Mud Party

It's actually not mud, but henna paste, and my head is currently slathered with it. That's right, I decided to try something new. I'm dying my hair with henna instead of those yucky chemicals I've been using for 13 years. Using henna on your hair is quite different than commercial dyes. It's not a liquid, but a paste, that I've been instructed to 'apply like frosting on a cake.' That's about what it felt like: gooey, sticky, green frosting. You should have heard me last night while I was mixing up my henna potion! It sure looked and smelled like some witchy concoction.

I got used to the smell as I was putting the stuff on my head. It's slightly hay-like and grassy. It's really a very natural, earthy scent. And why wouldn't it be? It's all henna (natural) and lemon juice (natural). My hair is pretty long (oh, how I hope I got it all! It's so very hard to section myself!) and with this cake of henna and plastic wrap and towel over my head, it's really heavy. I've got three more hours to go like this! Maybe I should take a nap....

Poor Branwen, my mother's old Saturn. We finished clearing it out and took off the tags so the Purple Heart charity could come and take it away. While we were doing this, we noticed the driver's side lock looked amiss. It was! The metal lock part was pushed back, and the rubber seal around it was loose. Someone tried to break into our car! We were very upset about this. That is not a fitting end for a car that served us so well for a few months shy of ten years. It looks like they didn't succeed (they wouldn't have gotten far in it anyway), but that's not the point. And it's disturbing to think someone even tried, in this otherwise quite suburb I've lived in all my life. Despicable.

Ah, but the old car is gone now. I hope someone will get some use out of it somewhere. Probably for parts. My mother and I were out shopping. This is a good thing. A car, though not alive, is like a part of your family. You rely on it to get you places, to protect you from the elements and from accidents, to carry things that are important to you. We would have cried to see it go.

Tomorrow is brunch. We get to show off the new car to Fox and his wife. And walk to and from Annapolis in the rain. Should be fun!