Little did I know...

Oh well. Not much I can do about this now. It was just a bit of a shocker to read that sign. The problem is, as much as this haircut doesn't really look like a $50 haircut to me (but really, what does a $50 haircut actually look like?), I like how she cuts my hair, and I like that she's young and a little hip and is at least good enough at what she does to keep passing these little tests at the salon. I'll probably go back to her again next time (in fact, I made an appointment for another nine weeks on my way out), but maybe this next time I'll call ahead to see if she's moved on to the next level. What will she charge at that point? $65?

How does our garden grow

The first really, really beautiful weekend of the year (though a tad hot), and how do we spend it? Doing yard work. At risk of sounding like a negative Nancy, welcome to home ownership! We started the weekend on Saturday morning by getting all of our shopping out of the way - Target, Container Store, the local nursery, and, everyone's favorite, Home Depot. Doug and I went a little crazy at Home Depot, and not just with our shopping, either. That place on a nice, sunny Saturday is a mad-house! So many people! We got most of the the things that we needed for the many yard/home projects we have on our to-do list for spring, but not without burning a hole in our wallet. Doug is amazed by how much everything cost, and I'm amazed at how many carts we needed to haul away all of our stuff. I've never needed two carts at a store. Ever. I needed to document this. Once our shopping was done, we dug in, literally. Doug started on his grass project (he's determined to grow grass in the many dirt patches around our "lawn," but we fear that a) we started too late in the season this spring, and b) it was too hot this weekend for the seeds to germinate), and I set out to do more planting. I planted flowers in everything that could hold dirt, pretty much. The other window box, the decorative birdbath in the backyard garden, the hanging planter on the garage, the pot that the old ornamental grass from the fall was in that we never did anything with, and the large terracotta pot that was sitting at the side of the patio collecting leaves and other unwanted waste. I also planted the growbox that my sister and her family gave us for my birthday this year. I planted broccoli and spinach - now let's see if we get anything! I am sure that this growbox would yield a bounty (at least it looks that way in the pictures), but the growbox may have met its match in me.
Our Saturday efforts paid off, though - the grass seed in the backyard is planted, the window boxes are planted and up, and the yard is beginning to look good with the flowers I've planted and those that are coming up on their own. I say we get an A for effort.

Today was another day in the yard, or at least a partial day in the yard. We started early again. I cleaned the skylight screen in the bathroom upstairs, as it was full of leaves and schmutz from the fall/winter, vacuumed the lint from the dryer, and washed the outside of the windows. The latter was a larger project than I wanted, and because our windows are the old kind on ropes it really didn't go very well (as all I washed were the storms, basically), but still - I feel better about myself now that I've made an effort to wash the windows. I also invented a new use for the Swiffer (though someone please tell me to learn not to wear stretchy pants with those underwear): You have to be creative when you're short like me. Doug reconnected our gutter on the northwest (?) side of the house and reattached it to the rain barrel, and he also finished his grass project for the front lawn. All the grass is planted now; we just have to water it and hope that it actually grows.

What's next on the list of things to do? Plant a blueberry bush and potentially a raspberry bush in the front area we de-stumped last fall, re-mortar the steps, mulch, weed, mow the lawn, water the plants... I'm not even including the things that we have to replace or buy, like the doorbell, the front storm door, the front lights on the house, hooks for hanging things in the vestibule, shutters for the sun/cat room... Yes, it is never ending. But it's fun, in a way. Or at least different. I'm sure it will get boring at some point, but for now while we're still learning it's actually kind of invigorating. Will our house ever be featured on HGTV? Not likely, but it will look good to us. (Awwww...)

Tributes

Lulu, these are for you, our lovely gray lady:


Adam, these are for you:

April Vacation

I've been on vacation for the past three days. Whoopee! I haven't taken time off since the holiday season, so it was much needed, and it was good planning on my part because we were able to go down to CT to visit my father (who was in the hospital having surgery for abdominal hernias - don't worry, it was a planned surgery, but hospital stays are no fun for him so we wanted to go down to visit him to try to cheer him up), catch a Hartford Symphony Orchestra performance, hang out with Adam pre-Marathon, finally watch the Boston Marathon (first time ever, and I think it will have to be an annual event - too much fun!), and get some chores done around the house. Doug went back to work today, but I am still off, about to check my work email one last time before I'm back to the old grind. I'm kicking myself for not taking the whole week off. I have the time to use, but I didn't think it was appropriate for me to take a whole week off. Why not? I don't know. I have this silly idea that work will fall apart if I'm not around, but if I'm really being truthful I'd say that everything runs just fine without me.

Anyway, here's a peek into some of the things I've been doing over my vacation. You'll see here that there are a lot of photos of the cats (though none of Sasha, surprisingly. She's really the most photogenic cat, but I guess she wasn't doing anything noteworthy these past few days). I think that if I were to create my blog all over again, I'd have it focus on two things - the food that I eat (since I love to eat food, or at least seem to eat a lot of it) and the crazy things the cats do. I have more photos of food and cats on my computer than I really should, and maybe I need a blog to properly showcase both loves. Here is Meg, trying to stow away down to Connecticut. She loves the basement there, which I'm sure was her motivation behind the stealthy move. Then we have a couple of Wyatt. The first is of him doing this new behavior that he's turned into routine - humping. Not that humping is new for him, but humping arms is very new for him. His favorite new past-time. He likes to hump my arm the most (ha ha, Doug! My arm's more sexy than your arm!), but he does try to get it on with Doug's every once in a while. He'll start to yell really loudly before making his move, then he'll bite my wrist, hand or forearm to get a good grip. Once his teeth are in place he begins the thrusting action, but I rarely let him get to that point. It's not that I mind being humped by my cat - for him I think it's some sort of reflex - but I certainly don't want to encourage the behavior, so I throw him off of me before the action gets too far along. One of the reasons I am not too upset about his humping is because he's just so cute at other times. Like when he hops into the laundry basket. I just can't resist the camera when he pulls this trick.

Other than being entertained by the cats, we've been slowly doing little things to the house. Doug fixed our shower door on Tuesday morning (I helped, but then cut myself with a razor blade so was not allowed to help anymore), and we moved the fish tank down to the sun/cat room to get it out of the bedroom. We then moved Doug's dresser over to where the fish tank was and put the TV on a taller table, so that when we're watching TV at night we can see all of the screen (and read the captions and/or subtitles, which we couldn't before and that was really bothering me). Again, photos: I also put up our new shower curtain today (no more vinyl fish in the first-floor bath): and gathered more stuff for our upcoming tag sale. I decided that these canisters should go into the tag sale pile, as I was never really crazy about them. They were functional and cheap, so they served their purpose, but I found some that I liked much better. Don't you agree?
Old:
New: I also planted some flowers this afternoon, right before it started to rain, which actually worked out well because then I didn't have to rummage through the garage looking for the watering can to water these babies. I wanted to put new flowers into both of our window boxes, but I ended up having only enough for one (guess I'm not too good at a) remembering just how big these particular window boxes are, and b) judging how many flowers should go into each one). No matter - I planted the few remaining plants I had in these flower pots that the former owners of the house left us, and will tackle the front window box this weekend. For now, I'm happy with my small gardening accomplishments for today and will proudly show them off here:
As for the rest of the day, I plan to check my work email and then wash some dishes, getting the place ready for when I make dinner tonight. That's another reason why I love to be on vacation - I can actually make dinner at home and eat at a reasonable hour. I wish I could be on vacation at least one day a week. That would be nice indeed.

A is for Awesome Adam

People are going to get tired of hearing me say how awesome Adam is, but let me say it again - Adam is awesome. He ran the Boston Marathon yesterday in 2 hours 47 minutes. Can you believe that? I can believe it - but it's still amazing. He hasn't always been a runner, and he hasn't been seriously training for all that long. He finished something like 365th out of about 25,000 runners, and he's the 6th place runner of all those from Connecticut. He was pretty bummed that he didn't run 2:45, and that the last two miles really killed his time, but all that aside, I think he was awesome. Clearly. A bunch of us stood out near the Kelley Statue in Newton, at the base of Heartbreak Hill (which is mile 19), to watch Adam run by, and while many runners (even some of the elite runners) looked pretty miserable by this point, Adam looked great. Didn't look winded, wasn't red and sweating, didn't have blood running down his cheek like one runner I saw in his pack. If Adam sticks with his running, which I'm sure he will, I have no doubt that he'll be able to be sub 2:40 next year.

Adam stayed with us before the race so that we could drive him to the start in Hopkinton on Monday morning. He arrived Sunday afternoon - here's a photo of him showing off his number: We hung out watching some videos on how to pick out a proper running shoe, how to tie shoelaces (do you tie granny knots? We did, until we watched this), and on Nike naked running camp. We then headed out to get Adam his dinner of choice - pizza on wheat crust - and to pick up some adhesive and polyseal for the piece that fell off our shower door (perhaps the subject of another post). Adam ate his entire pizza, and if he had been anyone else I would have been thinking, "What a pig!" In his case, I was thinking, "Shouldn't he order another?" Here are some photos of our favorite runner out the night before the big run: When we got back from dinner and Lowe's, Adam ate homemade cookie after homemade cookie (still carbo-loading) and watched You Don't Mess With the Zohan, a movie I never would have watched if Adam weren't around. It wasn't bad - but it wasn't that great, either. I'd say a solid effort, but nothing I'll watch again. After the movie we decided how we were going to drive to Hopkinton the next morning and Adam got his bag together for the next day. His coworkers made him a shirt that said, "Go Adam" on the front and "My Motto is Public Service" on the back, but the lettering was falling off so he decided not to wear it. I noticed that none of the elite runners wore shirts like this while running, so maybe that also factored into Adam's decision. Nevertheless, the gesture was a kind one. Here's Adam with his shirt:
We decided to leave at 6:30am on Monday to get Adam to Hopkinton by 7:15 - here are some photos of Adam and his gear before leaving Dedham: And here's one of Adam in the car on his way to Hopkinton: I won't go into too many details about the ride there, but I will say that next year we will be driving Adam to the shuttles in Boston that all the runners take out to Hopkinton. A) it will take less time to do that, and B) it will mean that we won't have to let Adam out of the car on the side of the highway five miles away from the high school in Hopkinton where all the runners start. I was so upset that we couldn't get Adam any farther to Hopkinton than we did, and I was paranoid that he'd never make it to where he needed to be. I was hoping and hoping that some kind person or maybe one of the shuttles would pick him up and give him a ride, and someone did - so he didn't have to walk all that far, after all. Thank god! Here is a photo of me driving back to Dedham - you can see one of the shuttles that we passed on our way back driving towards Hopkinton. We saw dozens of shuttles filled with runners. This is definitely the way to go next time, Adam. You live, you learn - at least everything worked out!
We met up with Mike, Chris, CHRIS, and Julie at about 10:30am at the Kelley Statue in Newton, and we were able to see some of the wheelchair racers as well as the elite runners. The wheelchair racers are amazing. Truly amazing. There was even a guy running by on two prosthetic legs. Now he was amazing. Thankfully Adam reminded us to bring our cowbell, so I had cowbell duty for the first half of our time at the marathon. At first I felt funny banging it like I was - it was rather quiet at first and not many people were out and cheering. But I warmed up to it, and after a while my arm got into a very steady rhythm. Here are some photos of the race before Adam ran by: These last two photos are of some pretty elite runners - one is of the first pack of elite women, with Kara Goucher in the pink sports bra and black briefs. I'm sure the female winner, Salina Kosgei, is in there somewhere. The last photo is of Deriba Merga, the men's winner, and ultimate winner of the marathon. It was pretty cool to see him run by, but not as cool as it was to see Adam run by. Everyone kept a look out for his yellow shoes, and we were able to spot him well before he got close. We cheered and banged the bell and got a wave from Adam - I'm glad that he knew we were there cheering him on! These aren't the greatest photos, but you can see Adam if you know what to look for. In the first photo, he's right behind a guy in a white shirt. In the second, he's at the far right waving his hand to us, and in the third he's to the left, a lone runner in a blue tank and black shorts. Once he ran by, we stood around for another couple of hours cheering on everyone else. People would have their names written on their arms, or on their shirts, or would have messages on their shirts. We'd scream them out. Doug eventually took the cowbell because my arm felt like it was going to fall off, and so he screamed and banged the bell. He was such a good fan that the official Boston Marathon media guy took a photo of his cowbell. Doug's enthusiasm was catchy and made the cold, windy day a little more bearable. Here's a photo of a boy and his bell:
At about 1:30pm I got a call from Adam - he had finished the race about 45 minutes earlier and now wanted to meet up so that we could take him back to Dedham to get his stuff and his car. We went to Newton Center to pick him up from the T. Doug greeted him with the camera: Adam requested a latte, so we brought the champ to a Starbucks for his protein, then headed back to Dedham where he was able to get cleaned up and relax a little before heading back to CT. We discovered that Adam was the #6 runner from CT, placing well before a few very good Nutmeg runners. I predict next year Adam will be one of the top 3 runners from CT. Adam showed us his medal for running - it's engraveable, so if anyone knows an engraver please get in touch with Adam so that he can put his time and rank on the back. Adam also relaxed with his latte before heading out and back to CT. I was amazed that Adam so easily slipped back into "normal" life after just having run 26.2 miles. I mean, by 4:30pm he was sitting in Dedham, drinking his latte and eating an orange, plotting his strategy for next year's marathon, talking about furlough days at the State, and lamenting Kara Goucher's loss. It would have taken me days to come back to my "normal" self after such an adrenalin rush. I would have been bouncy and jittery for days; either that or I would have been in bed feeling like death had run me over. But Adam just picked up and continued life, packing up his things and heading on back to CT.In many ways Adam amazes me, and this is just one of them. I mean, think of the hard work and dedication that running a marathon takes, at least running a marathon seriously and competitively. He's out there running a hundred or so miles a week, running several races a year. For fun. His diet and sleeping habits have completely changed. His life is now focused on running. He does it and likes it and excels at it and I find that kind of focus and determination to be inspiring. He won't inspire me to run (I don't believe the human body is designed to run that far; I'd much rather ride a bike than run like that), but he does inspire me to be healthy, be focused, and to enjoy what I do. Here's one last photo of Awesome Adam, pulling away from Dedham. We'll be out there next year, Adam, cheering you on (we promise next year to get you to the shuttles in Boston) - more cowbell!