7 Quick Takes (or the early summer of my discontent)

1.

As the title indicates, I have been discontented for the last two weeks, leading me to be antsy, irritable, and generally unproductive.  I blame the fact that I feel aimless at work, but it is really my own fault. 

2. 

In an attempt to improve my discontent, and the general condition of my body and spirit, I have begun waking up earlier in the morning to practice yoga using this.  I found a copy in a used book store about 5 years ago and I love it for helping me put my body back in order.  I am four days in and I already feel better.  

3.

In addition to the yoga, I am meditating on the Lord's Prayer when I am done.  Much like the yoga book helps my body, this is my go-to practice when I find myself having a difficult time focusing my spirit during prayer.  Clearly all is not well when I am busting out all of my tools to fix myself.  

4.

If I have made plans with anyone and forget or end up canceling, I'm sorry.  My schedule for the next month seems to be in constant flux.  My weekends are also a lot more scheduled than I prefer.  It makes me feel trapped to have every day of my week planned for me ahead of time.  Must work on this.  

5.  

I have done more cooking than usual this week.  I like that.  In response, I am contemplating hijacking my husband's mostly inactive blog.  Unfortunately we have similar reasons for not posting.   He doesn't because the pictures haven't been uploaded from our camera.  I haven't because I don't know where he keeps the camera so I can take pictures.  

6. 

I am pleased that summer finally decided to arrive.  The summer plants in my garden have decided to start growing in response to the sudden heat.  This is good since I only had two kinds of spring vegetables.  Bring on the homegrown food!  (And the lower grocery bills). 

7.  

This is funny. 

I was actually at a place where the pledge of allegiance was said Wendesday for the first time in forever.  I opted out.  

For more quick takes, go here.  I finally decided to join in after enjoying others' contributions. 

 

Goodbye Gray?!

I have gray hair.

Most of it appeared sometime between my engagement and when I went back to work after having a baby.  The bulk of the gray hair is located in my bangs in a significant streak.  This past year I realized I was starting to look like the principal of my junior high, who we all said resembled a skunk.  After this realization, I started trying to hide the gray.

My hair responds badly to dye; it dries out and sometimes falls out.  Since I prefer to avoid using harmful chemicals on my body, I have used henna to color my hair, but it has not proven effective for covering the gray for any significant amount of time.  I finally broke down and used regular hair dye, trying as much as possible to only use it on my super-human gray hairs, but it got on the brown hair as well.  I wash my hair with baking soda, which is abrasive and is not kind to dyed hair, so now I have brassy post-dyed brown hair in addition to the gray that shows once the dye wears off.  I'm not happy.

So now I am trying something new.  According to several sources on the internet, you can remove gray hair using sage.  So tonight I picked a ton of sage, boiled water and let it steep until it appeared to be a pretty strong tea.  I will be applying this to my hair in hopes that the gray will turn brown in a few weeks.  We'll see how it works.  

Here is a list of several natural options for coloring hair.  Someday I might try some of the others if I should ever get my hands on the ingredients.