Or…..”My Life As A Damp, Crabby and Depressed Old Hogwart”. Okay, I don’t exactly know what a hogwart is (isn’t it some sort of creature out of the Harry Potter books or something? Or are they real snorting, snarfeling things that root through the undergrowth and resemble actual hogs?) I haven’t read the Harry Potter books, and I’m too darned lazy to look it up or ask DH, who probably knows, because he’s an avid National Geographic and Scientific American reader. He knows just about everything about everything. If that sounded snide, it probably was. He’s getting on my nerves, but since everything and everybody else is, too, I’ve got to figure this is mostly me and not him/them.)

Okay. I have gained a pound and a half. Way to GO, eh? Oh, the weather - the weather. I have already berated myself soundly in my previous post for complaining about the weather when others around the world have it so much worse, so I’ll just do without that disclaimer stuff. I am feeling oh, so sorry for myself - and, I suppose for my fellow east-coasters as well, but mostly for myself - because this summer, thus far, is turning out to be such a bust. Presumably there’s still a chance for it to get better, but that kind of presumption isn’t doing me one iota of good at this particular point in time. I am soooo tired of waking up in the morning to gray skies, walking around all day in gray, gray, gray, and then having the gray slowly fade to black as night takes over again. I can practically feel the grayness seeping through my pores, and I feel bloated and over-hydrated.

I’ve been indulging here and there in stuff I don’t need to be eating - a piece of cake here, a cookie there - and you all know the slippery slope that can have you sliding down in no time at all. An ounce here, and ounce there, and pretty soon, instead of losing that last damned ten, you’re trying to lose that last damned fifteen, then twenty - and then you’re disgusted with yourself all over again, depressed, miserable….and hogwarty. So a pound and a half is no laughing matter - not something that someone my age can take lightly: not when losing it is like losing twenty would’ve been twenty years ago.

I got my hair frosted and cut. Well, I didn’t “get” it frosted. DH and I did it. Really. I mean, isn’t that a scream? I bought two of those frosting/highlighting kits, and used the plastic cap that comes in them - I pulled through all the front and front/side hairs and DH did the rest. And then I mixed up a double batch of bleach, slathered it all on, covered it with the plastic overcap thingie (really just a rectangularly-shaped plastic bag thing) and waited for an hour. YES, a whole hour! My hair is beastly to bleach down. I even added a drabber to the bleach, because my natural hair is full of red and orange tones, and if you don’t leave the bleach on long enough for all those tones to wash out, I end up looking like a walking Maple tree in October - wonderful fall colors, doncha know? Unfortunately, I can’t seem to find a hairdresser who isn’t scared to death of being sued - scared that leaving the bleach on for so long will make my hair all fall out, or something - so doing it my/ourselves is my only option. My only option if I want a silvery blonde as opposed to a “golden” blonde. I’ve been too old for the “golden” blonde look since I was 30. Just never liked it on me. I’ve always leaned towards the ashy tones, and now that I have more than a few grays coming in, staying with the ashy tones makes perfect sense, because the grays blend right in and I don’t have to keep bleaching my hair quite so regularly as I would have to if I wasn’t getting those grays in. Anyway, I have ample hair, but it’s rather fine, and bleaching it adds a little body, so that’s a help, as well. So, we - DH & I - frosted it, and did quite a nice job - I guess his being an artist and all helps with pulling those hairs through, but I can’t for the life of me figure out why it should. I just know he does a good job with it, so why should I pay a hairdresser who will only end up giving me that awful “strawberry blonde”stuff, anyway? I did, of course, go to the hairdresser for the cut - I have a woman who can really CUT hair, and that’s what I needed as well - needed to freshen up the color and then get it shaped nicely again. I haven’t had it done in over a year, and the sides had somehow grown shorter than the back and the back was all long and straggly - lately I’ve just been wearing it up in a banana clip because there was no shape to it when I let it hang loose. So now it’s all fairly uniform in length - three or four inches below my ears -  but with choppy layers that give it some oomph and body, and it looks quite decent, if I DO say so myself. Having better hair is a plus right about now, but I have to say that what’s been simmering in the back of my mind for a few days now is maybe doing a few sessions at a tanning salon. A little crazy - what with the skin cancer warnings and all, and the salons aren’t nearly the rage they were a few years back - but I am seriously suffering from a lack of sunlight (and vitamin D, naturally) and am feeling like 20 minutes in a tanning booth might cheer me up a little. Something needs to, and that’s the truth.

Oh, Anniegirl - that needing to clean the house bit hits home more than you realize. I love, love, LOVE decorating and hate, hate, HATE that dull, repetitive, day-to-day upkeep. Back when I had a little bit of money and the kids were growing up, I always had a cleaning person - I always worked full time, and when I was home, I wanted to spend quality time with my kids, not be up to my elbows in housework. Now, of course, I have no little babies at home anymore (they are STILL my “babies”, you understand - they just don’t live with me) and there’s only me and DH - and he’s home all day, so I don’t feel like I should work all day and then come home and clean up after HIM, if you know what I mean. I COOK - because his cooking is so abominable (although he’s managed to bake some chicken and roast some sweet potatoes for a few suppers, and they’ve been perfectly edible) - but I don’t expect to have to clean, and haven’t done very much of it for quite a while, now. Of course DH doesn’t clean as thoroughly as I would (if I had to) so there are some things that I tolerate for weeks at a time and then just give it a good shot myself from time to time. But overall, I’m not real happy with the state of my house - and feeling too damned gray and depressed to jump up and tackle any of it right about now. We actually have a great screened-in porch that I’ve been meaning to scrub down really good and set up our wicker table and outdoor chairs, which is as we speak floundering in the basement - hang some plants out there, but haven’t even bothered. Who wants to sit out in a screened-in porch to watch it rain? Blah, blah, and DOUBLE-blah is what I say to it all!

My son just got a job designing videogames. Go figure. Yes, I knew he was really good with computer programming and such, but had no idea that he could actually do this sort of stuff. Quite a substantial increase in income for him. I guess he won’t be moving back to Massachusetts anytime soon, so I may as well start searching for inexpensive (IS there any such thing?) flights to LA and back for the fall. I’m actually looking forward to it - it’s smoggy in the mornings out there, but generally speaking, there’s not much rain, ever. That’s what I really, really need - someplace where there’s not much rain, and there’s the BIG BONUS of my son being there, as well. I do miss that child terribly.

So, the fourth of July has come and gone. We went to a cook-out at the home of some of my daughter’s best friends - a huge family affair with parents, grandparents, grandchildren, and every age human imaginable. I brought my famous potato salad that I can’t even eat myself anymore because of this allergy I’ve developed in recent years to eggs. I have a gigantic aluminum bowl, and into this gigantic bowl, I threw one large (diced) onion, two stalks of (diced) celery and a dozen hard-boiled eggs. I then proceeded, using my old-fashioned tin hand-chopper, to chop that stuff into the finest consistency imaginable. I chopped, literally, until my wrists were hanging limp and useless. (Oh, not entirely so - but they were sore, and that’s the truth!) Then, I cut up eight pounds of potatoes cooked perfectly and refrigerated overnight into approximately 1 1/2 inch cubes and added them to the mixture. Then I mixed all that stuff together with *lite* Miracle Whip and a few good squirts of Gouldens brown mustard. Oh. MY! Now I’ve got to say that, simple as that recipe is, my potato salad is known and revered from here to Florida and out to the west coast and back (courtesy of my son, of course) and I only make it three or four times a year just so people don’t get too used to having it and it’s not a “treat” anymore. (LOL). So there you go - a nice, crowd-pleasing, non-diet-friendly summer recipe. (Don’t for a minute think that using *lite* Miracle Whip will do you any good whatsoever!) So, I took my potato salad and a great big package of Italian turkey sausages, and off we went. And guess what! It sprinkled, it stayed cloudy, and all in all, it was a gray, unpleasant day YET AGAIN. Some intrepid folks swam about and threw a beach ball back and forth in the pool (which they said was lovely and warm in contrast to the chilly day) and there were a few games of kickball and a badminton game over in one corner of the lawn. I can’t say I was able to muster much celebratory spirit, although I smiled and told a joke or two (Old song that you young ‘uns wouldn’t remember called “The Tracks of My Tears”. “They say I’m the life of the party because I tell a joke or two….dee dee dah dah (hum here because I don’t remember the words) but something about inside being miserable and you can tell from “the tracks of my tears”) Well, I don’t have any tear tracks, but I’ve gained a pound and a half and I’m vitamin D deprived, and that’s not exactly conducive to shouting with joy. It was okay, though - the folks are very pleaant, and it was nice seeing them and all, but a ray or two of sunshine would’ve been soooooo much more pleasant.

We were planning to go up to our White Mountains retreat over this weekend - I actually took Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday off in order to prolong it, but now we’ve cancelled. The weather predictions are for more rain and thunderstorms all week long until Friday, so there seems very little point in trekking up to the woods to experience more damp and grayness up close and personal. I’m going to go to work on Tuesday and Wednesday and save those vacation days for better weather. I will take Monday off, though. I really do need the break from work. I spent all this past week working on a huge, and extremely technical and complicated grant application, and my brain needs a little down time.

And that, folks, is “all she wrote”. Looks like plenty to me. A little more than plenty, but hey - I had a lot of kvetching to do!

Hope you are all doing well, happy, and most of all, I hope you haven’t gained a damned pound and a half!

Hugs,

Z