yup, this is what I do at work all day
Latest
Ombré THIS, mofo
Ombré is really hot right now. I’m about five trends behind the current trend, so ombré was really hot about six months ago. Or so. It’s a super-hot hair-coloring trend. My hair isn’t long enough, or thick enough and my face and body (and birth date on my license) aren’t young enough, but that can’t stop me from fulfilling my follicular fantasies through my teenage daughter! Yes, I forced my first-born to sit in a salon chair for five hours while she was poked, prodded, combed, colored, tin-foiled, heated and blown dry.
I was forced to sit in said salon and drink mimosas while leafing through style mags and listening to head-pounding electronica. It was so worth it — she’s got the hair I’ve always wanted. Best part was the conversation at school the next day (as reported to me, I am not stalking my child in middle school, I swear):
Friends: OMG!!!!!! How did you talk your parents into letting you ombré your hair!!!?????!!!!
First-born: my mother made me do it
Heh, heh. According to the West Elm catalog, ombré is even hotter in home decor, as in ombré walls. I’ve got walls. I can do this ombré thing!
I jumped on YouTube and watched a few tutorials. Ok, one, for, like, three seconds but I have adult ADHD and can’t be held responsible. For anything. I actually just bought a mess of paint and the cheapest brushes and rollers I could find. I learned a few things.
I’m not a painter.
Painter’s tape should be applied prior to painting – it isn’t meant to be applied to spilled paint and then ripped off as quickly as possible to remove the paint (the way bandaids work with skin).
Don’t use plastic bags as a drop cloth if you are painting a stairwell. It’s an accident waiting to happen! Alright, not an accident waiting to happen, just a goddamn accident.
PAINT REALLY FAST!!!!!!!! Because the ombré effect only works if all gradients are still damp and you can blend them together seamlessly while running up and down the stairs without wiping out on garbage bag drop cloths.
Buy the second-cheapest brushes. The cheapest fall apart as soon as you look at them and then you’re painting walls with the teeny-tiny brushes from your kids’ toddler paint sets. And that really sucks.
I think the end result is exceptionally mediocre, if that. But it’s done and I am not painting anymore. In my favor: the stairwell is very poorly lit; I will ensure that all visitors have had a few; I will confiscate or destroy all corrective lenses before I allow anyone to ascend the stairs. And good luck getting down, mofos. I removed the handrail and lost the screws.
exceptionally mediocre
My Fabulous New Steam Cleaner
I just got this new steam cleaner and it is the greatest thing ever. I’ve been steam cleaning everything – walls, ceilings, mirrors, windows, chandeliers, smelly kids, smelly pug.
I just can’t stop. If it doesn’t move, I’m blasting it with searing hot steam — hot enough to peel your skin off. If you’re looking for something that can clean your grout and clean your fingers of identifying marks, you need this. My fabu hubby pointed out that I’m also enjoying a lovely steam facial and strenuous uppper-body workout while I clean. I mistakenly thought that hubby could help out and get a steam facial, too, but he doesn’t want to deprive me of the rejuvenating, youth-promoting benefits I’ve been reaping. Thanks, honey! I hope I remember to wait until you’re actually out of your Zegna suit before I go at it with puffs of 212 degree scalding steam!
Parvo Puppies — cute, but plagued by explosive, highly contagious diarrhea
Scarlem aka “the hood”
All was progressing smashingly well with my miracle steamer until I locked myself in the guest room. Somehow forgot that the guest room door lacks a door knob (and has since we moved in six+ years ago,ensuing in all sorts of hilarity and pathos). In my zeal to clean the door, I accidentally pushed it shut with the 150-pound steam cleaner.
Crikey! I did what anyone would do — jumped out the window and directly into the pricker bushes that the parvo puppies favored as their latrine. Wonderful!!! Now I can steam clean my socks (and feet). Quickly realized that since I live in Scarlem (the Harlem section of Scarsdale) I had exercised proper security and locked all exterior doors. So, I climbed back in the guest room window and watched Real Housewives until the kids’ babysitter arrived. And wondered why we didn’t convert the guest room closet into a wine cellar (closet).
La-Z-Boy: Saddlemakers for the Geriatric Set
Tried a Tad Coffin saddle yesterday – and needed a cherry-picker to get me off the dang horse. The saddle looked great and fit me perfectly – but this (rather) mature equestrian requires A LOT more padding. When will La-Z-Boy start making saddles? There’s a business initiative I could get behind – horrid pun intended.
Derv, He Said
REJECTED, IN FAVOR OF DERV
“Would you like a mini-pizza hors d’oeuvres?” is what I said. “Would you like a mini-pizza or derv?” is what he heard. Temerarious seven year-old that he is, he boldly chose “derv”.
Treepoline
Sandy came and went, but she left her mark — she turned our trampoline into a treepoline! What good will that do us? A lotta good, actually. We really needed a bigger and according to kid #3, a “bouncier” trampoline. Not sure I can deliver on the bouncier mandate, but bigger is always better when it comes to trampolines. A larger one wouldn’t have folded in half and gotten stuck in a tree for starters (I think) and when you have six kids staging a steel cage match on one simultaneously, ginormous is safer.
startling discovery
magnet therapy – it ain’t working
Back to our Briny Beginnings
why ride on the board when one can dive beneath it?
Yep, that’s kid #2, demonstrating an insouciantly elegant wipeout. No big splashes or wild arm waving, merely slipping beneath the water at a 90 degree angle to the surface of the earth and precisely 180 degrees opposite of where he really should be. Spent the past week at the shore, watching kids 1-3 wipe out on surfboards and skateboards while I wiped out doing high-risk things like walking and standing. When not falling down, I spent a lot of time in the water, wondering what it is about the ocean that seems so restorative and rejuvenating. Does bobbing about in the salty waves bring us back to a time of non-sentient innocence, cocooned from all the world’s sharp edges in an amniotic sac? Is the composition of the water so similar to our own salinity that we become one with the water? I don’t know about all that, but I do know that it’s working for me. 
6-packs at 7?
Working from home today and overheard my 7 year-old and his buddies talking about what workouts could “actually give you a 6-pack!” Huh? Since when are 7 year old boys concerned with 6-packs? Since when do they know about 6-packs? And why are they sitting on a trampoline and talking about workouts rather than working out on the trampoline – I thought that behavior was reserved for people like me, middle-aged suburbanites who like to talk about exercise over dinner and drinks.
snoeberry 