From Maintenance to MainteNOTce

  A few years ago I was single with a good income-most of it disposable.  I was high maintenance:  I always got my hair, nails and eyebrows done by professionals.  My wardrobe was always fresh, I mean I couldn't go to the club in the same outfit as last weekend could I?  A lot has changed since then, in fact when I walk down the street people aren't looking at my awesome new 'do or great brows, they're looking for a can to put their spare change in.  I had sort of let myself go.  I can't even blame my sad state of affairs on motherhood.  I see a lot of well dressed moms out there who have managed to keep it together.  Part of my problem is that I'm technically now a bum.  I mean, yes I can say I'm a homemaker, but in reality I don't do that much housework to claim that title, my house isn't THAT clean-I take my example from Peggy Bundy.  Some people are supermoms, I'm apparently a Lex Luther.  That isn't the main reason however-I have discovered I am totally incompetent at these sort of things. But more on that later...
   Why did I stop going to professionals?  See I was in a mission to save money.  Because money was tight and I wasn't really adding to our household income I didn't want to spend money on extras and this looked like an easy way to trim money off our expenses.  I decided I was going to do it myself. I mean so many people do these sort of things every day how hard could it be?  There wouldn't be a multimillon dollar hair-color-in-a-box industry if it DIDN'T work.  Plus nobody dies from a bad plucking job.  Apparently there is a reason why there are professionals..and why I have been relying on them all these years.  It is very hard, well at least for me to do these types of upkeep and still look normal.

•  My hair:  I would still go to my awesome hair dresser to get my hair trimmed up and fixed up.  However in order to make the time between haircuts stretch sometimes I would trim it myself.  Big mistake.  I once ended up cutting my bangs too short and they stuck out like a unicorn's horn.  If I didn't touch it I would just let it grow out until it looked like a greasy, shapeless, limp mess.  Right now I'm in that phase:  the only thing keeping me from shaving my head ala Brittney Spears is by pulling it back in a pony tail and headband-not the most flattering look.  The color?  For the last year and a half it has been done courtesy of a $9.99 color in a box special.  Keeping my hair a solid brown color wasn't too difficult of a task, however in the summer I decided to go blonde.  Not only did I fry my hair but it went copper.  So I had to re-bleach it a few times to try to get a uniform, non kool-aide, semi-it-exists-in-nature shade.  I was in too deep to stop now.  I recently re-dyed it to get rid of my brown roots, however I messed up the application so instead of dying my roots blonde it just lightened them enough to make it look like I'm a lighter shade of brunette who needs to redo her roots.  Just the other day my mom pointed out that my hair was starting to look a little greenish in natural sunlight and when we eventually get natural sunlight I'm in big trouble.  I am so lucky my hair dresser is a patient person... I'm going there Thursday and she has her work cut out for her.  
• My Eyebrows:  I am completely hopeless when it comes to plucking my own eyebrows.  In all fairness to myself my eyebrows don't grow in evenly.  Even in the days when I never let my own hands take tweezers to them, my beautician would accuse me of plucking.  My other issue is I have thick eyebrow hairs but very few of them so if I pluck the wrong hair BAM! I have a bald space.  It's sorta like my brows got tired and needed to take a break. Anyways my eyebrows got so bad it was at the point where they were almost nonexistent.  I mean I had to draw them in which is annoying because you have to plan your facial expression for that day in advance.  You had to either choose to be shocked all day or hope that nothing shocking happened.  I guess I could bring some wet wipes and a pencil in my purse so I could change it throughout the day but I'm way too lazy for that sort of commitment.

    My mission to save money ended a few days ago when I opened up my husband's visa bill.  You see I've been put on mail duty (which sucks BTW: do you know that the mail comes everyday?).  I noticed that while I was stuck to greenish hair and one facial expression Dave was eating at McDonalds 4 times a week and spending money at the pub during his pool tournaments.  I mean it wasn't like he was blowing hundreds of dollars but still, a nice pluck and rinse done by a professional once a month was starting to look reasonable.  I just got my brows redone and on Thursday I'm going to my hairdresser to get my mess cleaned up so I'm starting to feel a little more human.
  I think I saved myself in the nick of time... things are starting to look pretty desperate!

Eyebrows fixed, can't wait to kiss the greenish multi-shade hair goodbye!