Twelfth December , Two Thousand Ten

Today, today, today. Gosh, what DID I do today? It was kind of mushy. Do you know what I mean? Where the morning and afternoon drags on, and you don't do a ton of concrete stuff, but lots of little things. That's Sunday-ish.

We woke up early today, but who am I kidding. When you're Noah's parent, you wake up early everyday! My hope is, is that for all the lack of sleep in these early years, he'll be the most lazy, most sloth-like teenager ever, sleeping in until noon at every chance he gets. Maybe even naps after school.

Sleep is a sign of weakness for Noah. Today a very rare thing happened, he fell asleep in the car briefly. We pulled into the parking space at the grocery store. He shot awake. I said, " Noah, were you sleeping!?" And he said, "No! I was just resting my eyelids, they were so tired from going up and down all morning." Lol. Ok Noah.

So we woke up early, which was fine, because I wanted to see how much snow we had gotten overnight! We have this oddly shaped window in our bedroom that I stare out of from bed. It's about five feet long from side to side, but only two feet high, and four feet and a half off the ground. It's some kind of 1950's take on contemporary I think. It frames the arborvitae trees outside perfectly. A five foot long painting of emerald green, and today the green was mixed with glittering white when I woke up!

It was so glorious out! The snow was falling in these HUGE flakes. I was so glad that it was coming down. Two years ago it began to snow in mid-December, we had a white Christmas and a snowy winter. I was happy. Last year it snowed much later, it was a pretty warm winter with not too much snow for the most part. I was not happy.

After we got the coffee brewing, I hennaed my hair. I've talked about the fact before, that people in my family go prematurely gray. It's not fun at all, to be thirty three, with lots of white hair. On top of that, I'm allergic to one nasty chemical called "PPD" for short, that's in 98% of all hair dyes. It binds the color to the hair. Soooooo...... about a year ago, after trying EVERYTHING, I came to the bummer conclusion that henna would be my only option. (Well, ok, a few months ago I found a henna based product that has just recently gone on sale in the U.S. called Surya Henna. It works so well and doesn't contain PPD! It still has some chemicals though, so after using it several times, I've taken a break for a bit and switched back to the all natural henna. ) What I've come to find is this: Henna comes in a limited number of shades from red to reddish brown, to brown to black. The red is made from the dried henna plant, and the darker shades are derived from the indigo plant. Henna and indigo are mixed in varying proportions to produced the desired color. Through trial and error, I've learned that the more indigo the color has: 1.) the less time it lasts and 2.) the more green-ish it appears on white hair. When I used red shades the colors stayed much longer and appeared red, which although not my ideal, it's way better than puke green hair.

This was the first time that I used the purely red henna. I wanted more of an auburn, but it was sold out. I threw caution to the wind and decided to give it a shot. Last night, just before bed, I mixed up the henna batter so it could sit and cure overnight. You mix the henna powder with warm coffee and an egg until it's just like chocolate cake batter! Cocoa powder and cinnamon are other things you can add in to make your hair smell wonderful. Sometimes I also fold into the batter plain or vanilla yogurt to help condition my hair. The henna makes your hair thick and shiny, it's wonderful!

Unfortunately, it all came out crazy red. Very, very red. The top of my head is oddly super red, where the white hair is growing in. The rest is auburn. It's quite annoying, but I'd rather have different color hairs than white hair. If you see me, and I look like Woody Woodpecker, just ignore the oddness and know it wasn't by choice! Things will fade, I'm not too worried.

After I turned into a Woodpecker, we ventured out into the white and drifty snow! Although, it was not very drifty, just really wet. We started at Bed Bath and Beyond for a new rug to place inside the back door. Wet boots need a home. There is nothing, NOTHING I hate more in this world than misplaced drops of melting snow upon the floor. The little tiny puddles that one would accidentally step in while one is wearing warm socks, or worse yet, tights. Argh! Just thinking about it makes my skin crawl. Wet socks and tights. Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

Next we went to Target, AGAIN, ha! You knew I was going to go there, of course, right!? Jon needed boots, his old shoveling pair died. We also needed Febreze. What an exciting life we lead huh!?

The final stop was Trader Joes. By now we were all tired and my Uggs dangerously wet. I was millimeters away from wet sock doom. It was crowded, it was claustrophobic. We jetted through. I did buy my new favorite....Trader Joes Seaweed Snack! Yum.

What else did we do? Some laundry. I tried to wash a couple sweater dresses instead of dry cleaning them. So far, so good, but the tag did say you could wash in cold. I also pulled out our winter sheets and some some warm blankets. We washed one of the heavy satin blankets, not as good an idea.

Da da da daaaaaah! Then we did THE. BEST.THING. We took our freakin' box spring, out of the basement, Febrezed the heck out of it, and FINALLY put it on our bed. WHAT were we thinking!? Sleeping on only a mattress for a couple of years? A SOFT mattress at that! What! I ask you WHAT is wrong with us? We have this low to the ground, silly, slightly contemporary bed. It looks better without the box spring, but does it feel better? NO! My back is often sore. Please cross your fingers that this helps.

Then, just to help my back feel better. ;)

I proceeded to go outside with Jon and shovel like a crazy woman. It was so much fun though. I shoveled our front walk and porch and sidewalk. Then, I did the same for our neighbor on the left and the neighbor on our right! Then we helped the neighbor across the street! I loved being outside. When we were done and came back inside, I was three feet tall, permanently hunched over at the waist. Lol. Can you picture it? I think I over did things.

Bless Jon's little soul, he loves cooking, and I'm just fine with that! He decided to start dinner, so Noah and I went to laugh at our now super tall bed. When seeing how high our bed was with the box spring, he started laughing hysterically. It does look ridiculous, as it towers over our low profile headboard and foot board. "Dad, did you feed your bed?!" Noah called. We climbed our way up, and settled in for a game of Colorku together. Which I quickly messed up. Which then turned into watching a DVR'd episode of Kid Vs. Kat and me passing out in my new giantly tall bed.

The smell of chicken piccata, mushroom risotto and green beans wafted into the bedroom and woke me up. Or it could have been Noah jumping on the bed and just about squashing my head, while screeching something about Kid vs. Kat being over. So we ate dinner. It was good. Noah revolted, there was more than one color/item/texture on the same plate.

Ah so is life.

Fast forward through the mundane.....clean up, email, phone call, bed time story.

Jon and I are sitting here on the couch in the living room watching Iron Chef. His cousin Joshua Applestone is a guest judge! He is a Vegan turned celebrity organic butcher. Battle Pork Fat!

That is SO nasty. Seriously, good for Joshua*, but my god, this is THE most nasty Iron Chef EVA! O.m.g.

Jon also made a Gingerbread bread in a bundt pan for Noah's breakfast tomorrow. Joy. What a nice weekend. :)

*Well, actually, in theory I am glad that Joshua has success, but I'd far rather him be an organic celebrity green bean farmer. I ate meat tonight for the first time in forever. By all practical purposes, I am a vegetarian 99.8% of the time. Tonight I reluctantly agreed to eat free range chicken for Jon, in hopes that it would get Noah to eat protein. It was delicious, but I still felt very sad.