New hair do

Got new fab hair cut curtesy of Jen's hair dresser Claire.

Update: Changed picture for the one that Jen took on her iPhone as it's a better shot! Also Clairs's Salon is

The Salon
87 Pendas Way
Crossgates
Leeds
LS15 8HN

Very happy with my new do and it's survived well overnight, real test will be when I wash my hair and try and repeat the same look! Suspect I'll be having to go back to Claire very soon!

Frizzy Hair

My hair is causing some minor difficulties at the moment as it is, obviously, growing and getting quite long, though nowhere near the length that I want it to reach.

I wash it every day and I'm going through experiments with various products to see what will tame it to the point that it can at least be considered manageable and not just look like a rather over-grown birds nest.

This picture was taken at Yo Sushi in Manchester (more on that in another post) and it did actually feel like the hair was being relatively well-behaved and didn't look too mad. I quite like what I'm wearing so this post is essentially pure vanity!

Hairy McClary ....

... from Donaldsons Dairy. I actually always thought it was "McScary" but apparently not. Anyway the book is available on Amazon.

This isn't actually about Chirldren's books but that dredded hair stuff that I seem to spend an enternity trying to remove only to see loads more of it making an appearance the following day. The problem is particularly acute for me as I am 'lucky' to still have fairly dark hair but I also have very pale skin.

Anyway, I generally attack most unwanted hair with an epilator which does the best job at removing it but it does eventually recover and grow back. I have noticed now that some of the hairs growing back are paler and finer than before, they are actually really hard to see but, for example, if I look at my arm over a black background I can see alot more hairs that if I stare at it directly (which is essentially against the white background of my skin).

I've also been using the epilator on my legs again and, so far, have suffered less from in-growing hairs than I did before. Also the skin on my legs feels a little softer.

WARNING: Work people beware, I'm going to be talking about my breasts again, you probably want to be finding something else to read at this point!

Boobs were quite uncomfortable yesterday and rather tender, not helped by wearing forms all day. Still worse discomfort on the left than on the right, but that side is slowly catching up. The areola still doesn't seem much different in size but is getting the "goose-flesh" appearance which I guess are some of the lubrication ducts (she says trying to sound authorative when having just read this on the Wikipedia article).

One thing I did notice in the mirror this morning is the area around and outside of the areola (that's quite easy to type when you get use to it you know, areola, areola, areola ... sorry, got carried away there) seems a different colour, lighter in fact, than the rest of the breast. On my left side the area is bigger than that on the right so I am assuming that this is something to do with the development of the breasts in some way.

Think I'll probably leave further discussion of this for a while now since I doubt much more interesting things are going to happen until more time has passed - though of course I'm now watching for every tiny little change which is likely to make me rather impatient!

New haircut

This is the first time I've been to get my hair properly cut, coloured and styled. I had no idea what I wanted doing or what it would look like and I certainly didn't realise it would take 2hrs to complete the entire process - I spent alot of this catching up on my magazine reading (I don't do this much these days) and now know what's happening in celebrity land!

Anyway, here's the pic of the final result:
I'm certainly pleased with it but it's still a shock and will take some getting use to ... and alot of care and attention to ever get it looking anywhere near as good as the hairdresser got it.

Also it's another sign of how real this all is and just how much this thing involves.

Hate hair!

Rather personal topic, but I'm talking about body hair here, rather than the, quite wild and unruly variety on my head (which I like and would like even more if it would grow straight, long and in a more interesting colour).

I've been shaving/epilating my legs for well over two years now and there is no way I can ever imagine going back to some hairy-Neanderthal-esque state, the whole idea is just unthinkable. And that's the same opinion I hold concerning hair on my arms as well - I attacked that sometime last year and have been, on the whole hair-free ever since (the only exception being the necessity to grow a certain amount so that the epilator has something to grab onto and rip - no it doesn't really hurt as much as you'd think).

I haven't been using the epilator recently for two reasons; one, I was letting my legs recover a bit from the punishment and assault of in-growing hairs (yuck, ouch, and similar) and two, the torture equipment is packed away awaiting the freedom of the flat. So this means that any other errant hairs have to be dealt with using razor alone and this isn't very permanent.

So this morning, while driving in to work I noticed some hairs that I'd missed and I actually felt quite a strong revulsion to what I saw. I really was quite upset by the idea that there were, what I'd consider, "male" hair still existing on my body. I'm not sure how to describe it any better than that, it was just wrong, and I didn't want it.

I really was quite surprised at how much this bothered me. I'm quite use to looking in the mirror or at myself generally and not been too happy with what's there, but that's a kind of low-level, constant dissatisfaction and dislike which I'd always assumed was more about a concious desire to look better/different rather than a deep-seated psychological issue.

I think I'm going to start making a list of things I don't like and what I want to be changed, then at least I know what I'm aiming for.