Vanity, vanity, all is vanity
Went grocery shopping today. Not that remarkable an activity, but when I got home, I realized that a good chunk of the eighty-or-so bucks I spent were accounted for by my hair products alone.
My hair is supposed to be a stripey blonde. Not a bimbo blonde, but blonde. I was properly this color until about high school, then my hair started to darken. Without asking me. Now, one of the few things I'll admit to being vain about is my hair. Some people like the way they look with dark hair. I look at my hair when it's dark, and think, "So dull, so dishwater boring. How depressing." So in college, I took steps to remind my hair what color it was supposed to be--i.e., I bought some do-it-yourself hair bleach. Pictures of me from my junior year in college are a wee bit alarming--I went a wee bit overboard. I've since learned that I can dye my hair to a "cool" caramel blonde and have it look natural. Bleached-nearly-white, unfortunately, doesn't work for me.
Right now, my roots are growing out dark again. So I bought myself a touch-up application. For me, that means I only bought one $20 box of coloring stuff. (L'Oreal Coleur Experte, in case anyone's interested. Ignore the silly pretentious spelling, the included instructions are clear, you get color and highlights in one box, and the conditioner that comes with it both smells good and does a great job of making even my hair silky.) I like to let my hair grow just as long as it possibly can, which with my genetics is about waist-length. So coloring it is a $40 proposition, if I'm going for all-over color. I generally go home and ask Mom to "do my hair"--she's not just good at trimming the split ends nice and neatly, but she's also good at arranging highlights so that they look natural. I love having highlight-stripes in my hair.
On top of the touch-up, I bought myself a tube of detangler. It's a new brand for me--which is not entirely voluntary. I have a history of jinxing hair products. In college, I loved Willow Lake Witch Hazel shampoo. Did a good job of cleaning, smelled great. (I tend to pick my personal grooming products by scent.) Then it disappeared off the market. Next was a detangler--which I think was a L'Oreal product, but it was yanked off the market. A third detangler that came in an orange bottle was discontinued a couple months ago. So buying the tube of new stuff will probably result in its downfall.
All told, those two products accounted for around $30 of my Kroger bill. I comfort myself by thinking that at least I don't wear makeup often enough to need to replenish that.
I'm also a very boring eater. I'm on what I call the Boredom Diet. It's very simple. I have a few established staples--Cheerios, applesauce, bananas, hamburger stroganoff, and cookies 'n cream ice cream. When I go to buy food, I'm trying to buy things I'm too bored with to eat just because they're there. That way I only eat when I'm actually hungry and need something to fuel my metabolism.
I currently have on hand both Nestle chocolate chips and most of a pound bag of M&Ms. They've been in the fridge, which is where I keep chocolate, for at least a month. I'm just not interested in them. I will, sooner or later, have a craving for solid chocolate, and at that point, will pour myself a ration of chocolate pellets. If I had to go out and get said chocolate, I'd eat a whole pound of M&Ms at a time. Having lived with my contrarian cravings for a while now, I just keep stuff on hand, and know I won't want it more than once every month or two.
Let's see. Not much else I feel like writing about at the moment. Both MythBusters and NE are on.
My hair is supposed to be a stripey blonde. Not a bimbo blonde, but blonde. I was properly this color until about high school, then my hair started to darken. Without asking me. Now, one of the few things I'll admit to being vain about is my hair. Some people like the way they look with dark hair. I look at my hair when it's dark, and think, "So dull, so dishwater boring. How depressing." So in college, I took steps to remind my hair what color it was supposed to be--i.e., I bought some do-it-yourself hair bleach. Pictures of me from my junior year in college are a wee bit alarming--I went a wee bit overboard. I've since learned that I can dye my hair to a "cool" caramel blonde and have it look natural. Bleached-nearly-white, unfortunately, doesn't work for me.
Right now, my roots are growing out dark again. So I bought myself a touch-up application. For me, that means I only bought one $20 box of coloring stuff. (L'Oreal Coleur Experte, in case anyone's interested. Ignore the silly pretentious spelling, the included instructions are clear, you get color and highlights in one box, and the conditioner that comes with it both smells good and does a great job of making even my hair silky.) I like to let my hair grow just as long as it possibly can, which with my genetics is about waist-length. So coloring it is a $40 proposition, if I'm going for all-over color. I generally go home and ask Mom to "do my hair"--she's not just good at trimming the split ends nice and neatly, but she's also good at arranging highlights so that they look natural. I love having highlight-stripes in my hair.
On top of the touch-up, I bought myself a tube of detangler. It's a new brand for me--which is not entirely voluntary. I have a history of jinxing hair products. In college, I loved Willow Lake Witch Hazel shampoo. Did a good job of cleaning, smelled great. (I tend to pick my personal grooming products by scent.) Then it disappeared off the market. Next was a detangler--which I think was a L'Oreal product, but it was yanked off the market. A third detangler that came in an orange bottle was discontinued a couple months ago. So buying the tube of new stuff will probably result in its downfall.
All told, those two products accounted for around $30 of my Kroger bill. I comfort myself by thinking that at least I don't wear makeup often enough to need to replenish that.
I'm also a very boring eater. I'm on what I call the Boredom Diet. It's very simple. I have a few established staples--Cheerios, applesauce, bananas, hamburger stroganoff, and cookies 'n cream ice cream. When I go to buy food, I'm trying to buy things I'm too bored with to eat just because they're there. That way I only eat when I'm actually hungry and need something to fuel my metabolism.
I currently have on hand both Nestle chocolate chips and most of a pound bag of M&Ms. They've been in the fridge, which is where I keep chocolate, for at least a month. I'm just not interested in them. I will, sooner or later, have a craving for solid chocolate, and at that point, will pour myself a ration of chocolate pellets. If I had to go out and get said chocolate, I'd eat a whole pound of M&Ms at a time. Having lived with my contrarian cravings for a while now, I just keep stuff on hand, and know I won't want it more than once every month or two.
Let's see. Not much else I feel like writing about at the moment. Both MythBusters and NE are on.