it's like spring cleaning...

atc

i just found out about these things called artist trading cards - there are a bunch of trading events in my city going on all the time...they are little works of art that are the size of playing cards, or baseball cards, and you have your name and e-mail address and whatever other information on the back of them. they get traded amongst other trading card artists and some people trade over the internet, etc...they can be anything you want - collage, paint, debossed metal, etc...the only requirements are that they are the size of a trading card and they are not sold, only traded.

more to come on this - i'm totally excited. i may even start another blog documenting all the trading cards i make. this is awesome.

re-cap on the spa night...and other weekend news

so friday night was somewhat girlie fun. the facial mask isn't even worth repeating because it was so wet that it wouldn't stick to my face, not to mention i didn't blend it up enough and it was a little too chunky. i was so annoyed with it's wet consistency that i didn't even bother re-processing it in the food processor.

the hair mask went better, although i'm not sure if i see or feel much of a difference in my hair. it was:

• 5 T full fat yogurt (i used a greek yogurt because that made sense to me)
• 1 T of backing soda (not sure what this is for)
• 1 T of lemon juice

this particular mask is for oilier hair, so if your hair isn't oily, i'd suggest changing out the lemon juice for coconut oil or something else that'll be moisturizing.

i think it might've made my hair more shiny, but i'm not sure since my hair's pretty shiny to begin with. ah well, it was fun being girlie for an evening. i picked up some sushi and red wine and enjoyed myself for the evening.

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saturday morning i had to get up early and promote my yoga studio along with one of the massage therapists at a peace run/walk...which was a total bust. there were all of 20 people there. apparently not many people care about peace in this area...and it was cold and i was under dressed. flip flops and a track jacket were innappropriate that early in the morning.

after that, i went to get an oil change which i usually don't mind because i feel that the place i go to doesn't try to sell me anything i don't need. this time, they tried to sell me a transmission flush that hyundai recommends every 50,000 miles. had he looked at my service record, he would've seen that i had that done earlier this year. so he said that my transmission fluid was dirty - either they didn't do a good job on the transmission flush the first time, or they were lying to me. either scenario sucks.

i napped most of the day on saturday and went out to meet my new girlfriends for some italian food before meeting up with matt to go to a wedding reception for one of his co-workers. dinner was really great - again, can't say enough awesome things about these girls. we're going out for margarita happy hour this thursday...and the reception was kind of stupid. it was way out of town and we spent more time driving than actually at the reception. who gets married in the middle of nowhere anyway?

matt and i spent most of sunday cuddling and napping on the couch, watching football and eating food. seems like there was a lot of napping going on this weekend - it was chilly and a little dreary, so it seemed like the the natural thing to do. we went over to his friend joe and meggan's place for the evening game and some sandwiches from jimmy john's.  

matt's coming over tonight to watch the packer game after i get home from yoga (if you're not from wisconsin - green bay packer football is like a religion around here. the state may as well close down on game days).

happy monday.

top 5 - #4

so i'm finally rounding out the top 5. here's number 4. ryan gosling...noah, i'll be your allie any day.

solo girlie night

there was a meetup event tonight at the art museum, but i decided to change my rsvp to "no." i have a busy weekend coming up and i thought i would stay in and relax a little.

so instead - i am having a spa night...just me and a glass (or two) of my favorite red wine and probably a chick flick (or rom-com as matt says). i found a few recipes online for homemade natural facial and hair masks so i think i'm going to make myself beautiful tonight.

thank goodness i got that food processor for christmas - how would i ever make my cucumber yogurt mask without it?  :)

happy hour was actually just that

after work last night, there was this little impromptu, informal get together with a few girls from the meetup group i'm in. one of the girls posted a message about how she's having relationship difficulties and she doesn't really have anyone to talk to about it and the other 4 of us came to the rescue, suggesting drink specials at a relatively swank downtown cocktail lounge.

it was, surprisingly, a really good time. all these girls are professional, young, smart and friendly...so i feel like i fit in and they were easy to talk to. i'm finding that frequently girls in the meetup groups are sometimes painfully, socially awkward and it makes it hard to talk to them, but all these girls were cool and i think it was a bonding thing that we all got together to help this girl deal with her boyfriend issues. Not to mention another one of the girls also just broke up with her boyfriend and i was having my issues with matt - so we have a lot of common ground with man problems.

the five of us got along so well that we all exchanged numbers and we're having dinner on saturday night. i'm actually ecstatic. i was so surprised that we all got along so well.

dry shampoo

ok - so i've been giving this dry shampoo thing a try for the last three weeks or so and i kinda like it, but kinda don't.

i have thin, oily hair that needs to be washed daily...or always has been, but i color it and it seems to fade so much by the time i get it colored again that i'd thought i'd give this a whirl.

i'm using tresemme freshstart because it seemed to work for shy. and it was totally affordable. i'll wash my hair normally on day one and just rinse it on day two to get out any hair products. i blow dry my hair, then lifting it up in sections, i'll spray on the dry shampoo, leave it on for a couple minutes then brush out as directed.

i'm finding that my hair looks clean, but doesn't feel clean. i assume that's what it's supposed to be like, but i haven't heard this from anyone else that uses dry shampoo, or in the reviews. i'm not sure if my hair is just too oily or what, but i've been waiting for my hair to slowly start to become less oily by day two naturally and it's just not happening.

i do like that i can just fluff my hair at the roots and it's totally full and bombshell-esque though...that's kinda neat.

i'm not sure if i need to spend a little more than $4.00 on dry shampoo, or if it just doesn't work well on my hair type. i'm gonna stick it out until i've used it up and see how my hair's behaving then.  

how does my office phone cord get twisted and bunchy when i pick it up and put it down the same way every time?

wandering eyes

sometimes i think about dating other men. especially lately. things were going well with matt and i until today. i had eased up a little and backed off from interrogating him on the regular (unintentionally).

[quick re-cap for the typepadders: matt and i were dating for a year, moved in together, lived together for 2 years, he cheated on me and moved out, we broke up for 2 months and have been back together now for about 9 months but are not living together].

unfortunately, the homewrecker in question was a close friend and ex-bandmate of his with whom i've never been friends and always hated [i knew my intuition was right]. our agreement was that he was no longer friends with her - end of story...and she hated him for going back to me so it wasn't really an issue.

i find out today [from that one girlfriend we all have who's always looking out for you] that at his band's last show, homewrecker was there and they got to talking about being in a band together again along with some other people. he didn't mention it to me because it's in the earliest stages and nothing has been set in stone yet.

for whatever reason, he didn't think i'd be upset about it. the male brain never ceases to amaze me. how could i NOT be upset about it?!?!...when i asked him about it, he felt bad for making me upset and didn't realize that it would bother me so much which is shocking. how could you not know it would bother me?

i can't talk to him for a little while. at least not for the rest of the day which doesn't seem like a lot, but we normally talk all day and make it a point to call eachother and say goodnight. i honestly and truly believe it doesn't occur to him that this would be hurt my feelings. i'd like to think it's because in his head, he knows he'll never cheat again, but to me, the levels of anxiety that it causes is borderline unbearable. no amount of yoga will fix that much anxiety.

this is why i soemtimes fantasize about dating other men and the conversations we'd have on a first date...but don't we always think the grass is greener on the other side?

my fear is that if i decide to leave at some point in the near future because i can't handle the anxiety of the situation and his flighty male behavior, will it be the biggest mistake of my life? will i end up settling with someone a few years down the road who i don't compliment or mesh as well with? someone who i haven't known more than half my life? someone who has other personality flaws which are worse [i.e. some weird sex fetish, gambling problems, etc.]? i know what i'm getting with matt. there's never been a question of that. 

*side note* - he just called my phone. i didn't answer.  

le sigh

yesterday i had gotten a little upset about this whole yoga studio thing. it's going a lot slower than i had anticipated. i teach two classes on monday nights and two classes on tuesday nights. what sucks is that matt will always call me when he knows classes are over to see how they went, which is sweet, but it then forces me to tell him that i had no students in my first class and my mother was my only student in my second class.

tonight, i know for certain that i will have two students in my first class and i'm actually ecstatic about it. i've more or less exhausted all opportunities to advertise and whatnot at this point and it's frustrating and discouraging to know that virtually none of those efforts have paid off.  

if matt or my parents tell me once more to not get discouraged and to hang on and keep at it, i think i'll throw up. i signed a three month lease, i have to keep at it. i am, however, also entitled to be frustrated and discouraged.

i suppose it has only been open for two weeks as of today and if it doesn't work out - how many people can say that they ran a little yoga studio for a while? [...this is me trying to keep my glass half full...]

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in other news...i'm going to start a supplementary blog to this one [i like the option to have multiple blogs on typepad...i don't think that vox had that, or else i never really looked].

i'm going to try to read through Patanjali's Yoga Sutras (ancient yoga text written in verse form and somewhat convoluded and difficult to decipher). it's challenging and i generally always give up and/or lose interest, but if i have something to be held accountable to, i think i'll get through it. i want to really take the time to understand it and come to my own conclusions about its meaning. i think this'll help.

have a good day, typepadders. 

we had a high of 66 today. the high for tomorrow is 82. it's impossible to dress appropriately for wisconsin weather because it fluctuates 15+ degrees from day to day.