The other day I got in a mood and wrote a post about how my neighborhood is losing it's soul. Little pieces of it's history are being erased and replaced. I complained about the gas station changing names (only because the old name is soooo great, Magic Gas!), and the new cafe owners painting over the replacement Chicken Corner chicken mural and redecorating the inside of the cafe -I still don't like the new decor, too cold.
But just after I wrote that I went out and I needed to stop for gas so ofcourse I went to Magic Gas (I will never call it anything else). I was reminded that the new guy that works there is super friendly and nice, which is actually a big improvement on the previous employee. And then while I was standing there waiting for my tank to fill up I looked across the street at the new mural on Chicken Corner and saw that it's still in progress and there's more to it than I initially remember seeing, perhaps because they've been working on it, and it's not so bad after all.
I always reserve the right to change my opinion. There's been a lot of commotion and fog in my life lately and this morning -after I cleared up a few more things with some phone calls- I realized that things are not looking so bad after all but when one or two things start looking sketchy it's easy to be disappointed in many, many more things.
I think I'll be spending this week looking more on the bright side again. It's kind of crazy when so many things are changing and so many things I feel should be changing are not, but overall it's worth the effort.

Lately I've been sleeping so hard that I feel kind of drunk when I wake up in the morning. As usual, this is accompanied by heavy dreaming and they're all weird. The other night my dream was full of animals that don't exist in real life -and some that do, I fought a wild boar that had wandered into my house.
Last night I climbed a steep wobbly "staircase" that was made of narrow boxes stacked up against the outside of a building which was halfway up a tall, steep hill I needed to get to the top of to get home. All of my "friends" had abandoned me for some juvenile reason (or rather, all of my friends had shown clear signs of betrayal if I were to stick with them so I took off on my own) and I seemed to remember the same route from a previous dream but this time it was different. The makeshift staircase was much wobblier and all the pieces of it were unattached and flimsy. I was terrified to climb it but knew I had no choice. When I finally got to the top it seemed the building had a new tenant and rather than the kind old man I remembered from the last time -who would have helped me through the window so that I could walk through his shop to continue up the hill- there was a shady guy who let me cling to the building begging for help while he stole my credit card before allowing an employee to help me through the window. Strangely I knew that ultimately I would be ok and that this was just an annoyance along my way. Sadly this is illustrative of recent developments in my real life. I seem to be dealing with some unsavory characters lately and while I know that I'm ultimately pretty "safe", I'm really ready to get these people out of my life.

Honey

So happy! This is my new hair and strangely enough it's pretty much my natural color -which hasn't been seen on my head since I was about 15. It looks a little darker in the photo than it does in real life (same is true of the red, which is why it looks cute to me in the photo below but I couldn't deal with it in real life). It's a color I've wanted to try for a while (not realizing it was my natural color), kind of a darkish honey. 

Little thing I was reminded of this week: it's important to have at least one really good friend in the world who will tell you the truth even if it's not "nice". Being "nice" is reeeeally overrated. Telling someone the truth in a way that isn't mean, that is an amazing quality that very few people possess. 

To The Next Phase!

Well I spent a week as a strawberry blonde but I'm really sad to say it just wasn't for me. The first problem is that I could never be quite sure what it looked like. When you're looking at someone else's hair it's easier to be more objective. You can look at it up close, you can look at it from a distance, and you have no personal attachment to how it feels to see it. There's something quite strange about going from looking in the mirror and recognizing yourself to looking in the mirror and not being quite sure who you're looking at. It took me all week to decide that it just wasn't the right shade for me. The photo's make it look much, much better than it seems to look in real life -big problem. So I'm taking it a few shades darker and going for an amber brown, or technically, an amber dark blonde. I've left out the ends of the underneath section since they're not around my face and therefor don't contrast with my complexion, and also because there is still something magnificent about seeing my previously super dark brown hair in shades of blonde. Just not when it's around my face. Pictures to follow.