I haven’t written here for a while, but I feel like I haven’t really got anything to share. I also forget how energy consuming a customer service job is…I seriously slept until 11am this morning (unheard of! I am a morning person…or was. sigh.) and I could go to sleep happily again even though it’s only half five…but I did want to update here, so I thought today I would share my snippets of this and that.

The little sundries and things that come to me. You know, the usual, seeing as this blog lacks any sort of structure.

Things I am enjoying lately:

Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab‘s perfumes…I recently stumbled upon them and had to place an order right away. My favourite of the perfume oils I bought is the “White Rabbit” from their “Mad Tea Party” collection. Here’s the description: “Strong black tea and milk with white pepper, ginger, honey and vanilla, spilled over the crisp scent of clean linen.” I don’t know if I can smell half the things they say are in there (like the tea), but it’s a lovely clean yet sweet scent. Each perfume has a story, and the site is filled with gorgeous art work. Loves it! I definitely recommend checking them out!

Other new and well liked things…

Fever Ray is strange and heartfelt and, I think, quite catchy. This album came out in 2007, and I think that things come to you when you are ready for them, but I also think I would have liked this back in the day, too…

Other youtube habits include “my morning cup of raocow.” Yes, I am a geek, and yes, unless watching others play video games is your thing you will probably not enjoy it. But I do, and I look forward to the daily videos that go up (I’ve been watching for over a year now, so it definitely counts as a habit). It’s sort of like defragmenting right before you head out into the brave new world for the day. He tends to do stream of thought while playing, and breaks out randomly into song—something I can always get behind! Anyways, I like the intelligence behind it, and he’s a graphic designer/illustrator, so perhaps he’s not your typical gamer on youtube. Here’s the start of his An Untitled Story series (one of my favourites):

He also laughs when he dies most of the time. I like him for that.

Speaking of death, how sad is the string of suicides happening among the young’ uns these days? I look at them, and think “Fuck! They’re too young to be suicidal!” but then I realize that I totally wanted to kill myself when I was 13. It’s the worst when you’re young, because for all your naivety and innocence you can’t see the forest for the trees. People can tell you this too will pass, that things won’t always be this way, but you don’t get it.

And depression doesn’t discriminate. Ever. When I was looking up bellydance videos this past month, I came across this one:

This woman. I can sadly find out more about her death, than her brilliant but short life. People wrote epic blog posts in memorium. They wrote songs for her, dedicated songs for her…beautiful songs for a beautiful and apparently talented woman (I couldn’t find videos of her dancing, just memorial services). She committed suicide too. I am pretty sure that if I killed myself, there would not be half the outpouring of creativity and love in my honour.

Makes you wonder…when hope dies like that. Whether you are a shining star in someone’s eyes, or just someone trying to get by, sneaking past people wanting not to be noticed…(because if they notice you then they can hurt you. Yeah…been there done that…)

I have my imagination to thank for my life today. For better or worse, the thing that I think holds me back sometimes, it’s also saved me from accomplishing other things that are best left to fate.

As for imagination holding me back, it’s because it’s easier to pretend you’ve already accomplished it all in your mind then to put forth the effort (yes, I think this is an integral part of my perpetual procrastination), so yeah…

Another gorgeous song:

Still no idea where I am going, or what I am doing, but I was discussing this with Tobias. I was asking for a path to follow, a goal to aim for…and he said, “Why do you want that, when you prefer the adventure of storming through the underbrush of the forest and finding your own way?”

Good question, and I have to laugh because it’s true…

Yet like I said, I am still looking for all the answers. Or some motivation or something…jeez. Perhaps living mindfully in the moment is all you really need. I mean, if you have joy and gratitude for each moment, then it doesn’t matter what you are doing…right?

Anyways, I figure I may be an unenlightened fool, but God looks after children and fools, so at least no harm will really come to me…or I’ll get to go to Heaven when I die, or whatever that particular phrase means. I do feel blessed, for all my struggles and woes.

La…such is life.

Lisette says that love is like the tide, and you need friendship to hold you over when the tide goes out, which is a very true and very awesome way of putting it. I think my spirituality tends to come and go on the tide system as well, but I am not sure what holds me to it in the interval. I am guessing it is because I know how good it is to feel connected to my source and my guides and my intuition. They are sorely missed when I am in a slump! So I go from connection to foggy, then back to connection again when I put forth the focus and effort.

Damn work gets in the way too…ha. Oh well, that’s life though. Cannot really picture any of the Saints, Buddha, Jesus or any other religious figures flipping burgers…which is not to say that they did not go through trials and tribulation, but the mundane seemed to have a way of avoiding them.

Not sure where I was going with that…

Updates! I can run 25 minutes straight now, and I have a tendency to tell anyone with ears about it. Not that they care, for the most part they’re all “And…?” but I am excited. I am on week 8 of the c25k program, and so I will be running 28 minutes straight this week, and after that 30 minutes straight. After that I think I will go back to week 1 and do intervals of jogging and sprinting, which has a name apparently—Fartlek! That name really gets my inner 8 year old going, but my body is more like “Please don’t kill me!”

Should be interesting though…

Nothing much besides introspection, running and work going on in these here parts. Oh, and my baby sister’s 19th birthday! I have to say the best bit of the whole thing was when I made her do a shot with me. I chose a China White as that (in my mind, anyways) is a sweet and rather mild shot…but the look on her face! A thousand giggles, seriously. My stepmother captured the moment of her first shot for posterity, and though I won’t post a picture of it here…oh, it was a perfect picture of a perfect moment! I hope she doesn’t hate me for it…

Honestly, she is a little wee thing built like a bird and only about 4’10”—she was pretty much blotto-d after 2 froufrou cocktails, so the shot just finished her off…

So that’s updates. I am sure I could dredge up something else, but I wouldn’t want to bore you. I will get on writing real and proper posts in the next while, as a blog consisting of purely updates seems rather lacking…

All the best, mah kittehs, and I hope you have an amazing Labour Day/first week back at school!

I had never hennaed my hair before this year. I have had experience hennaing my friends hair in high school, but those were the little blue box ones that aren’t necessarily the real deal, and the instructions weren’t great compared to the information I found online when going to henna my own hair all these years in the future (high school seems so far away now…).

I will start from the beginning as to why I chose henna…

I had dark brown hair for about 3/4 of a year after my sad attempt at blonde. However! I wasn’t happy about my roots, and getting the girls at work to do anything for me hair-wise is like pulling teeth. Fair enough, as I am picky, so before I went to DC I decided that I would try to go back to my natural colour—whites and all. Then I wouldn’t have to bother at all, right? Right?

Anyhoo, I got one of the girls to bleach the dark brown out of my hair, but my hair turned a sort of flaming red orange…not the ashy brown I was going for (understandable…dark brown always lifts reddish) but my largest upset about this, was that the colour was still way darker than my natural ashy colour. No amount of toning was going to take the red edge off, and so I set off to DC with reddish brown hair and a slightly sour taste in my mouth over stupid chemical dye processes.

When I came back from DC my roots were definitely needing some love (like I said, light ash brown roots with red ends…mmmmm…delicious, can you picture the contrast?). I decided to hell with it, that I would box dye if I had to, because I hate getting my hair done at the salon (good advertising, yeah…? It’s all about the attitude…attitude I would rather avoid). I will not use products that are tested on animals, and there are no hair colour brands in my local drugstores that fulfill this caveat of mine, so it was starting to look sort of grim there! Then I heard about Lush’s hennas…

The first time I hennaed my hair with Lush henna, I chose to use the chestnut brown colour (“Caca Marron”). I have to say that it made my roots less noticeable, but I wasn’t super pleased with the colour. Mostly because it was more orange then brown or red. I found the colour easy to mix up (I don’t know why people complain about that part), but I did find the application rather messy.

Messy, for the most part because of all the extra stuff that Lush puts into their henna—the coffee grounds made the mixture clumpy and it had a penchant for glopping off everywhere because of them. Anyways, the rinsing was alright, and I wonder again at people’s complaints. They said it took them days to get the coffee grounds out, and I wonder at the inefficiency of the world’s people in general, because I had no problem—even with my thick, wild, curly hair…so yeah.

The next time I had to do my roots, I went with Lush again, but I thought to try their “Caca Rouge,” as I was digging the red, and I wasn’t that impressed with the coffee grounds of my former choice. It was less clumpy this time, and I knew a little better the process Lush advises you to use with their henna. The colour was nice, but again had little “oomph!” despite me leaving the henna on my hair for 4 hours.

The cocoa butters that Lush uses in it’s hennas melt and run easily with the heat of a saran wrapped and towelled head, which always leaves me uber paranoid about orange stains on my skin. The colour faded a lot…which surprised me considering that everything I had read about henna stated that it was a permanent colour. I did more research online after this, and came across this website. A website dedicated to all things henna!

Henna for Hair is a wealth of information (the founder of the site, Catherine, is writing a thesis on Henna). There is information on how to, why to, results, recipes, and there is even a forum to ask questions or research previous answers…just what I needed.

I realized that it was how Lush advises you to mix their colour (added oils of the cocoa butter, boiling water, no time for dye release) that makes it fade so quickly, and not achieve a true stain on the hair…so I would recommend it perhaps for the experimenter in henna, because at least it won’t be a bitch to get out if you don’t like it.

Personally, I love, love, love the body quality henna in comparison to the Lush—actually, for me there is no comparison. The sift is so fine that it’s a breeze to put into the hair (no clumps falling everywhere, yay!), it doesn’t run, it smells way better (for reals, Lush henna reeks) and the colour! Oh my God! The colour is rich and beautiful, and it stays…as an added bonus, my hair feels as soft as a baby’s right now…I’m certainly not going to complain! It’s a far cry from the dried out dreads I was rocking from my blonde hairventure last summer time…

The red is a wonderful garnet hue, and totally different from the brassy sort of orange the Lush Cacas imbue, so I am incredibly happy with my BAQ henna purchase from Catherine’s store (also on the Henna for Hair site). It’s even blended the darker and lighter sections of my hair pretty nicely, and my whites are now simply highlights.

If you are interested in a natural dye, and someone who’s not afraid of a permanent change I would totally recommend henna, but specifically going to Henna for Hair and researching the subject yourself. There are a multitude of colours that you can obtain from different plants…buttery blondes to rich browns to the blackest black—of course dependent on your natural colour, well…maybe not with the black, but you get the idea.

I hope you give it a whirl if you are interested!

I will keep this post short, seeing as I would like to spend the bulk of my writing time catching up on all the other posts I want to write about.

I finished week 4 of the c25K program…super proud of myself! Apparently by this time next week I will be able to jog for 20 minutes straight! Egads, if you had told me this on day one I would not have believed you, but I am slowly improving. After work I am golden, but I am still rather breathless on my morning jogs…I am not too good at hardcore fitness first thing on a Sunday morning, but the weather has been gorgeous lately (read: bloody hot) so to exercise later in the day is becoming rather out unless you are into that sort of thing. And by “that sort of thing” I mean giving yourself heat stroke because you’ve gone from hardly ever exercising to jogging in the 30 degrees Celsius weather we’re all at the beach enjoying these days.

I will say that the breeze off the ocean is heavenly first thing in the morning when it’s that warm…loverly!

In other news, I have drunk way too much tea today, and I suppose that water will have to be my bevvie for the rest of the day, if I want to sleep tonight anyways…aaaand I just broke my alarm clock. I am not sure if it is a caffeine induced twitch that made me drop a litre of water on the poor thing, or if it’s just my totally awesome and rather innate clumsiness that did the job for me.

Sad face…I really liked that alarm. I hope it works when it’s dry. I never had to set the time on it, because it got it from a satellite or something like that. I’m one of those people who always forgets about daylight savings time, so a clock that sets itself is a blessing indeed…

Hmm…well, I can see this is a rather stellar post, so I will finish it off here, and get started on some honest to goodness real writing. Ciao, dahlings!

This made me laugh out loud…and not just in the emoticon way, but you know, the real way. My cat Lenny wasn’t far off from this in her morning “wake Danielle up” ritual. Sigh…I miss my poor little kitteh…

But what I really want to know is who the hells is thumbs downing this on YouTube? For reals! How can you not find this funny…and even if you are soulless and don’t like kittehs, for why the negative feedback…?

Also, WordPress just tried to make me watch the “Price is Right”…wtf, WordPress? I thought we had a spam free understanding…

[Update! Photos of the crash...]

View from the front...picture more wall...glass...and like, 100% less debris...

My poor lil' desk!

Well…if their retarded “embedding” actually worked you’d get to see footage of my wrecked place of work…instead you can go here and watch the video titled “Car into Salon.” Actually it was a small van, but hey! the news is never wrong…*cough*cough*

So yeah…I spent most of my day off at the salon helping clean up and get a hold of clients to rebook or confirm or just book period. It could have been worse, but luckily no one was hurt and we will be open (ha…) as per usual tomorrow. I was a little worried…we have all the appointments on the computer, and the desk was smashed into two (now duct taped together…). I wasn’t sure if the lil’ guy was going to make it! The computer got away with a few licks of nail paint due to some smashed OPI bottles, and is otherwise in good working condition—huzzah!

Otherwise, I finished week three of my running program this Sunday, and will be starting week 4 tomorrow—exciting and slightly scary at the same time, yet I don’t know why I think scary, as I seem to be quite capable of each new week…

I do have some ideas that I want to blog, but it’ll have to wait for later this week, because I can’t even remember what else I was going to add to my list of updates…oh yes! I forgot, but now I remember…henna’d my hair this weekend, so it’s a glorious auburn now! I suppose that gets another “Huzzah!” as my roots (i.e. my white white hairs) were driving me batty. They’re now lovely copper highlights, so I think we’re all good on that front now.

And that is another post I want to write about…henna! There is such an amazing science behind it, so please excuse me if I make a point of saying it here, but my mind ain’t what it used to be. Also spell check has “ain’t” in the dictionary…I am not sure what that says about American and human culture in general (“Yay! I spelled ‘ain’t’ correctly, ma!”)…

Werl, mah kittehs, I have had a rather draining day (elderly drivers…eee!), so I will leave this little update post here, but I hope you all have a great week ahead of you…

Anyhow, I was reading on the c25k site that most people drop out after week 4, and I am hoping I will not be that person…especially because I have gotten it in my head that I am going to do this bloody thing, and you know how I get (terrier meet rat). So yesh, you can expect a weekly update from me telling you “I did it!” and I can honestly say that it is probably more for my benefit than yours…

Next subject!

I have been feeling rather blank lately, and I am not sure of what direction to take myself in next. I think before this point I was soooo looking forward to spending a month in DC that I didn’t think about what sort of options were open to me beyond that. I continued to work at the same job, mostly because they agreed to let me off for the month, and I while I am content there (they have all been in better moods, or perhaps it’s because they are all so busy {yay for being booked solid} that they don’t have time to be all petty and that…) I’m not sure if I want to continue on there or take another leap of faith…

To be to the point (say what?!?), I have been doing morning pages every day this week, and in doing so I have been writing down intentions (if you go to the previous post, you will see my muse to write down my daily intentions). When I script my day, I have been realizing that I am in survivor mode. There are no awesome things like people discovering my blog and getting me a job writing, or meeting the love of my life, or anything fun like that really…there are only small little piddling things that get me through the day with the least amount of pain.

While I have been inspired in my life to make changes for the better, I can see that my daily objectives are totally uninspired…yes, it’s totally rad to get to work on time and unscathed and then have an awesome day at work, but is it really more important then choosing life goals and actually doing them? So for all the changes coming in my life, I realize that the most important change that I can make at this point in time is to decide where it is that I’m off to…far, far beyond my daily routine.

We need change to grow, so I am hunting for my next big adventure where I can prove myself again…

I’m actually considering professional bellydance. I haven’t really danced in months, but I am hoping to get back into the swing of things with the advent of running etc…so when I was washing dishes last night and thinking of bellydance this occurred to me as an actual choice, and I thought “why not?”

It’s not like I have any other life goals at the moment, and the thought of being trapped in an office, and having a regular boring old career just kills me. I am not meant for those things, and I think it is good to challenge myself with things that I don’t think I could possibly do.

Getting up on stage and shaking it, werl, that would definitely push me out of my comfort zone, even as much as I love dancing…in front of others, I am not too sure about. So it would be a way for me to push myself to be myself, and accept all the bits of myself…I feel like you have to have confidence in what you are doing/who you are, and certainly some “git-er-dun” attitude to go out there…putting yourself out there.

Anyway, we will see where this goes…no promises at the moment, as I need to meditate on all things future related.

Speaking of the future, it’ll be my birthday on Tuesday (30…eep!), and speaking of birthdays, do silent birthday wishes count? I certainly hope so, as it was my mother’s birthday this past week, as well as a few others, and I don’t want to initiate contact with her lest she think I want to talk to her (which I don’t…I tried, but I am done with that at the moment), but I do wish her the best in the coming year…

Anyhow, I hope they count, as it’s the thought that counts, and if a silent birthday wish is All Thought then I suppose that there is no better betterment of the thing…is that English? Oh well…

Hugs, dahlings, and I will write more later (“later” probably being some point in the week when I am not busy slacking as is my wont normally…)

Anyways, after watching one video I was so intrigued by her that I had to watch every video on her channel…she’s funny,  randomly bursts into song, and is incredibly intelligent. She often shouts at her viewers to “get smart,” “google it” and I love her turn of phrase about how things “give [her] life.” Which is true, because those things we love truly make us feel alive and connected.

I can’t recall if I have mentioned her in my blogski before, but I felt that she deserved a post all of her own—especially because I have felt so inspired by her latest series where she recommends books that changed her life.

It wasn’t necessarily the book itself that was so inspiring (though I have made an effort to obtain it and read it), but her breakdown of how that book changed her life, and what the gist of the book was about…basically that we eat shit all the time, and think nothing of it because we are conditioned by society to do so. She asks us why certain people deserve fame and happiness and fulfilment more than we do…and she’s right they don’t, but we need to constantly be on guard to remember that we are just as worthy. Such a hard task!

Here is the series, so you can see just how charismatic Shira is, and really, I adore the message in these videos.

So that is a taste of her style of videos, but her other videos are definitely worth checking out, and I hope you do…All of them are really about embracing who you are, empowerment, and of course makeup/fashion/skincare/etc.

I find that even though I am some random white woman in Canada her story really speaks to me about my own path in life, and she’s someone that I think deserves some more love for what she does. I was so bummed that I found out about her losing her whole makeup collection after I had already given the majority of mine away. She so deserved it, and I would have loved to help her out…

So I couldn’t help her out then, but I will help her out in my little way by blogging about her…and possibly, in a way,  help you out by giving you the gift of Shira!

I won’t say that it’s easy for me to get out there and run. I feel quite pathetic wheezing away (okay, I have found a breathing rhythm, but I am not used to huffing away), and I can’t run for any length at all at the moment, but I see progress. Actually, having started the couch to 5k program, I can really see how you can be running 30min straight by the end of it.

It seems rather impossible the first day, and then after that you go out and your muscles get used to what you are doing and it’s much more manageable…and that is what springs the hope up—actually, I wouldn’t call it hope…it’s that same surety that I have about my intuition. I know I can and will be doing 30min straight running and more if I should choose to do so. It’s a good feeling to have.

Running itself is weird in the spectrum of feelings it invokes…it’s been a long time since I have looked forward to something so, and I like that about it. Here is my mixture of feelings…trepidation (will I be able to run as long as I am supposed to?), excitement, motivation, slight embarrassment about the wheezing and when I am done accomplishment and pride for actually getting my arse out there and doing it.

Having said that that my ipod (stupid ipod!) wouldn’t play the c25k podcast with the run/walk times…so that definitely made my first jog all the more harder! I had to count the times, and it threw my breathing (that and being, you know, totally out of shape). I got a stitch at the end, and I think I probably should have done one more run, but I said screw it and just walked home. Oh, that and sprinting instead of jogging…I are retardeds sometimes, and that was definitely one of those times…let’s start slowly, Danielle…sigh. Anyway, funny enough, I was only one run interval off of what I should have done, so good on me, but I can tell you it didn’t make me hopeful at all for the next day.

When I got back home I made an entire series of playlists with songs of the right length, and arranged them this way and that, so at least I have the right timing for my intervals…

Also, I don’t know what it is about me, but when I walk I tend to speed walk (not in a goofy way—just in a “getting-where-I-am-going” kinda way), and the same thing when I run, meaning I tend to sprint. Maybe it’s all my years of dashing to a bus stop in time, or dashing off to help someone etc…but I find jogging so…awkward. It’s like, “Yeah, I can go faster, but I’m not gonna!” I realize that I need to pace myself, and really, probably one of the main reasons running has become much easier is because I am pacing myself, but yeah…I look forward to having intervals of sprinting and jogging instead of jogging and walking.

Hmm…I don’t think I have much more to say about this for the time being…I suppose I will give weekly updates of my progress, and if anything it will somewhat guilt me into doing all 9 weeks of the c25k program…la…

I will probably post tomorrow, but for the time being I hope you are having a lovely weekend, mah dahlings!

[Update: So I confronted her, and she could barely stand to be in the same room with me after for a while...I suppose that is what happens when you've been called out on your douchery in a calm and adult manner...sigh. I think (read: hope) that this is the end of it. Also, me blogging on my phone equals spelling and grammar errors out the yin yang! Which is to say "a few," but for someone who triple (if not quadruple) checks posts before publishing...oy vey!]