bathin beauty

I ordered this bathing suit from LandsEnd. It really fits awesome and I am pleased. There is a secret underlayer that is tight as a sausage but then the little overlayer looks floaty and casual. I swam and swam with the kids and I dont think I adjusted it once. no wedgie, no boob-pop-out, nothin!

There is no bathing suit that can help with my new grandma elephant legs but hopefully someday I will be able to work out and all that jazz. Right now I can barely stand up or sit back down due to extreme extreme back pain and stiffness. I cant even put on my own pants or socks.

Looking forward to summer!

wowee airbrush

http://homepage.mac.com/gapodaca/digital/bikini/bikini1.html
scroll over this craziness

then try the side ones

sigh

eyebrows and ponytails

I overplucked my eyebrows, big time about three weeks ago. It is easy to do. Just start plucking and go overboard and look like an idiot!

This takes time to regrow but they are looking alot better now. My natural eyebrow shape is very pointed and slanty, and somehow I ended up with more rounded, which looked horrible on me. The eyebrows are the frames of the face, and I am usually pretty good at this. You can tell if you did your eyebrows wrong if you look expression-less and wierd. Which I did.

My hair is finally long enough for ONE PONYTAIL!!!! I am so happy. Yes there are wispies but that looks cute if you have an actual outfit on. (With pajamas, not so much. )

Now I have a more sophisticated option for continuing to grow my hair and have the little bangs. My hair grows really really fast and I am certain that by this Christmas the memories of the little choppy Bob hairdo will be amazing to even recall.

I cannot wait until I really do have the long long hair that I crave. I will have two braids or one ponytail or one bun and I just love that. Hooray!

more special makeover tips for the frugal mama

So whats a time challenged flat broke Mama suppossed to do to look and feel KEWL? Try some of these cheapie tricks of mine and soon you will be the one who is as righteous on the outside as you feel on the inside!

Buy 2 or 3 essential oils that you love. I use patchouli, orange, dewberry and lavender on a regular basis. If I had my wish, I would also have rose, bergamot, tangerine and peppermint in my home.

These are now your perfume! You can mix them into cheap unscented lotion for body lotion. You can drop them in your bath. You can drop them onto your bed. You can shake them onto little cotton things and put them in the dryer. Now you are yummy and cool.

Wash your face with Neutrogena. It is under 3 bucks and the best stuff there is.

Scrub your face with the best scrub you can afford, and use a tiny bit of it. If you cant do a scrub, wash your face with a washcloth and the Neutrogena bar and dont be afraid to really scrub!

Save up your dollars until you have 20 of them. Do not hesitate one second while you plunk them all down for Origins' Charcoal mask. The stuff it sucks out of your face is worth it, and it lasts for a LONG time.

Cut your own hair
Color your own hair.

Does your hair make you look SUPER CHEERFUL? Do you look in the mirror and feel waaaay different inside than you look on the outside? I lived most of my life this way, but now I am free! Get a hairdo that is HAPPY AND FANTASTIC to you, despite what is in style with the freaks who you hate anyhow.
Get a hairdo that you think someone who would be extremely intriguing to you would have! There! Now the intriguing one is YOU!

If exercise makes you feel great and strong, then make time for it! Like you make time for blogging or watching survivor, make time for exercise IF YOU LIKE IT.

If eating healthy makes you feel great and strong, then take a few minutes and learn how to make a few nice things. Eat some fresh fruits and veggies everyday and you will be on the way to health! Apples are super cheap and so are carrots!

As far as body image stuff, just get some clothes that fit you right now. Dont suck, stuff, smash or hurt yourself. Dont wear giant baggies just to hide. You have a size that fits you nicely, so if it is 4 or 44, it is ok! Start with a pair of jeans. Try www.zafu.com to find a pair that will be cool for you. Mine were 19.99 Levis so it isnt too expensive.

If you are broke, I understand. Try to come up with een one or two shirts a month, just plain basic stuff under 15 bucks. Old Navy and Target are cool enough to not feel like some mutt and plain enough that no one will notice if you wear them ALL the time.

When you can afford to, try to work in a few special pieces. Mine was my magic skirt from www.muddypeople.com from christmas. I wear it twice a week, or so, and thats fine by me! then I can be that one girl with the hippie skirt!

If you do find a key pice that rocks your world then try to get another one when you can. This goes for shoes, too. Be that Mama who has 4 colors of ____. Now you are on your way to a LOOK!

Hilarious cheap sunglasses rule. Get a pair and rock em.

Wet n Wild makes the best lipliner...99 cents...mix it with chapstick and now you look like you have nice lipstick on.

I would not use cheapo foundation. If you wear this, spend as much as u can or just skip it and rub a little bronzer (bonne bell 4 bucks) into your lotion.

2 dolar eyelash curler
Maybelline Great Lash (3 bucks)
now you have fabulous cat eyes!

Citre shine shine spray--the original and best. Now your fried and dyed hair looks shiny ; )

But some lame headbands and cover them with fantastical fabrics. You could hot glue them or just regular glue.

When your baby was up all night for the last 9 years and you havent eaten a whole food in weeks...when coffee is all you drink, there is no hope of a shower today, and all your cool clothes are in the hamper smashed under the spaghetti, juice, poo, and pee things from the little darlings....try this ray of hope:

Spread Noxema (that old minty wierd white stuff) all over your face. Leave it on.
Put on a new outfit, undies, socks, the whole thing. Put on new perfume. Brush your hair and try to scrape it into little pigtails or some kind of barrette or hat. Wash off the Noxema. Brush your teeth. Stretch high high high into the sky. Stretch down down down to your toes. Put on actual shoes. Take a B vitamin and turn on your favorite music.

Now you are ready for more coffee and nursing on the couch! But now you feel like a real live Kewl-Mama!

makeover tips for under 10 bucks

So now that I have the digi camera you will be treated to more real pics and less fantastic wig ladies. I dont know if this is a move I will regret but hey.



So this was my hair. I walked into the bathroom and came out about 55 minutes later .....


















And had this hair!













You, too, can save thousands of dollars and scads of horrible humiliating loser idiot hairdressers who dont listen to you and who get rich off of your IMAGINED lack of talents will roll in their graves as you walk in beauty for under 10 bucks
all
the
time!

I put on the brown hairdye. When covering bleached hair, do not use anything that is described as Golden or Ash. You want to look for Natural or no word at all when describing the BROWN. I used Nutrisse's Medium Natural Brown. Then I put in tiny stripes of Manic Panic pillar red.


When cutting your own hair, use a sharp scissors and really study how the hair falls and acts when you are living your life. Figure out where layers and bangs are coming from, like at the top of your head--and then cut! Use two or three mirrors for the back. Allow for shrinkage.

I have re dyed it several time since then (december) always the same Medium Natural Brown. I have cut the bangs MANY times since then. I have opted to not redo the red stripes but am seriously considering Blue, Green, or Purple as an overcast.

Greta suggested that I should do seasonal hair, which I am all in favor of and adore her for her open minded artistic cool.
Blue hair in winter
Green hair in spring
Orange and Pink in summer
Red in fall

LOVE this idea...

To do the overcast (my word) I will be using a highlighting kit, as I like the thickness of the bleach they give you. I plan on doing a large amount of the outer layer of my hair wit the bleach and then after washing it out, and blow drying it (very important when using manic panic!) I will fill in all the blonde parts with the fun color.
I'll let u know!

better times

Oooooh man things are lookin up.

I got a real live BED! A bed, an actual gorgeous bed! We have been sleeping on the floor on a mattress for years now...and now we are grown ups in a real bed. I went to IKEA with my friend yesterday and got some cool stuff. But nothing wierd or really indulgent or dumb--you cannot shake the "frugal" out of me that quickly, even it is my once a year shopping time.

We got our tax return and it is all allotted out for me to get a car, pay some bills, start a savings account, and some was allotted for a bed/house stuff. Hooray! IKEA is the funnest place ever to me and with no babies with me it was a whole different thing. thanks Dada!

I also got us a vacuum, a fake Dyson--meaning it is yellow : ) but for 70 bukcs instead of 400, it really does clean! It practically drags you across the house! My floors are clean now...

Somehow my hair is loveable now, too--funny how that works--hee hee so nothing off track, still growin and ponytailin...

I almost won a van on Ebay, but lost the auction at the last minute. Im sure there is one for us out there--I am just tired of waiting!

February is hard, and it is already the 11th. Breathe.......soon we can go outside even if we don't have a car, walking and gaining strength. I cannot WAIT.

Here is our bed:

Time for a little boost?

I dont know what to do now about my hair.

I am trying to keep things in perspective.

Is it my hair or everything in my life that is broken/absent/f#$%-ed up right now that is really wrong.

Do we all change our hair when things are out of control?

Can I really wear two tiny pigtails until it is "long"?

Will I get two tiny bald spots or anything like that?

Do I actually look cute/ok/human?

Would an outer coating of bright red be fun?





When I picture a new hairdo, I always picture this gorgeously made up face, clean and matching clothing, a fresh perky outlook....



So would dirty filthy damaged stump ponytails with a cream cheese, jelly, ketchup crusted too small t shirt, snowman flooded pj pants, woolen legs, pale grey skin and zits on the tiredest tiredest tiredest Mama EVER really look that much awesomer with red stripes in them?




God I cannot wait until my imaginary new life starts soon. Ya know, the traveling jaunty mommy I could be once we get the vacuum, dryer, car and health all back?

Maybe I will wait to do the color-job until then.

i worry/human rights

As a mother who is home with four little kids all day long,

I miss the human right to have moods. My friends say "Joy, its OKAY to not be happy all the time." But do they really get what this entails? The reprocussions? They do not.

I miss the human right to be ill and have a day off work. God do I wanna call in sometimes. Are my unused vacation days being accrued somewhere?
I miss the human right to sleep and a daily shower.
Like the vast majority of grown-ups, I have someone at home who needs me. A dog. A roommate. Even the jet settiest TV stars seem to have an iguana or something keeping them from true unhindered autonomy. Sometimes I think it is in our nature, to have someone or something that needs us, but mosttimes I think living away from a tribe is unnatural in itself and the root of the problem so there lies the problem right away, no communes in metro detroit, etc.

So If YOU get sick, do you get to "call in"? Do you get to lay on the couch all day? What about if you had major surgery? Do you worry about this kind of stuff?
Sometimes I don't dare try a sport or anything even remotely physical, for fear of the real possibility of a twisted ankle, broken arm, or worse. What would I do?

I think I do not have anyone in my life who could help me out. Is this common?

When I had a c-section, Steves work called him in the second day I was still in the hospital. My friend took my three kids to the movies and cesarland. Steve's parents raked our leaves. My sister, bless her heart, tried to hire me a housecleaning lady, but she turned out to be the laziest most un-helpful hinderance and when I came out at the end of day one with the fact that she did not help at all, and in fact, she made us all feel incredibly indescibably awkward and nervous in our own home, and thanked my sister profusely but asked that the lady not come back, my mom stopped calling me for over 3 weeks because she deduced that since the cleaning lady was of a different racial background than we are, that I therefore taught my children to be racist. But beyond all this initial flurry of drama and bizarre misery, I, like too many other newly postpartum women especially those who have been unmercifully sleep deprived, endured major abdominal surgery, and especially those who have other children at home who need care, was all alone all day long. This is unnaceptable. I could not feel more strongly about any other subject matter. It tears at my soul. this abandoning of new mothers is absolutely unacceptable and across the board unheard of in any other developing, third world or developed nations. But ooooh boy are we shocked and concerned when postpartum psychoses set in, huh...?

What I needed, of course, was my husband--- and this familial support is what we all have a right to, in theory, the free use of the Family and Medical Leave Act. As long as you have over 50 employees at your place of work and you have been there a year or more, you are entitled to up to TWELVE WEEKS unpaid (hey what did you expect this ain't Sweden) leave for anything like birth, caring for a family member, adoption, death, illness, etc. Except if you try to use this, you will most likely get fired.

Makes me wanna sing the star spangled banner just a little more off key at the next ballgame. It will be my secret.
I do hate America. or at least how we treat our women and children and families. Please understand this.Hate is not a family value. This has been a gay support cry for a while but it applies to everyone.

So, with all this knowledge, why would I expect a rally for my imagined recreational sports injuries?

So I am afraid. Afraid to go curling, afraid to roller blade, worried when we sledded. I feel so valued and so terribly vulnerable. For a headstrong experimental feet-first Aries, this is hard for me. I dont want to do the wise thing. I dont want to plan. I hate the Small Details.I want to have a blast. But I worry.
I guess this is true for everyone, we're all one slip on a grape away from utter destituion and ultimate demise.
What would happen to your life if you slipped on the grapes?
and my point:
what can we be doing to prepare for it?