I’m sitting down to write this post before dinner, lest it become a repeat of yesterday’s “woe is me, I frittered away all my time”. I have actually gotten some tasks done that needed doing, including changing the sheets and doing the laundry—well, most of it; load four is in the washer now, and there’s only one more to do after that. I also colored my hair so as not to have grey roots showing in holiday photos.

Part of my hair coloring process is to write down what dye I used in a log I’ve been keeping since 1988. I don’t recall why I started keeping a history then, since 1988 wasn’t the first time I used dye in my hair—I remember doing my own highlights in college with one of those frosting caps where you’d pull strands of hair through the holes with a crochet hook type thing. Maybe it was because I had the sense that it was the start of my “covering the grey” years, and I’d be doing this a while. Perhaps a dig through my paper journal from that time would shed some light, but quite likely not, and besides I don’t have time for that sort of detour right now.

I did take a detour earlier when I went to write down my latest entry in the log, because the log (kept on loose sheets of lined paper) lives in my clipping file, specifically in the folder labelled “Hair”, and I got lost for a while flipping through the contents. In the age of the internet, it’s hard for me to justify having this file, or most of the ones on other subjects that live in that same drawer. I have a Pinterest account; a few hours of Googling and pinning and I could make a board to replace this file. Or maybe boards, plural: one on ideas for wearing long hair, one on dealing with fine/thin hair, one for haircolor advice, etc. Or I could just ditch the file and not replace it with Pinterest boards, since I pretty much only wear my hair in one of four or five ways 99% of the time, have given up on fighting my natural texture, and manage to cover my grey without the results looking too artificial. Yet still I hold on to all this paper, because flipping through it reconnects me with my earlier self, the anxious young woman who studied the How to Do Everything section in Glamour magazine, hoping eventually she would learn how to be a proper grown up and stop being so worried about everything. I wish she’d spent more time establishing a lifelong habit of being active and eating sensibly and less reading magazines and crash dieting, but she did a lot of things right since I am now pretty good at being a grown up.

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On this date in 2013: WDW Day 5: Magic Kingdom and the Studios
2012: On Being An Hourglass
2011: On Being a Negative Force
2010: With Attribution
2009: Better to Light a Candle
2008: Procrastination
2007: My Most Memorable Day & One Picnicker, All Alone
2006: Four Days in Utah
2005: Winter Count—August
2004: Back When It Was Warm
2003: Not According to Plan
2002: Missing