My quest with this series is to look back over my life and remember all the songs that would have been my favorite at any point along the way. It's a tall order, and I'll probably fall short, but we'll listen to some good tunes in the attempt. 

This song reminds me of the best concert I've ever been to. The night before finals week started (December, 2006), a group of girls in Southern Utah drove to a tiny venue in Salt Lake City to watch Imogen Heap play a lit-up piano. It was hot and stuffy in that club. Imogen was somehow a crazy hippie and a proper English lady, simultaneously. And of course, she threw her voice around with technology in songs like this one.

Plans: My Future Haircuts

A brief hair history:

My hair is blond and naturally curly/wavy. Over the course of a year or so when I was a teenager, I dyed it reddish-brown, then brown-brown, then blond again. This took a big toll in terms of drying out my hair and making it less lustrous (and lustrous is the name of the hair game, folks). To remedy the sad hair problem, I first cut my hair a little, then a lot to get rid of the most damaged stuff. It continued to grow in blonde and curly. A few years passed, at which point I dyed it bright red (in a fit of self-determination), then maroon-ish red, then dark brown. That's where things stand right now.

As naturally-light hair grows on a head of hair that's been significantly colored, the light roots next to the darkened portion can have the effect of making it look like the person is balding. This makes it all the more obnoxious to have to color and re-color every 4-6 weeks, at least in my experience; stretching out the time between dye jobs isn't as carefree as it might be if I had naturally dark hair that I'd chosen to lighten.

So, I can keep dying my hair really frequently, but that gets expensive and time-consuming and against my nature. I could also have my hair lightened so that the whole shebang was light blond, but that would essentially wreck my already very dry and intrinsically-fragile hair. For now, I've decided to embrace the kookiness of skunk hair, letting my blond roots grow in without doing anything about it.

And I'm doing this because I have a game plan. It involves a carefully crafted set of haircuts that I'll employ over the coming years. I need to start out with a few solid inches of blond, so that when I get the first haircut on the list (and it's drastic!), I will essentially be starting fresh with the hair God gave me.

Step One will look something like this (in terms of cut, not color -- the whole idea is to stay natural with my color and texture):

Aaahhh, crazypants! The basic jist is having really short, practically buzzed, hair on the sides and back of the head, with a remaining poof of hair on the top. I hope I'll love it, because in my imagination, I love it a lot. It's risky, it's gutsy, and it could look really terrible. But I'll keep my fingers crossed that it won't.

Step Two:

Short all over. It'll grow in a bit, staying at a pretty uniform length throughout.

Step Three:

I want to get more dimension into a still very-short haircut, with pieces that are longer and shorter, especially pieces in the front that can sort of function as bangs if I style them that way.

Step Four:

Time for a short, asymmetrical bob cut. Very messy looking. Because I'm kind of messy.

And then ...

In time, it will grow to the length it is now -- and beyond! Which is great. I enjoy having my hair both long and short, especially when it's healthy and out-of-control curly. Blond Sara is making a comeback, y'all. With a very organized haircut plan, apparently. =)

Wishes: I Want A Yellow Tablecloth

Thrift stores play a huge role in my life.

There's a small Goodwill location just a few doors down from my workplace, and I visit it often. But I've observed that it's a little overpriced as far as thrift stores are concerned. A few days ago, there was this bright yellow tablecloth for $10, and I thought about getting it, but it seemed like sort of a frivolous purchase.  A bright yellow tablecloth? Yeah, not a necessity. I also knew, thanks to Goodwill's regular discount schedule, that because this item had a blue tag, it would be 50% off in two days. I told myself that if it was still around at that point, I'd buy it.

And as sometimes happens, the thought of this thrift store find set up camp in my brain. Suddenly, the one thing that would make my house (umm, apartment) feel like a home was a bright yellow tablecloth. How had I not seen this before?! It was so obvious! I was sure that the tablecloth needed to be mine.

I went back for the much-desired item yesterday. And of course, as you may have guessed, it was gone.

But there are other options.

Vintage Bright Yellow Tablecloth, $25

Vintage Swedish Tablecloth, $35

Yellow Lace Tablecloth, $30

But the whole idea was to avoid spending even $10, soooo ... these probably will not work.

I could just make my own, a la this:

... with this tutorial.

Or, more likely, I'll just add "bright yellow tablecloth" to my ongoing list of stuff to look for every time I'm in a thrift store. (Already on the list: "mug tree" and "You've Got Mail DVD.")

A Lifetime of Favorite Songs: "Safe In The Arms of Love" by Martina McBride

My quest with this series is to look back over my life and remember all the songs that would have been my favorite at any point along the way. It's a tall order, and I'll probably fall short, but we'll listen to some good tunes in the attempt.

My mom had the cassette tape for Martina McBride's 1995 album, Wild Angels. I loved that tape. It was an actual hobby of mine to sneak into my mom's room, start the tape, and listen to it all the way through while laying like a starfish on my parents' queen bed. This song is like ear candy to me, and it inspired my earliest memories of believing I'd fall in love someday.