Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night

Never fear, my faithful reader! I have not given up on blogging. No, quite the contrary: I've been amassing blogging material. You have the following ruminations to look forward to:

1) Three year olds! What is with them?

2) Husband makes a wearable space shuttle; I make an infant-sized Harry Potter costume.

3) Pinterest gets me cooking again.

4) Gilad Shalit, the angst of a mother, and the Second Lebanon War. Maybe. I haven't decided if there's a good way to go there or not.

But for now, I will share with you what I did on Saturday night, in a great fit of not being able to stand looking tired and older than I am. The culprit couldn't possibly be the short nights of constantly interrupted sleep. No! It's the damned gray hairs. I have had more than one person announce unbidden in the past few months that he loves all my gray hair. Husband was not one of those people. Husband simply comments that I have a growing number of them. Actually, I should say had. Yes, I who have only had highlights twice--both times more or less abject failures--decided that a proper Saturday night involved wine, spicy chocolate, and a box of hair dye whose instructions were in Estonian. Note that this was not a subject area covered in my ten months of Estonian training or the final test. I made Nanny help me, assuring her that in no way would I hold her personally responsible for the results.

The results were good. My attempts to get a picture of them were not. I have a fancy DSLR camera, the fine piece of machinery that takes anything good on here. But it's at least three feet away from me and requires uploading. Dealbreaker. I used the built-in camera in my laptop.

On the first night, with my hair freshly blown out, the tired eyes and poor lighting resulted in this unsatisfying picture:

Oh sweetie, just go to sleep.

So tonight I tried again, moving my head to block the light. The pictures evoke less pity for my sheer exhaustion, but completely fail to show the color:

Wait, no, on second look, I still appear exhausted.*

So I here I am, fanning out my hair to capture the reddish brown color while pointing my desk light at it:

This is an important rite of passage for me: the first box of hair dye in what will certainly be twenty years filled with boxes of hair dye. A husband, two kids, a career, and a five euro tube of hair color. Apparently I'm an adult, but I didn't know until that last one.

*But my necklace is adorable! Thanks to a helpful post by Jill at Baby Rabies, I ordered this custom peridot and blue topaz necklace and stackable rings from Olive Bungalow. Great mommy jewelry.