How to make your 1980's hair 2015 bendy

Not to brag or anything, but in the 1980s I had perfect hair.

My hair is brown and wavy/curly and thick, and it just wants to grow OUT rather than down, so in its natural state it is like a messy, bouffy oval that reaches its widest point a few centimetres out from each ear, and sits just below shoulder-length.

As a child in the 70s, I wished I could replace my Shirley Temple curls with long straight hair and a fringe, but in the 80s my hair was excellent. I cut it short a couple of times, but mostly I wore it thick and shoulder-length, brushed to make it as soft and fuzzy as possible (like the novels I remember from that time that described the heroine's hair as like a 'soft cloud around her head' - that was a good thing. No anxiety over frizzy hair back then).

The hair goal of all teenage girls back then was this:

Rachel Hunter, 1985

The epitome of female beauty to me was Kathleen Turner in Romancing the Stone. Who I loved because she had hair just like mine. (And also my sunburned red nose, but that's where the similarity ended).

Alas, by the late nineties the tide had turned against thick curly hair. Even Julia Roberts and Cindy Crawford started straightening their hair.

My hair has always been difficult to straighten. Even when a hairdresser straightens it, it will start to kink by the time I get home, and by the next morning it's back to its messy, wavy self.

I came late to hair-straightening and never fully committed. Unless I wanted to stand in front of the bathroom mirror for an hour and a half with aching forearms, my hair sizzling and steaming under the irons in small sections at a time, and repeat this process every single morning, I was never going to achieve straight hair. I came to a compromise of running the straightening iron through sections around the front and the top and leaving the rest as is, which worked well enough.

But once I had kids and discovered the preciousness and rarity of free time, I lost all interest in spending even twenty minutes of it straightening my hair. It was the mid-2000s and my hair was definitely not correct.

That was a difficult decade for me, obviously.


Now, in my mid-forties in the mid-2010s, I am back to (mostly) loving my hair.  The aspirational hair texture these days is "bendy".  Bendy hair is shoulder-length or longer, often brown, and is supposed to look like soft, natural kink as if your hair does this naturally (but of course it doesn't)

You are supposed to secretly spend lots of time and dollars on conditioner and bendy rollers and curling irons to create this look, but here is how you can achieve it with next to no effort if you have my hair:

How to get 2015 bendy hair when your hair is from 1985:

1. Get regular haircuts (8 weeks max) so your hairdresser will at least somewhat remember what s/he did last time. This is important for curly-haired people as our hair quickly obliterates haircut shapes.
2. Colour your hair regularly to cover grey, obvs, but with the pleasant side effect that your wiry frizzy hair is rendered softer and glossier.
3. Wash your hair every two to three days. 
4. If you want massive, curly sticky-up hair, by all means wash it the night before work. But for better results, wash it in the morning and follow the rest of the steps below.

   

   Step 6

5. Shampoo and condition in the shower as normal. 
6. Blow-dry your hair until almost dry. It should look like you're a member of an 80s stadium rock band at this point.
7. Brush your hair out to remove tangles and curls.
8. Tie your hair behind your head into a pony-tail-bun thingy. A pony-tail-bun thingy is when you pull your hair through the first and second loop of a hair elastic as if you are going to do a pony tail, but then don't pull the hair all the way through on the last loop so that it looks a bit like a bun.
9. Spray your hair with just a bit of hairspray (not too much or you'll have to wash your hair every day).
10. Leave house for work or wherever.
11. As you walk into work/reach your destination, reach back and pull out the hair tie, and casually run your hands through your smooth, bendy hair.
12. The next day, brush your hair when you get up and repeat steps 8-12.
13. Enjoy your ongoing success!

Selfie. I somewhat resemble Rose Byrne

Regulation

Choose your preference.

Retaliation

My daughter A. is a pretty sensitive kid, easily upset by playground shenanigans. She is also, unlike her sister, utterly guileless.  M. can be cunning and manipulative at times but her sister is unable to even THINK of any schemes, lies or tricks, let alone implement them.

When the kids fight at home, the outcome is often A. incoherent with rage, crying and yelling that M. hasn't told the truth or M. did such-and-such first or M. is pretending to be 'the good one' when both were to blame.

At school A. is not great at standing her ground or fighting back. M. is both naturally resilient and able to keep up with shenanigans, so is not picked on as often or if she is, I don't know about it. (It's not all easy street of course - she has plenty of friendship dramas and gets upset over different things).

A. has attracted more than her share of teasing and unpleasantness.  She's a popular kid (as I see whenever I observe her at school), but there is something a bit 'young', naive and 'good girl' in her manner that seems to attract teasing.

Also unlike M., A. is not a skinny kid. She's what used to be called 'sturdy'. She is not fat - and lest you think I might be a delusional fat mum with a fat kid, the school nurse and her doctor both agree she is not fat. She's rounded instead of angular.

Her friend V. is the same. Both sometimes get called 'fat' by other kids, not always in a mean way, but it still hurts.

I've talked to A. a few times about this, and explained some kids are skinny and some kids are not, and the ones that are not are sometimes called fat by other kids, but you are not fat. And that kids sometimes say hurtful things without realising how much they are hurting you. And that some kids are just mean and you have to stay away from them. And if they're your friends or kids you have to deal with every day you tell them 'Stop it, I don't like it', 'You're being mean', and all the other wholly useless things the school tells the kids to say to each other.

When A. was in daycare she was confident and outgoing and sunny. Since she started school I have watched her confidence shrink and her light dim, to the point where she was seeing a counsellor for anxiety and depression and regularly saying things like 'I hate my life' and 'I want to kill myself', when she was six and seven. That broke my heart. It still does.

In the last year she has made great strides and is closer to her old self, and she has grown much more resilient. But she is still easily upset by teasing, and struggles to keep her self confidence.

Today when I picked her up from after-school care she told me that a boy had teased her at lunchtime. This kid is a serial pest, not just to A, and is often disruptive or mean to other kids. I will call him 'Alex' for that is his real name.

Today Alex said 'Hey A,' and when A. came over he said 'You're fat.'  She tried to ignore him and he kept saying 'You're fat, you're fat.' Then 'What are you going to do, hit me with your fat head?' and 'Well, are you going to cry?'

Eventually A. cried.

When A. told me this she kept her composure and her voice only wobbled a little, but I was furious. I'd had enough. I abandoned everything I've told her before, and this is the advice I gave her:

'That kid is rotten. He's a horrible kid, and next time he says anything like that to you, you tell him: YOU'RE UGLY.  And - I know this is hard, because it happened to me too, and I remember it, but: don't let him see you cry. You try your best not to cry in front of him, ever. Be strong.'

'You're not allowed to be mean back,' said A.

'I know,' I said, 'And usually that's right. But that kid is horrible, and sometimes you just have to fight back. You have to stand up for yourself, and with some kids when ignoring or doing all the other stuff doesn't work, fighting back and standing up for yourself is the only way to make them stop.  So next time ANYONE calls you fat, you tell them: YOU'RE UGLY. And if they say anything else, tell them YOU'RE A ROTTEN KID.  And if you get in trouble for saying any of that stuff, you tell me and I'll talk to the school.'

She liked everything I said, she was comforted by it, and she understood this was special, exceptional advice for difficult situations.

The anti-bullying stuff the schools teach is all good stuff. 'Stop it I don't like it', ignoring, telling a teacher, are all fine. But at some point, when those things don't work, your kid has to get tough and fight back. They either figure this out themselves and manage it, or you end up having to tell them.

THAT'S ME IN THE PINK SHIRT

adplayers/Flickr creative commons

12 Resolutions: April (and March recap)

This year I'm playing along with #12Resolutions on Twitter and Facebook. The idea is to set yourself short-term, achievable goals, one each month. 

January went very well. I stuck to that resolution and am still doing it: I walk the dog at least once a day and occasionally even twice. The dog is happy, I'm happier, all good. 

February was not so good - I failed.  Typical to New Years' Resolutions, I think start-of-year enthusiasm was enough to carry me through January. But that tends to run out by February, and then actual effort is needed.  Also, the January resolution has been easier to keep up, because (a) it has created a habit, and (b) I am beholden to someone else - my dog, who basically will not let me not do our daily walk.

So how did March go? Well, I did it. I wrote my short story. It is "finished" though still in draft form, and I'm not happy with it. Creation is hard, you guys! Like drawing, which I have also always done and love doing, it's very hard to get the item that's in your head - fuzzy and yet dazzlingly perfect - out of your head and onto the page. Anyway, I did get my story done, and that's a win!

I also did make a start on my course, completing two topics in the first module. 


So now: April.

Bron who is the moderator of our 12Resolutions Facebook group, set her April goal as "visit GP", something she had intended to do for ages but kept putting off.  I realised I had exactly the same problem, so I too set my goal as VISIT THE GP.

I have to admit, there is something to this small goal stuff *.

The same day I posted the resolution, I made my GP appointment, and was there the next evening. I got a referral I needed, made a follow-up booking for my overdue secret-womens-business test, and so already my goal is halfway achieved. So, #winning.

I've now decided to bite the bullet and get a full check-up - blood tests etc. There is nothing especially wrong with me, that losing weight and eating better wouldn't solve. But instead of waiting until I lose that weight (never gonna happen) before I get a full health checkup, I've decided to do it now.

The last one I did was about three years ago, offered through my work. I was (almost) as overweight then and all the bloods came back okay, so I think I have nothing to fear. Except fear itself.

There is so much we tend to put off while needing to lose weight. Meanwhile, years go by!



* (Maybe I should set a goal to blog more consistently...)



#12Resolutions:

January: walk 5 times a week (done - I now walk daily)
February: write 2 short stories (failed - wrote none!)
March: write 1 short story, and start Project Management course (done)
April: visit GP and complete or schedule the follow-ups

iosphere/FreeDigitalPhotos.net

What's the difference?!

The modern (wealthy) world is a world of surplus and too much choice. We have to fend off salespeople trying to get us to switch energy billing provider, and spend time resentfully comparing phone deals, insurance packages, mortgages, credit cards, etc.

Then we hit the supermarket and are confronted with whole sections of aisles devoted to different brands and permutations of very specific things.  I'm pretty sure this has got worse as I'v got older. I remember when we moved to the US in 1979 and being amazed by the variety of types of thing in the supermarket. What amazed us there then has long been the norm here now, too.

But I'm pretty sure I remember, when I was young, that supermarkets could fit all the tins and bottles that related to 'tomato' (tomato paste, tomato puree, tinned tomatoes, bottled sauce) in one aisle. Now they're spread out among at least two. (Oh, the difficult lives we lead!)


Then there's this stuff:

Panadol

WHY are there a million types of Panadol? I'm not talking varieties of painkillers or brands, but different types of the SAME brand of the SAME kind of painkiller.

I understand choice of delivery system: some people prefer soluble tablets, some prefer traditional tablets, and some (like me) prefer "caplets". (Capsules are no longer sold as they can be tampered with).  But still, aren't a couple of choices enough? As long as one of those includes caplets?

As for type of pain targeted and speed of relief: headache vs osteo, normal vs "rapid relief": do they really work differently?  It doesn't seem plausible to me, and if you turn the packets over and read the back, they seem pretty much the same.  But apparently I am wrong: there are apparently (small) differences which you can read about here.

Band-Aids

When I was a kid, I'm pretty sure there was just one kind of Band-Aid. That one kind was one size, and came in little paper envelopes threaded with red string that was supposed to tear the envelope open when you pulled it down, but usually did not. They stuck to your skin like glue, left a grey residue outline, and were ripped off by your mum when a corner came unstuck and they started to tug at your knee hairs but you were still too chicken to tear them off yourself.

But I'm on board with child-friendly band-aids. I've bought my share of Dora, Wiggles and Barbie band-aids, marveled at how easily they peel off, and stifled impatience at kids rifling through the packet searching for the one they want or refusing to wear Dora when we've run out of Barbie. I'm kind of glad we're past that now, and the kids will only wear regular band-aids.

But the shapes - so many shapes! When did it ever get so complicated?

Dog mince and Cat mince

Here is beef mince for dogs:

Here is beef mince for cats:

They are actually not different colours though it looks that way from my photos. (You try taking surreptitious product photos in a supermarket).

Since they're both made of minced beef one can't help but wonder, what is the difference?

Well, it's not much. Both are mostly beef and contain the same ingredients. They both contain kangaroo and seaweed extract, and the cat mince has a little more of those in it. I bought one pack of each and feed my dog and the cat both from the same pack. We used the dog meat first and then the cat meat. No preference was shown by either animal, of course.

The only important thing for both pets is that meat from the other animal's bowl generally seems to taste better.

What kinds of consumer choice make you happy, and which ones make you crazy?

Letting off steam

I know there's too much judgmental snark in this world, and I KNOW there are more important things... but I just have to get this out.

Why the F*** do people back into car parks?

Are you one of those people?  Is there a massive advantage to this that I am missing?  What's the point?


I honestly don't get it. You have to back your car at some point, and backing out of a carpark is twice as easy as backing into one. You spend more time backing into the carpark than you save in driving straight out of it later.  And while you do it, you hold up everyone else who has to wait while you take twice as long to get your car into the slot.

Then if your car is next to mine, when we go to leave, our driver's side doors are right next to each other so one of us has to wait until the other gets into their car, before they can walk to their door.

Or if I'm parked on the other side of you, your car is most likely right up against the edge of your car park slot, so I have to struggle to open my door and walk out.

I would never actually use one of these stickers. 

Clearly I'm missing something here.

Clue me in?

The Evolution of Spam Comments

So, spam comments on blogs have changed over the past couple of years.

At first they were purely complimentary, like this:

Hey, great blog man! I really like your style, and your unique way of writing! Check out my website as well, and let me know what you think! www.bigrussianscam.com

Howdy! I could have sworn I've been to this site before, but after checking out a few articles I realise it's new to me. Anyway I have bookmarked it and will be coming back often. Feel free to visit my site: www.loseyourshirttradingoptions.com! 

Wow, thanks for your marvellous posting, you really are a talented author! I have added your site to my RSS feed and will keep reading with interest. I want to encourage that you continue your great work, have a nice weekend! Check out my site, www.weirdexercises.com

Sometimes these were so nice I was really tempted to publish them.



Others don't do it quite as well:

What a stuff of un-ambiguity and preserveness of valuable experience on the topic of unexpected emotions. Here is my weblog: www.inappropriatebusiness.com

Then gradually I noticed a touch of criticism creeping in - probably to make them seem more like real people?

Have you ever considered about adding a little bit more than just your articles? I mean, what you say is fundamental and everything. However think about if you added some great graphics or videos to give your posts more, "pop"! Your content is excellent but with images and clips, this blog could certainly be one of the greatest in its field. Fantastic blog! My site - www.importillegalanimals.com

I was curious if you ever considered changing the page layout of your website? It's very well written; I love what you've got to say. But maybe you could a little more in the way of content so people can connect with you better. You've got an awful lot of text for only having 1 or 2 pictures. Perhaps you could space it out better? My site - www.fakedesigneroutlet.com

You might be correct, but f*** off anyway, spam robot!


Or there's the fake "hey just letting you know" type:

Hello there, I believe your web site could be having browser compatibility problems. Whenever I take a look at your blog in Safari, it looks fine however, when opening in I. E., it has some overlapping issues. I simply wanted to provide you with a quick heads up! Aside from that, fantastic website! My site: www.samesitesthatkeeppostingcomments.com

Lately, they seem to have given up all pretense, and just slam you with volume (hundreds of comments a week) and WORDS. Each one is crammed with as many SEO-friendly words as possible. They don't even attempt to make sense.

Factors several benefits together with the service to the software. If the insurance company believes the repair will be too costly they would rather not pay to fix it. There is a Gamestop located at [address]. My advise is to take some time to research and study the process yourself, which would give you enough leverage to do the property deal on your own. Here is my site: www.siteyoudontwanttoclickonevenoutofcuriosity.com

I know this post is going to get me inundated with more. But I couldn't resist.

Do you have a blog? How are you dealing with spam? 

by Ambro via FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Reasons My Kids Are Fighting

I loved this blog post "Reasons My Kids Are Fighting" by Free Range in Suburbia. Outstanding.
Shae kindly agreed to let me copy.

So here goes.


Reasons my kids are fighting:

• because one is playing with the iPad so the other has to make do with the iPhone 
• because they can't agree on a DVD to watch and I make the SPECTACULAR mistake of allowing one of them to watch a DVD on the TV and the other to watch one on my laptop - then they fight over the TV or fight over the laptop - and I have neither TV nor laptop
• because it's Sunday and there is only one newspaper delivered so they can't both go out and pick up one section each like they do on Saturday

Here are more, in their own words:

• because she's singing along to my favourite song and I didn't sing along to hers
• because she's playing too loudly
• because she always wants to watch Tinkerbell and I hate it
• because I never get to watch Tinkerbell
• because she's looking out "my" car window *
• because she always says "me first" 
• because she sat in Daddy's chair yesterday and now it's my turn 
• because she made her teddy bear the girl and she says mine has to be the boy and that's not fair
• because we're playing Power Rangers and she wants to be the pink girl but I said it first 
• because she said she's good with cats and she's not 
• because I gave her one of my magazine pictures and she didn't give me anything
• because she's stretching out in the bath and I'm all squashed
• because she used all the bubbles in the bath
• because she scratched me by mistake and didn't say sorry
• because I had that idea and now she's doing it too
• because I liked One Direction first and now she wants a One Direction CD 

Additional, 14 April 2013:

• because she drew herself pretty and drew me funny 

Image by Piyaphon at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

All siblings fight. Mine aren't too bad. They play together and get on very well. But they still fight every day.

I think my sister and I were worse. I do remember my dad one day getting completely exasperated with us, and yelling at us about how much we fought, saying, "You two fight MORE than other kids, MORE than NORMAL. It's not NORMAL. You're NOT NORMAL!"

Most of the time my kids' fighting doesn't even bother me - much. Until suddenly it does. Then I snap and yell or say something like "Oh for god's sake, can you two NOT play a SINGLE GAME without FIGHTING?"

And in the back of my head echoes my dad's exasperated cry "It's not normal!"
But of course, it is.

* That made me laugh when I read it on Shae's blog, because my kids just had the exact same fight this week.   In fact I think my sister and I fought over this one too. It's a thing!

Real Life Wednesday: Snack Foods

Because I am fearless and searingly honest, I am going to break one of the last remaining parenting taboos - right here, right now!

Parents - give - their kids - UNHEALTHY SNACKS.

Yes we do!

Once upon a time, when I was a kid, this was normal. You came home from school and had biscuits. Kids' story books were filled with luscious descriptions of cakes, cookies and ice-cream. We didn't eat raw carrots as snacks. Crackers were salty and greasy and most of the time we ate them with butter. It was perfectly acceptable to have sugar and cinnamon on toast, or jam and cream on bread.

These days, things are different. Yes, we know more about nutrition and yes, we all want to avoid obesity, heart disease, etc. So the whole "healthy food" thing has permeated into everything in kid culture. The reader books my kids bring home from school are filled with kids in daggy trackpants making butterless sandwiches with raw vegetables and grinning like they're eating cakes.

It's funny now to read the childhood classic "There's A Hippopotamus On Our Roof Eating Cake", with the reference to Mummy on a diet eating salad, and the little girl who eats honey sandwiches every day.


At our house here is what my kids eat on a typical school day:

Breakfast (when at home): Sultana Bran, Weet-Bix or Cheerios cereal or two pieces of white toast, one with Vegemite, one with jam.

Breakfast (when at before-school care): Cheerios or raisin toast or pancakes

Morning tea: cheese and crackers for M; a "Stringers" cheese stick for A

Lunch: white-bread sandwich with margarine and jam; or with tzatziki; or wheat/rice wrap with butter and Vegemite; or wrap with cheese and tomato.  Sweet snack: mini muffin or two biscuits or pack of My Little Pony/Scooby Doo biscuits or muesli bar or homemade cake/slice. Fruit: apple /strawberries / grapes / banana, etc

After school snack (when at after-school care): Cup-A-Soup, crackers and fruit

After school snack (when at home):
3.45pm: two biscuits and a glass of orange juice or chocolate milk
3.50pm: "I'm still hungry":  Cruskits or rice cakes or rice crackers or popcorn
4.00pm: "Muuum I'm still HUNGRY": cut-up apple or orange
4.30pm: children attempt to steal sweets from cupboard, I (usually) notice and stop them; tell them to eat fruit or nothing
5:00pm: "still hungry". I tell them dinner is coming soon and to wait. Often end up giving them another rice cake or Cruskit, or if things are bad and I am starting not to care, a sweet biscuit
5:30pm: Ditto

Dinner: Mostly not eaten (Big surprise huh).  Includes cut-up carrot sticks and apple or orange on the table to make me feel better when their only other plant-food intake is two negotiated bites of broccoli (which they used to love).

Before bed: HUNGRY again - because they didn't eat dinner. I serve up the warmed-up dinner but unless the dinner includes plain rice or plain spaghetti, this isn't successful and I end up relenting and giving them a piece of bread and some fruit.



Things that frustrate me:

• My kids used to eat only multigrain bread. Since they discovered white bread awhile ago keeping up the multigrain has got harder and harder and I've now abandoned the effort - we've moved on to white bread 
• I cannot buy enough bananas. Every week at the supermarket I buy two or three bunches. Between Y and the kids, they're gone in three days
• My kids used to LOVE broccoli (seriously). It's also my favourite veggie. We still serve it often but now have to push them to eat even a little
• A used to love wraps with Vegemite for lunch. Now apparently "hates" them and won't eat them
• The kids like Vegemite on toast but not on sandwiches
• I'm not strict enough and struggle to get them to hold off snacks before dinner - then they don't eat dinner
• I have the only child in the world (A) who hates mincemeat. Won't eat homemade meat pie, lasagne, spag bol or any other normal family go-to meal. I have the only two kids on the internet who don't like Mexibake

Things I don't care about:

• a sweet snack after school
• once a week I make them macaroni and cheese (from a box) for dinner
• on weekends they often have a Nutella sandwich for lunch
• icy-poles every day during summer
• a chocolate milk or Milo every day

Things I have got a bit cleverer at:

• So they eat their fruit in their lunchbox, I give them a smaller sweet snack. 
• A is put off by whole fruit so I cut up fruit and put it in a little box in her lunch box. E.g., I cut up one apple and one banana, or one apple and four strawberries, and split it up between two boxes for the two kids
• I sometimes make up a little snack bag containing sultanas, a couple of mini Oreos, and a handful of dry Cheerios; I try to sneak in a couple of almonds or walnuts but they don't fall for that
• Sometimes I make up an after-school snack plate of crackers, tzatziki, cut-up fruit, carrot sticks and two biscuits - so they can graze while watching TV and the entire snack amount is controlled

not available every day

• I use a million chicken recipes for dinner - butter and soy chicken, lemon chicken, honey baked chicken, orange chicken, apricot chicken, crumbed chicken, chicken in tomato sauce, homemade or frozen chicken nuggets...
• Sometimes instead of steaming veggies I boil them in water with butter, orange juice and honey, for a bit of flavour. It makes it easier for them to choke down those vital two bites.

And that's REAL LIFE in our house.

Linking up with Picklebums for Real Life Wednesday.