Chapter 28 - Your hair will look so good, it's a crime!

There was a brief time in my life when I was a regular at a salon.  In my mid to late 20's I went to a wonderful stylist and friend (as did several of my friends, and my sister - we all loved going to Jimmy) and I was very good about keeping up with regular appointments.  Those days are long gone and you can tell by looking at me.

I could blame it on laziness, I could blame it on the fact that I have two small children and keeping up my appearance has moved way down on the list of priorities.  On the days I work from home, I have to remind myself to throw on a hat or pull my hair up into a ponytail before I run out the door. It could be that I don't want to shop around for another salon that I like and that's convenient to get to, and it could also be that paying for Lily's next couple months on the "Fun Bus" at school is a better use of $100 than getting highlights in my hair.  But, really these are all just excuses for the fact that I'm too lazy to make an appointment and too busy to keep it, and therefore my long (and getting longer) hair suffers. Oh well.  So, I'm low maintenance about my long hair....but I decided that I would try to keep up with it and make an improvement.  Since I had a few different highlights going on and my hair was various shades of light to dark blonde, I decided to get some home hair color and try to get it all back to the same shade.

I'd colored my hair at home before, and wasn't nervous or worried about it, but I did want to try to find a brand that wouldn't kill my hair with chemicals, I settled on one that I had never used before called Olia by Garnier (I think it's new) --

Anyway, as I said, I've colored my hair before and the box always comes with a pair of what they call "colorists gloves".  Easy as that! -- Just open the box and now you are officially a "colorist".  Nice.  Well, every one that I've ever used had either an opaque pair, or usually a clear pair.  But wait...what's this?  I open up the box of Olia and here's what I find:

Black gloves! -- YES!  I had to take a picture.  

 These gloves were awesome!!  Suddenly I felt like I was committing a crime.  (and if you saw how my hair turned out, well...that's not so far off) -

Anyway, don't believe me, just try it!  Try doing some simple things around your house while wearing shiny black gloves and all of a sudden, it feels sinister.  Make mashed potatoes while wearing gloves, you'll feel like you're about to poison someone.  Take the milk out of the fridge, you'll feel like you're stealing it.  Check your email...you'll feel like a cyber stalker! - Sort the mail, you're a spy!  Pet your cat, fill the sugar bowl, arrange some flowers... (for some reason those last three feel especially fiendish)

So, I can't say that I've learned my lesson about coloring my hair at home, but I can say that it was totally worth it for the gloves.

Chapter 27 - A reason to write....

– Though I promised myself I would write more often and keep up with this blasted blog, I have let a gaping hole of time go by without writing or posting.  It’s not that I don’t want to write, and I most certainly enjoy it, rather I have realized that the issue is the subject matter and the haphazard way that I went from a specific topic to a jumble of ideas in the life of this blog.  The whole reason I started it in the first place was because of my travels on the bus.  While commuting through New York City with my children on the M15 bus every day, I had one ridiculous thing happen after another and would usually post about it through my facebook status.   After the 100th person said to me "you need to write a book about this" or "start a blog", I decided I would give it a try.  Since I have two kids and a full time job, "spare time" isn't in my arsenal....so I opted for the blog over the book.  (I would love to write a book in my spare time.  Look for it on shelves in 2025)

Anyway, as far as the blog went, for a while subject matter presented itself to me every day in the form of some random lunatic on public transportation (hence the name of this blog:  MadMom:Tales of Public Transportation...which no longer makes any sense)

Then in the spring of 2012…we moved.

We left NYC and I no longer take public transportation (except for my sweet sweet ride on the ferry to Manhattan, but that is WORLDS away from commuting with two babies on a city bus every day).  I’m still a “MadMom” from time to time, but my trials and tribulations and all around nonsensical stories have nothing to do with the good old M15 bus anymore.  So, for a while I wrote about our new life in the suburbs and the transition from raising kids in NYC to raising kids in a small town in South Jersey (you are my wife….goodbye city life! – and if you don’t know the Green Acres theme song, then there is nothing more I can think of to say to you…and if you don’t know Don’t Cry For Me Argentina then ….okay, I’ll stop now – sorry) – So, from there I stumbled into my daily list of 25 Days of Ridiculous Things I See In Holiday Catalogs, which gained me a nice little regular group of readers every day and also clued me in to the fact that I actually CAN find the time to write a little bit every day if I commit to it.

 (also....this stuff was just too easy to make fun of)

And what did I do with that realization….I stopped writing.   Fail.  With the exception of our insane day at Chuck E. Cheese, I haven't kept up with this at all.  So, here we go – this is my true and sincere attempt to stay on top of the blog and give myself permission to write about anything and everything.   Writing for the sake of writing, and hopefully making someone laugh along the way.  

Though I wouldn’t call myself a “writer”, I do love to write.  I guess that sounds odd, but I feel like that title applies to people with tweed jackets and a certain amount of talent.  But, for different reasons and in different ways, I have always loved to write.  Early on my writing was solely for the purpose of emoting to a boy that didn’t like me, or one who did, or one who didn’t know I existed, or one who broke my heart.  Looking back at this writing, it’s amazing the level of emotion I was able to describe and get down on paper.  (A broken heart brings tons of adjectives to the surface).  Then I tried writing plays.  As an actor and theatre-lover, I thought this would be a wonderful idea and I truly enjoyed taking on the challenge.  The only problem was that I lacked that one thing that would have been necessary (talent for playwriting).  Also, according to my husband, who actually IS a talented playwright, I abuse pop culture references like it's my job.  Apparently everyone does NOT love a random Brady Bunch reference thrown in without warning.  Not everyone watched Three's Company religiously, not everyone memorized all of the John Hughes movies, not everyone remembers all the different kidnapping episodes on Different Strokes...who knew?

So moving on, now I just really like to write to make fun of the things around me, and quite often myself.   Riding the bus everyday presented me with limitless things and people to make fun of, but there’s still quite a bit of nonsense in my world.  (also... I still get a lot of silly catalogs)

So there it is…. an official so long, farewell, auf wiedersehen, adieu to The Tales of Public Transportation (and if you don’t know the Sound of Music then I said good day Sir!, and if you don’t know lines from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, then ….well, then you probably won’t like my blog) –

Thanks for reading!