Heinous Henna Hardships, Near Drowning and "Simply Elegant Desserts"

I would have added "Working Mom Blues" to that mix since I'm at work, but i feared it would complicate matters worse than trying to tie all of this together.

Heinous Henna Hardships : I have contemplated dying my hair for some time now. Each time I look in the mirror, new coarse white hairs seem to be popping up and invading my head at an alarming rate. I encouraged the natural ones to battle them, but they just seem to lie down. With that in mind, we begin our adventure.
The lady in the gingerbread house (an artist who lives down the road from me) told me to try using henna. She seemed sweet and well meaning. Little did I know that she was secretly part of a conspiracy to befuddle me. Just kidding. So I bought the henna.
She told me to get the tubes on line or at the local health food store. I got the only box of "dark brown" the health food store had. Turns out it was in the form of a powder and not a tube. At least nobody could accuse me of my color "coming from a bottle". When I opened it up, it was pea green. Anne of Green Gables scenes flashed before my eyes. I called the artist lady. She assured me that dark green was o.k.. She did, however, tell me that the powder was terrible to use. Unfortunately, I had already mixed it into a gooey looking pudding that resembled what happens when a dog eats people food. There was no taking it back now.
After waiting the allotted time period, I followed some of the suggestions on the box including adding day old coffee, nutmeg and ginger. That seemed just weird, but I went along with it anyway. I told my daughter I would be in the bathroom for about 1/2 an hour. She looked at me and my bowel of green mush with a furrowed brow and a possibly skeptical look.
It occurred to me that I may have been making a mistake. Painting this stuff on my hair was something that resembled an art form. I got a "D" in art when I was in high school. The only reason I didn't get an "F" was because I cheated and my boyfriend (now husband) did a few of my art projects to help bring up my grade. Yes, I'm that bad. So fear struck my heart as I began painting the putrid matter onto my head.
I kept reasoning with myself that this was a new kind of adventure. Despite the trash bag I had covered myself in, bits of the grainy pasty substance splattered all over. Eventually, I realized that I would never have the patience to paint all of my hair evenly, so I started adding it in a bit thicker. It didn't seem to spread all that well. Over time, it got thicker and thicker. Then I decided to just massage it into my head. By then it had formed a thick, chunky and grainy substance similar to clay. All of my hair stayed in a formed, matted mass on the top of my head. There was still a whole bowl full of the heinous henna that i didn't know what to do with.
Eventually, I left the mass of matted hair molded to the top of my head and put the bag on. I looked for a blow dryer but couldn't find it. Then I looked for my bath tub but couldn't find that either. In case you are wondering, we have 3 showers in our house, but no real bath tubs. I don't know why they built it like that, but we haven't had the resources to put one in yet. With that in mind, my bath tub is a large storage container. It had gone AWOL. Upon questioning my daughter, I found out that one of the boys used it to put some of their junk in. After wandering around looking for a hair dryer and a bath tub, my time to leave it in had expired. I was supposed to "check" my hair, but it was literally all matted into a ball on the top of my head. For this reason, I hoped for the best and commenced to rinsing it out.
Soon the heinous henna was all over the shower. By now an hour or two had elapsed. I couldn't get the stuff out of my hair. I rinsed and rinsed. I soaked and soaked. I combed and combed. I used baking soda. I started combing it out, though it was rather matted. Eventually I had to put in some real conditioner. Many frightening scenarios unfolded in my mind during this time. All of which I will spare you from. Sufficient to say that when I eventually got out of the shower, I was relieved to see that I still had brown hair, though rather unusual smelling.
I gobbed the remaining heinous henna into the trash and tied the bag in a mute effort to conceal the disaster from my husband. He didn't have to look far though, it was splattered everywhere! When all was said and done, I looked into the mirror only to find...... white hair still remained!! I can't really tell a lot of difference, except that maybe it is a little darker, and maybe just a little less of the white. This was quite disheartening, though nothing like my wild imaginations had feared.
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Simply Elegant Desserts : I held the 2nd official "Cooking Class" in my home on Friday. It was hosted by our church ladies Bible study and my younger women's fitness/devotional group. My friend Mist, a Culinary Arts Graduate of Hollywood Ca, taught the class.
Weeks before, I obsessed about my house driving everyone up the wall. The day before the class, I took almost everything out of almost every cupboard and drawer cleaning and rearranging. I cleaned for untold hours. My friends and family helped me with some diversionary activities the day before the class, though I did stay up till 1am and then got up at 5am the next day. It was then that I realized I may have a problem!
When the women actually started showing up, I was peaceful. A lot of prayer had gone up for this event. I was amazed that in my remote, 4wd, hill top location in the middle of no where, 22 women showed up! Besides the women, our total tally of kids was 15! It was a busy, but very fun and rewarding day.
Fresh flowers graced the dining and kitchen area. Soft violin music filtered in. Candles flickered in choice locations. Good whole bean coffee kept a brewing. Fresh home made Cinnamon rolls were readily on hand for all (Sock Fashion expert had made a 20 cup of flour recipe)! I had fancy gifts for door prizes. Oh it was so much fun. We had a lovely devotional and introduction time. The desserts (especially the truffles) were heavenly. I enjoyed the women a lot. Mist outdid herself again. There were no major issues with the children (most of which played outside being supervised by my two eldest children).
The head of the women's Bible Study explored doing another one in November. Tempting as it was, I knew I couldn't put my children through dealing with me that way again so soon so.......... we settled with having it at her house. After most of the women left, the last third of us headed to the lake to relax.
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Near Drowning (a praise report) : Super Catman has had serious concerns for some time. As a matter of fact, we discussed these concerns at length just this past week. "How do you get a girl to stop bugging you?" The problem girl was none other than "Miss Twinkle Winkle", Elasta Woman's 6 year old girl. Apparently, not long ago, she had "jumped on his back" when they were running around together after a recent church service. He considered "flicking her", though I advised him against it, concerned this would surely cause retaliation on her part.
Kids will be kids. Six year old boys and girls will inevitably always have some trouble relating with each other. For this matter, I encouraged him to pray about it and decided it was best if he could work it out on his own. Later that week, I heard he had found a solution to her "bugging him". Apparently, in another one of my children's words he had "chucked a frog at her" and hit her squarely in the head. This solved the problem for the time being.
On Friday, however, there would be a new and terrible story unfolding. Since a third of the cooking class women came with me to the lake, we had a good group there. Actually, all 15 of the kids came along. This presented me with the challenge of keeping track of my own. After a relaxing swim and great visit, Moonbeam started fussing and I was a bit distracted from my constant surveillance. The last time I had seen Catman, he was wearing his life jacket so I thought he was fine. Next thing I knew, somebody looked up and saw bobbing heads and heard gasping. Catman and "Miss Twinkle Winkle" were fighting each other to stay above water. Catman was under. Time stopped. Two moms had ran in to retrieve the struggling children. Apparently, they both doggie paddled out over their heads and then she tried to hold onto him. A very white looking little boy emerged from the water screaming on the top of his lungs "she held me under"! "She wouldn't let me up!" She was crying, but he was screaming loudly. Despite his hysterics, being an ER nurse, the hysterics caused relief to flood my being. I am so grateful to the mom who pulled him out of the water and so grateful to God for revealing the crisis to her just in the nick of time. As for Catman, he is convinced that "Miss Twinkle Winkle" was trying to drown him, despite the fact that she was drowning herself. I am encouraging him to forgive and not plot some creepy crawly revenge!
Really, I thank God, he is safe, well and alive. Miracles happen every day and we don't always recognize them as we should. The gift of his life is precious to me, not something to be taken lightly.