What is the appeal of hair dye anyway?

I spent like $10 and take a gamble everytime I decide I want a change, and you never know just what you are going to get. Honestly, the last time I tried red I looked like Ronald McDonald for a couple of days and then it faded into a hellishly freaky pink.

So why would I be stupid enough to try it again? Well, I have a thing for red hair...I want it. It doesn't look really all that good on me but I figure since I have red highlights naturally that at some point I am going to find the one shade that looks absolutely smashing on me. So I pick up the box, peruse the "this is what results you will get" images for brunette hair, chuck the box into the cart and found myself ten bucks poorer.

Get home, lather up the stuff, wait out the half an hour before rinsing and blowing dry. Shock. My hair is not really red but a faded, mousy, strawberry blond that makes me look completely washed out.

So now I am going to be out another ten bucks tonight buying a brunette dye to get me approximately back to my original shade, taking a risk again that not only will the new stuff be close to my old color, but will cover up this new dye as well without turning orange.

What a waste.

Mixed Signals....

See this? This is correct...the stop sign is facing forward and the controller is also motioning you to stop (okay, so he's yelling it but it has to do with today's story so please read on....)

On my way to pick up some supplies this morning before work and I come up to a construction site (not that I saw any construction, just two flagmen but that's not the point). The point is that as I approached my flagger had his "slow" sign to me so I slowed down. He waved his hand at me so I slowed down even more. He REAAAAAAALLY started waving his hand and I slowed down even more than the mosey the car was doing at the moment when finally he screamed "You need to F-ing STOP!"

Well I must say this caught me off guard and I stopped. Mind you he wasn't holding his hand up like I should stop but was making the motion the guy always does that says "move along, move along, nothing to see here" and his SLOW sign was staring me right in the face.

He stood there grumbling for a few moments, flashed me a couple of black looks, looked around PAST his sign before flipping it around to now read STOP. I waited. He finally looks at me again and yells "MOVE IT!" and angerly waves me through! Again, the sign facing me says STOP!

What a moron.

I should have pulled over and asked for his supervisor because that idiot is going to cause an accident. His buddy looked over and yelled something at him I couldn't catch after I was buzzing back down the road and I was too peeved to see if he was correcting his road sign.

Honestly, yelling at someone when YOU are in the wrong is hardly the way to rectify the situation. Given, he might not have noticed his sign was turned about but he did look past it a couple of times while I sat there waiting, you'd think SOMETHING would have registered.

Maybe he really was a moron, maybe his mind was elsewhere, maybe he was just in a bad mood but that doesn't fix the fact that I was treated like an idiot for doing what the sign said. As I said before, that situation is an accident in the making.

Sadly we have many mixed signals in life; some unintentional, some deliberate....most of them just as dangerous as that road worker today.

Someone else knows....

That terrible, horrible, evil, nasty, I-got-myself-into-it number. You know the one...that number that makes you shudder and cringe when you step onto your BATHROOM SCALE (cue Psycho theme).

Frankly, I don't have a bathroom scale and it wouldn't be accurate anyway seeing as how I am hefty enough to need an industrial scale to weight myself on (unless I want to keep popping into my doctor's office for daily weigh-ins....NOT). Luckily I have one at work that is willing to slap those numbers into my face anytime I choose to set it on the floor and hop on.

It is not for the faint-of-heart to allow someone else to know that terror-inducing, heart-palpitating, artery-clogging number but I trust the person who knows and we have decided we both need to have a plan. Not sure if they are going with my plan but today this girl has got to get serious about a food diary....I eat better when I know someone else is going to check in on what I have crammed down my gullet.

I need more fruits and veggies and have GOT to start cooking my own meals and packing up leftovers for lunches, etc rather than stop in at my local fast food dives and grabbing something "to go". Soda? Diet or otherwise I am have got to cut back drastically....if I don't watch it I can easily down a 6-pack of pop in an 8-hour period (can anyone say unhealthy???) Start slow by cutting out my sugar intake and introducing real foods to my over-processed diet.

I know I am in no shape for jogging or serious power walks right now but that doesn't mean exercise is out of the question....I just have to find the time and start slow. If I remain serious about it I will reward myself with a larger MP3 player so I can take more tunes along.

I will love and not punish myself. No pictures showing just how huge I am on the fridge (and trust me, I have a few of those unflattering shots that were taken quite recently--the ones that catch you off guard and leave you thinking, "that can't be me, there is no way I see that in the mirror every day!)

I can (on occasion) have a treat. That doesn't mean out comes that delicious carrot cake once a week (because frankly there are much better choices out there with a lot less calories that I would love just as much). I will also admit to realistic goals...I do not need to be a size 6 to be happy, and as long as I am healthy and able to do what I want, who cares what the end number is.

I am not a number.

And last but not least I will not be upset if I do not see overnight success; it took me 38 years to get to this weight and it will not just melt away in a few short months (though I would certainly rejoice at THAT miracle!)

So why do I post this? It is not for people to shake their heads if they see me snarfing something not on the "for your good" list or to make comments about if I really need to eat that item in my hand. Trust me guys, I am fat...odds are I know if something I am eating is not good for me. It is also not so people can come up and pointedly ask "how's that diet thing going?"

So why you ask? Because I want people to know this is something I am serious about.

I have a lifetime of bad habits to overcome and it won't be easy.

It's about time I decide that I am worth doing this for.