Turning Back The Clock

One of the main reasons I go to Hot Heads is to turn back the clock. I walk into the salon a woman of a certain age. I walk out decades younger. (Well, part of me does. The rest of me struggles to catch up with creams and glosses, clothing and exercise equipment.)

Tonight I won't be employing any of these products or methods. Tonight I'll be using a chair and my finger tip. Don't forget that Daylight Savings Time ends tomorrow (Sun) at 2:00 am. I feel younger already! :)

So Many Men, So Little Time

So it appears that word is getting around Florida that I, a soon to be legally single 40 something year old gal w/fabulous highlights, am about to be on the market again. In fact, just today I came home to find three rather lengthy voicemail messages from powerful, charismatic men seeking my time and attention. “Choose me! Choose me!”, they all pled! "Wow", I thought. "If this continues, my social calendar will be full in no time." Strangely though, they all only seemed interested in my availability on one particular day - Tuesday, Nov 2nd. Wonder what that’s about? Anyway, I’m not going to overthink it. I’m just going to take it as a sign that things appear to be looking up for me. :) Hope they are for you too!

An October to Remember

This has been quite a month. I started it traveling back through time.

(I spent the first weekend of October in Winter Park catching up with my old high school classmates and the second one up in Pennsylvania reminiscing with family and celebrating my cousin’s milestone birthday.) Tomorrow I’ve got a pre-dawn date with a wizard and I’ll be cloning myself. I can hardly wait to see what the final week has in store.

Tomorrow’s date is with a much younger man I’ve heard a lot about… one who gives the term “sending out sparks” a whole new meeting. Specifically, I’ll be meeting a guy known for a lightning bolt - shaped scar on his forehead. While I’m looking forward to seeing him, I don’t give us much of a chance. For starters, I don’t anticipate our being able to spend enough time together to see if there could be anything between us. Not only that, I understand that he’s in pretty hot demand and I don’t share men.

Don’t feel sorry for me though. If I don’t feel the magic with Harry, I understand that there will also be a significant number of men in uniform in the vicinity, as well as some very accomplished athletes and a few real characters.
Should be quite the interesting morning.

Once a month I run a 5K with a group of friends and tomorrow, we’ll be participating in the Universal Pursuit 5K, which is being sponsored by the Association of Chiefs of Police for the benefit of Special Olympics Florida. The course winds through City Walk, Universal Studios and Islands of Adventure. Though I've been to CityWalk recently, it's been a while since I've been to the parks. I'm really looking forward to checking out Suess Landing and The Wizarding World of Harry Potter.

Dr. Suess and I go back as far as my own childhood. I'm not much of a cat person, but put one in a hat and you've got my attention. As for JK Rowling's contribution to the liteary world, she did what no one before her was able to do and what no one since has accomplished, she got my child to read for pleasure. For that, she'll always have my undying devotion. I would imagine that seeing Horton and his whos, Gertrude McFuzz and that snow covered Hogwarts Castle while running through the parks is going to be quite the rush. I can't wait!

I have done a lot of things in the Universal entertainment complex in the two decades it’s been around. Among other things, I’ve danced until the wee hours of the morning. I’ve dined on fabulous food and I have been catapulted through the air on some amazing rides. Tomorrow, however, will be my first time breaking a sweat there and I love that I'll be doing it for such a good cause.

To make tomorrow even more interesting, while the real me pretends to be an athlete and runs with cartoon characters so some real athletes – the Special Olympians - get a chance to compete, a pretend me – a cartoon me - will also be exercising. “I’ll” be nearing the end of a virtual walk across the country in order to increase the chances for some other special folks – a group of real warriors – women who are battling Stage IV breast cancer. Since its inception, I have been pleased to participate in this annual “event”, a 31 day online trek across our great land with a throng of other people and stops in almost every major city.

I really love this fundraiser! For a mere $5, participants get to create an animated version of themselves, “walk” the country without getting off their couches and help a group of women who really need and deserve some love and assistance. Maybe you’d care to join me for the last leg of this little jaunt… If so, log onto https://www.galtogalwalk.org/ and register.

Well, gotta go get some beauty sleep … so I’ll be ready for a day when two of me will be logging some serious miles. Sure do love these win-wins!

My First Time

So… I did it. I read a few articles so I’d know what to do and then I did my best to prepare. I went to the store and bought something nice. I put on just the right outfit. I put on some music. I made sure the lighting was right and then I … painted a room a color other than white for the first time in my adult life. The experience went exactly the way the books said it would: I was nervous. I was exhilarated. I got a good workout and I think it will go better the next time.

The room I painted was my guest bathroom. It was Mint when I moved in and now it is a shade called Fresh Avocado. (I’m sensing a theme here. Anyone care to join me in the loo for mojitos, chips and salsa?)

I selected Fresh Avocado because it is in the same color family as the predominant shade in my shower curtain. The problem is that this particular hue is a little too saturated. Since there are no windows or skylights in the room, it is now looking rather dark and a little too much like a 1970s Frigedaire. (Hopefully when the white towels and the shower curtain go back up, the end result will be a little less overwhelming.)

I reminded anew about the skill it takes to properly select and apply color and it makes me want to give a shout out to the team at Hot Heads who always get it right. Diane - who normally does my color - you are amazing!

The End Result :)

Split Ends

Though it defies logic, since I’m still cash strapped and living in limbo, I had a pretty great Summer. Summer’s over now though. Well, according to the calendar, Summer won’t really be over until next week, but the leaves are already starting to change colors. There’s a chill in the air. I’ve been wearing lovely jewel toned sweaters…. (OK... OBVIOUSLY none of that is true! :) School has started again, though, which means that whether it’s official or not, it’s Fall.

It also means that I am substitute teaching again. (Though my Summer did include some fun surprises, none of them were a book contract/a five or six figure advance, an offer letter for my dream job, a winning lottery ticket or a wealthy, handsome gentleman seeking my hand in marriage.)

Yesterday, I subbed for a Cosmetology class at the high school. Did this kind of class exist when I was in high school? I really don’t know. If it did, I know I didn’t take it given that I was all wrapped up in those pesky college prep courses, which were supposed to all but guarantee my stable financial future.

If we did have Cosmetology at my high school, I can’t imagine that the classroom was anything like this one. Honestly, I half way expected to see an aging Frankie Avalon come sauntering in with the Pussy Cat dolls and performing a hip hop version of Beauty School Drop Out.

In my Baby Boomer mind, high school classrooms have gray floors, desks, chalkboards and pencil sharpeners. They don’t have black and white checked floors, pricy electronic equipment, capes, adjustable chairs with dryer hoods and bins of mannequin heads with eyes that would scare Chucky.

What really blew my mind though, wasn’t the appearance of the classroom. It was the lesson plan. The students in three of the classes were supposed to either style their own hair or work their magic on the mannequin heads. The other three classes were supposed to watch The Style Network’s show, Split Ends, and then answer a few questions about the episode they saw.

For those of you not in the know, Split Ends is the salon version of ABC’s Wife Swap. A stylist from one type of salon temporarily trades lives with a stylist from another type of salon and hijinx ensue.

For example, in one of the episodes we watched on Wednesday, a glorified barber who generally comes to work in flats and no makeup and who works at a salon/antique shop in rural Washington state which caters to a local logging community trades places with the owner of an East Coast high end salon known for its very fashion forward, highly trained staff. The Washington state salon charges around $20 for cut and its counterpart charges somewhere in the several hundred dollar range for a precision cut and color.

It was another one of the many out of body experiences I have had since my hiatus from corporate America. Here I was being paid to watch bad reality tv while bored 17 year olds whispered back in forth about what they're going to wear to homecoming. Anyway, I left school yesterday afternoon a little more current on teen fashion and more grateful than ever that I don’t live in a community where I have to look at plaid flannel, decoy ducks and old furniture when it’s time to get my hair cut and colored.

What did you do yesterday? Did you go to Hot Heads? If you were smart, you did. (See my last post about the advantage of going to Hot Heads on a Wednesday.)

Wishing you a day with no Split Ends. Be back soon! The HHG

TGIW - Thank God It's Wednesday! :)

When it comes to days of the week, I think we all agree that Saturday and Sunday are by far the hippest, coolest, most fabulous ones on the calendar. Following a close third is Friday. Whether it’s a paycheck you’re after … or a hot date… or after work cocktails …. or a high school football game, Friday can usually pull it out of its hat. In fact, so celebrated is Friday that it even inspired a national restaurant chain*.

*I used to work at one of those restaurants, by the way, right after I graduated from college. My parents were thrilled! :) Working at Friday’s was just like college too. I learned a lot of stuff that is not helping me pay the bills in 2010 and I was exposed to things that were not part of the life I knew as a Winter Park teen. I learned to carry five glasses at a time. I learned how to garnish a chicken fried steak dinner. I learned that I probably shouldn’t wear red & white stripes and I was introduced to a number of outwardly very appealing things that the smarter girls knew were only meant to be enjoyed in moderation, then set aside… specifically Long Island Ice Teas, Brie cheese and the man I ended up marrying.

If Friday, Saturday and Sunday are the favorite days, Monday is the red headed stepchild. Who doesn’t share Karen Carpenter’s take on the day in the 60s era hit Rainy Days and Mondays… or the perspective offered by The Mamas & The Papas in Monday, Monday? Who among us didn’t feel creeped out by The Boomtown Rats’ I Don’t Like Mondays and whose blood pressure didn’t climb at the start of the work week when The Bangles’ Manic Monday came on the radio?

If I were Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday, I’m sure I’d be tempted to pull the covers over my head and just stay in bed. Between the three show off days and all of the exciting things they have to offer and the unsavory day stealing more than its share of the spotlight with all of its gloom and negativity, it would be so easy for Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday to just feel overshadowed and unappreciated. It would be so easy for them to buy into the whole “Middle of the Week” stereotype and just throw in the towel and not even try to compete.

Sadly, it appears that Tuesday and Thursday have done exactly that. As days go, they just don’t stand out. They’re boring. They seem to run together and as a general rule, the public seems quite eager to hurry them along so as to hasten the arrival of their more glitzy, glamorous calendar mates. Sure Thursday made an effort about a decade ago with its NBC “Must See TV” line up, but since then it’s brought absolutely nothing to the table. As of today, Thursday barely has a pulse …and Tuesday? Tuesday has yet to even suit up for the game. It’s kind of tragic when you think about it.

Anyway, I could go off on a tangent about Tuesday and Thursday’s unrealized potential or I could do something more positive and direct your attention to a day that is much more deserving… the unsung hero of the week… Wednesday! I think I’ll do the latter! I’m an unabashed Wednesday fan and if you have a few moments, I’d like to tell you some of the reasons why.

You know that kid in school who made a name for himself despite that fact that he had neither a flashy sports car he had gotten as a birthday gift from the parentals … nor a genius level IQ … nor the athletic prowess of the kids who set county records and who lettered in every sport … nor the effortless good looks of homecoming royalty? Well, Wednesday is just like that kid. Wednesday refuses to get lost in the crowd, but it won’t sink to Monday’s level in order to get its recognition. Wednesday just works harder.

Wednesday has branded itself as a day to celebrate. In addition to the fact that it’s known in the professional arena by it’s nickname “hump day”, a nod to it’s role as the official half way point of the workweek, it also answers to the name “short day” in local academic circles. This is because, as every Central Florida parent, teacher, student and administrator knows, Wednesday’s final school bell rings about an hour sooner than any other day’s.

When it comes to TV, Wednesday’s offerings are among the finest. I have a niece who does her homework earlier every Wednesday night during American Idol season so she won’t miss a minute of the results show and there has been some talk among my circle of friends about initiating a standing Glee viewing party every Wednesday night this Fall.

Even the name Wednesday has a broad appeal. Like Tuesday (i.e. Tuesday Weld) and Sunday (Sunday Rose Kidman), Wednesday has reached out of it’s comfort zone to become not only the name of a day of the week, but the name of a real person and/or television character. While I am fairly sure that somewhere in this great land there lives a Wednesday Smith or a Wednesday Jones, I know for certain that there was a Wednesday Adams and that makes me smile.


Anyway, I could go on and on about all of Wednesday’s wonderful attributes, but I won’t because I don’t want you to spend your day at your computer reading about Wednesday. I want you to get out and enjoy your Wednesday. :) I’ll close with some news that I’m sure will make you happy. I just found out that Wednesday has offered up another gem. Wednesday is now a day where you can get more beautiful for even less money. Though I can’t give you all the details as they will vary from week to week, Hot Heads is now running every Wednesday specials. Want to know what they are? Pick up the phone and find out. 407-671-0480.

Well, I’m off to enjoy my day! Happy hump day and happy short day and happy get beautiful for less money day! Be back soon! The HHG

Back From The Brink

I have heard that in parts of the country people put logs in their fireplace. What I have in mine is a blue beta fish, who, up until about two hours ago, went by the name Michael Phelps.

As you may recall, my beta’s namesake got himself in quite the imbroglio about a year and a half ago when a compromising photo of him surfaced. I can only imagine what was going on in his head back then. He was probably thinking, “Wow. I feel like I want to die."

Here’s what my Michael Phelps was thinking during his recent moment of crisis. “WAAAHH! I don’t want to die! Somebody please save me! Unconsciousness is imminent. There’s a giant black and white beast with Zombie - like eyes lapping up my world.
For the love of God, somebody please do SOMETHING ...NOW!”

Thankfully, I walked in just in the nick of time. I reminded Brandy that her water bowl is in the kitchen and I made a beeline for the tap. I then grabbed the AquaSafe out of the catchall drawer, added a few drops and crossed my fingers. Thankfully Michael Phelps made it.

So… the fish formerly known as Michael Phelps is now known as Lazarus. He’s back from the brink. Just like my blog. Have you missed it? Have you missed me? Hope so. Be back again tomorrow! The HHG