Hair, Hairy, and Harried

One thing that I'm looking forward to after my Camino is spending a weekend with all of my beautiful sisters in October....they have graciously accepted the challenge of helping me update my look and my wardrobe.  Considering that I haven't done this for about 6-8 years, I'm sorely in need of new clothes and a new look.  This includes my hair--since I keep it pretty short, this means that I have to deal with my hair getting shaggy.  I am currently wearing a headband to work daily, since it is still too short to do anything with, but too long to style like I normally do.  I wouldn't mind so much, except that I hate having hair in my face, and my bangs are about at the place where I usually get fed up and chop them with my kitchen shears.  I am resisting temptation, as I want to be able to really choose a new style when I see my sisters at the end of October.  It is getting dang hard, though.  At the same time I think I'm probably getting too old to continue sporting the "Julia Roberts as Tinkerbell" pixie cut, which I have worn since about the time I graduated from college in 1997.

I hate having hair in my face, so this is my usual "working late while in my PJ's" look.  Funny, it is the same fashion statement that my under 5 nieces seem to sport....I really need a haircut, but am waiting as long as I can stand it in order to maybe update my hair style.  At least I will be wearing a hat on my Camino!

Which brings me to the hairy part--I recently changed which blanket I use because of my animals.  All of them have light-colored hair, and they shed terribly.  Seriously, I think that I sweep/vacuum up their weight in hair every week.  You would think that they would eventually go bald, but no, they are still as hairy as they ever were...In the mean time, I have gone to a cream-colored comforter, since the hair doesn't show, and I have taken a vow to never buy microfiber fuzzy blankets ever again.

Ginger and the fuzzy blanket--as long as I own pets, I will never own another fuzzy blanket again!  I don't care how warm they are--they are hair magnets!

I am a procrastinator of epic proportions, and I am taking a few moments to write this so that I can get back to work on my proposal for teaching a class next spring.  I am really looking forward to getting back into the classroom, but I have to get my proposal in by the end of the week, and I'd like for a colleague to look it over before I turn it in.  That means that I need to finish my proposal as well as my syllabus before I go to bed tonight.  I can't say that I'm looking forward to staying up late tonight, but it will also mean that I will probably be able to teach in the Spring, and that is something that is worth a little less sleep.

I really need to be better at not procrastinating, but I have yet to figure out a way to refrain from doing so, especially when I have access to the playground that is the internet at my fingertips day in and day out.  I've tried Chrome Nanny, and it works to a point--did you know that you can just open another browser, like Firefox, and get around it?  It is the same with using the Pomodoro technique.  I'm really good about following it for one pomodoro, and then the ticking tends to get relegated to background noise, and I'm back where I started....I will figure it out some day, and hopefully going on my Camino will help me to reset my priorities. *sigh* It is the one sin that I have to confess every time I go to Reconciliation.  I know that it is better than coming up with new and ever more interesting sins each time, but it would also be nice to no longer have to confess this particular sin!

This is what the blanket looked like before I washed it--but the washing didn't get all of the hair out.  I think that this will be the "Hairy Blanket" from now on.  Sometimes I want to look at my critters and tell them, "this is why we can't have nice things!!!"

Lastly, I have not really trained for the last 4 weeks, running wise.  This means that I'm still barely able to run 3 miles, when I should be running 10-12 miles on my long runs.  If I don't get back in the habit of running soon, there is no way that I will be able to finish my Marathon in the middle of October.  I talked to one of the experts in the running club, and he says that, as long as I can run about 20 miles in one stretch after I get back, I should be ok, since I will be hiking with a pack for 3 weeks straight.  I've just kind of run out of steam these last few weeks, and it is really hard to get back in the groove.  I don't want to need my runs like I did when I first got my divorce, but I need some other sort of motivation to keep it up.  I need to work on that....

This is day 4 of the 7 day Challenge that Jennifer Fulweiler set up...Check out this link to see who else picked up the gauntlet!