psych...

so, one of my friends (thank you ashley) answered my question about the sketchy referring URLs that were showing up for the blog.  apparently they are just spam sites, trying to get you to visit.  so for now, i will leave the blog public.  sorry for the back-and-forth.  but thank you to everyone who sent me your email because you wanted to keep reading.  you warmed my heart.

 i painted my nails when silas was in mexico.  also, note my crackly, dry hands.  

for the first time in a couple years i have a phone that is not just the cheapest prepaid phone i could find.  it takes very decent pictures (see detailed photo above of my wrinkly hands).  

behold, le desmond:

i started reading the Old Testament (King James Version) at the beginning of this year...i'm currently at the end of 1 Samuel.  i haven't read the OT since high school, when we studied it in seminary (Bible study class before school).  now i'm reading it straight through and, honestly...i'm not sure what i think of it.  i have a lot of questions about a lot of things.  

i took the boys to the mall to play today (and to ride the "alligator", of course...it's not a real mall experience without a good elevator trip).  while we were walking around after, i stepped into sephora on a whim.  when a sales associate asked me if i was looking for anything specific, my brain said, "no, just browsing," and my mouth said, "yes, i want a natural-looking pink lipstick". 

i walked out ten mintues later with a $13 tube of "natural-lip-color-enhancing" lip balm.  assertiveness fail.  you know i can't say no to those people!  happy early birthday to me, i guess.  

it is a very nice lip balm.  and it does enhance my lip color quite beautifully.  (i tried to take a picture but taking a phone shot of my lips without getting my creepy giant nostrils in the picture is impossible.)

what else was i going to talk about?  oh yes, my hair.  ;)

i dyed it last night!  it's not a drastic change, i was just trying to get it back to something close to my natural color.

before:

here you can see the nice two-tone color i've got going on (from the last time i dyed my hair).

after:

i'm not entirely sure what i think yet.  i'm fairly certain i like it, and i think it's close to my natural shade.  time will tell though, i usually have a lot of issues with my home dye jobs fading/turning red.

today was another bad hair day (the back is giving me issues...a bunch of funky, uneven layers).  unfortunately i can't just pull it up into a ponytail.  instead, i am left to concoct hairstyles that can only be achieved through artifice and an arsenal of bobby pins.

and here's a picture of the stupid back.

i know it doesn't look that bad in the pictures but that's because i've been fighting it for two days, trying to straighten the [heck] out of it.  the uneven-ness and multiple lengths is not something i can attempt to fix with a cheap straightener, unfortunately.

that $%#@ mullet/duck tail.

playing grown up

i'm not much of a makeup person.

i really want to be.  i admire women who know how to transform their look--who can go from day to evening with a sweep of smoky shadow or bold lipstick.  there's a certain power in knowing how to flaunt your femininity.  i want that power.

my "evening look" is very similar to my "day look"...just a little more smudged.  what i thought was a "fresh face" in the morning light usually turns into the "i just rolled out of bed after sleeping in my makeup" look--my mascara has traveled down to create a dark ring under my eyes and my eyeliner, if i'm wearing any, has mysteriously disappeared.

i have a few tubes of lipstick that i picked up on a whim.  once or twice a year, i break them out and pretend i'm going somewhere fancy.  (a.k.a. i just wear them around the house.)

two weeks ago i wore heels to church.  i own exactly one pair of heels and that three hours was the most wear they've gotten in the last, oh....four years or so.

i want to have plans tonight.  i want a reason to look pretty and wear my heels and a gorgeous little dress  (note to self: buy a gorgeous little dress).  even though i've pretty much come to terms with my jeans-and-tee personality, sometimes i still want to live the glam life a little.

we tend to keep it pretty low-key around here, though.  most of us don't even bathe daily.

and that's okay, too.  i can just pretend to be glamorous.

maybe i'll start teaching the boys the fine art of dress-up....