Two Decades of Grey: The Everyday

When I last blogged about my hair, I ended up writing this post. When I wrote it, it felt unfinished in a way. Yes, I had stopped coloring my hair. My natural hair color, pigmented or not, was growing out, and this was going to be how the rest of my life went with hair color. Sometimes I'd think about coloring it for fun. Sometimes I'd think about adding some highlights. But I never ended up doing anything.

In November of 2024, I cut my hair. I do normally cut it a few times a year, but this cut was special. This haircut was when I cut off the rest of my colored hair. I colored my hair for the last time in December 2022. It kept growing, and two years later, the remaining roots which were colored back in 2022 were cut off. For the first time in my life since I was 16 years old, I had completely virgin hair. 

Every day is a new challenge when it comes to living with my premature greys. Some days, I'll look in the mirror and think to myself, "Hey, it doesn't look so bad today" as if I could convince myself I had less grey hairs on my head than I did the day before. Other days, I'll look in the mirror and want to start pulling them all out one by one because they look like they've taken over my entire head. And still, there are other days when I look in the mirror, see all my greys, and tell myself, "They look okay today."

As I've gotten older, my need to please others has gone down. I don't hang my value and worth on what everyone else says. There's still areas where I struggle with this, but when it comes to my hair, I've learned to put the comments aside. Over the last year, multiple people have made comments about noticing my greys. Some of them are shocked because as far as they can tell, it looks like I went from zero to grey in a few years. Little do they know I was hiding them for so many years already and this is merely just letting the facade fall. 

My youngest is in kindergarten this year. The year I was in kindergarten was when a poignant comment about my mother's hair stayed with me forever. I had children almost 10 years earlier than my mother did. I am still younger than my mother was when I was born. By the time I'm as old as my mother was when I was in kindergarten, I will probably have the same amount of greys as she did. I think I'm luckier in some ways. Society now is much kinder regarding beauty, signs of "aging," and self-image. It's refreshing for me as a parent to see other parents and staff at my child's school embracing their natural hair color.  And yes - there are still the parents who are 1000% put together and could be ready for a photo shoot at any minute. 

I have one box of hair color sitting in the closet at home. Yes, it's nearly 3 years old. Someone out there is probably face-palming and secretly yelling at me to throw it away.  Some days, I want to use it. I want to color my hair back to a uniform sea of black. I want to complete the picture of youthfulness nature took away from me naturally. But then, I'm reminded of how difficult these 3 years were to get through, growing my hair, leaving it uncolored, and wanting myself to be comfortable with myself. So I push through another day and don't look back.

Two Decades of Grey: Overseas

I kind of got stuck after writing the previous part of this series. Do I know how the story continues? Of course I do. I lived it. But I got stuck because I wasn't sure how to share it in a way which was productive. Honestly, it was symbolic of this period of my life. I didn't love my grey hair, but it was becoming more and more a reality. I was now an adult, learning to live with it, but also still dyeing my hair consistently. 

My husband is not the first person to tell me he doesn't mind my grey hair. But he is the first person  I've believed. He's also the only person who has seen it in its full extent and still looks at me the exact same way. And even then, it took nearly a decade for me to get here. I dyed my hair for the better part of eight years of marriage. 

I wasn't ready to believe it before then. I didn't even  like it myself. How could I believe someone else?

**

When I lived overseas, I'd wake up in the morning and go to my bathroom to get ready in the morning. Because of the lighting of my bathroom - not great - it would appear like my grey hairs were gone. Even when I fussed around my roots, the greys would appear to be colored. I'd have a moment of shock, amazement, hope, and then I'd run to the mirror in a different light, and there they were again. It's like they literally reappeared after disappearing for a moment and tricking me. I still remember that elated, bubbly excited feeling as if something miraculous was happening. And of course the deflating feeling after when I saw them again. 

Even during these moments of false hope, I'd wonder to myself. What was I expecting, a miracle? Sure, it’s possible. I believe God is capable of taking away my grey hairs with the snap of a finger. But will He? I think He has bigger fish to fry. I don't think eliminating my grey hair is high up on His agenda. 

At the same time, if I wanted to give God the chance to perform this miracle, I had to stop hiding. I had to let it be for what it was, and if He ever wants to show Himself in this way, then He has the chance. 

When I lived overseas, it was the first time I saw younger girls with premature grey hair. And then I thought, it must be an Asian thing. So I felt less alone, but I still fit the category of a young Asian with premature grey.  I'd shared about my grey hair with my teammates early on. I even packed myself two boxes of hair dye to bring overseas. Later in the year when my hair was growing and the roots were showing again, one of my teammates even mentioned, "Oh, I thought you were exaggerating when you said you had grey hair. It's actually more than just a few."

Nope, I was not exaggerating. 

**

Having not colored my hair for over a year, I've learned that hair can re-pigment itself over time. Most of the hairs which are grey stay grey at the root. But every now and then, I see a hair that is grey in the middle and dark at the root. If I kept dyeing my hair every month whenever I started to see grey roots, I would have never have seen this for myself with my own hair. 

This is how I know God is capable of changing my hair color if He wanted to. Will He? I don't think so, and it's not because I doubt His power. It's because I understand the choices made as an Almighty Being must be made carefully. Every wish cannot be granted. Every prayer cannot be answered. When you know the ultimate outcome, you know every sequence it will take to get there.

The Green Life

When I was a child, I composted for the first time. I scooped up dry, dead leaves off the ground with some dirt and put it in a bucket. I left the bucket on our back patio for years. Yes, years. The rain got to it. The elements got to it. It sat out there in an orange bucket for years. One day, my dad needed his bucket for something so he emptied out the contents on the patio and took his bucket away. 

What was left of what it started out as was a cylindrical block of dirt. I can't say it was very nutrient rich or anything because it had both been overly wet and probably dried out due to summer heat, but all the matter that was in it broke down into a giant block of dirt. After that, I've always been fascinated with compost.

In the 7th grade, our science class planted basil in a pot to take home as an activity. My basil died. Last year was the first year I grew my own basil again, and from seed. I will always grow my own basil from now on.

In the 8th grade, I won a raffle. I was at the high school being introduced to their orchestra program, and my name was drawn for the raffle prize. My prize? A rosemary bush from that evening's decoration. I took it home from the event and it sat in my dad's garage. It dried up, died, and all the leaves fell off. Our garage sure smelled good for a while. Thinking about this rosemary bush makes me so sad because I didn't even cut the branches off to dry and use. Rosemary isn't used often in Asian cooking. At the time, I didn't know what to do with it. So this poor bush died without a chance in my dad's garage. The 30-year-old version of me mourns for this rosemary bush.

Gardening and growing plants in general has become a hobby of mine. I've done the outside gardening for a few years now, but in the past year, my attention has shifted to more indoor plants because they can provide joy year round. My husband gifted me with a grow light for Christmas. I now have over 10 indoor plants, 3 of which I have spent money on. The rest have been gifted to me or acquired through our local take a plant/leave a plant group. 

Last year, I bought myself an Aglaonema. The bursts of pink throughout the leaves really captivated me and I was hooked. It has done well in the last five months and I seem to have found an okay spot for it to thrive in our kitchen. 

I haven't named my Aglaonema...maybe I should. Agnes? Angel?

This year, I got ambitious and bought myself a Calathea. These plants are notorious for being difficult to care for and even experienced plantsman have a love-hate relationship with it.  

Meet Callie my Calathea. She was getting her first drink at home. 

I might be posting about my failed attempt at taking care of her....but for now, she's alive and I love checking her out everyday. She lives in our bathroom because after doing my research, I came to the conclusion the most optimal conditions were in there. 

I'll let y'all know if I was being overly ambitious. 🙈

Two Decades of Grey: CVS

I still remember the first time I dyed my hair. I had gotten a temporary one to start because the chemicals are less strong and I wanted to get my feet wet in the art of hair color. I remember getting out of the shower and wringing my hair out in my towel. Bits of color came off onto the towel as I dried my hair, but that was to be expected as it was temporary color. Also, who knows how well I actually rinsed off my hair. I tried. Later, I learned this happens after any kind of coloring. I learned to have designated black t-shirts to dry my hair that first wash. 

When I looked in the mirror, I saw a sea of black hair again, a uniform color with no imperfections. It felt normal. It looked normal. It looked good. And I knew from that moment, I wanted to see my hair colored for as long as I could help it. 

**

I need to insert a caveat here. Had I been 18 years old with the amount of grey hair I had, my opinions may have been different. Had I been 21 years old with the amount of grey hair I had, I may have felt differently. Had I been 25+ years old with the amount of grey hair I had, perhaps I would have done things differently. But I wasn't 25, 21, or even 18. I was 15, in the heart of high school, surrounded by a false impression of the way things "should" have been. And I had already endured at least two years of knowing the extent of what I had and how "abrnomal" it felt. After all, someone actually thought it was more likely for me to have bow hair in my hair at a grocery store...

**

So when I saw my hair colored dark and black, I felt like the teenager I wished I could be. I felt like a person I wanted to be but could not by nature. So I kept it up for the next 16 years. For the first 10 or so, I was dyeing my hair every five weeks to cover the roots, and I always did it myself. I can count the number of times I paid for hair color at the salon on one hand. 

In college, my roommates never knew I dyed my hair for the first two years. My freshman roommate was hardly ever in our room. She'd come back late after I had already fallen asleep most nights and left in the mornings before I awoke. It was easy to color my hair without her knowing and I never had a reason to tell her. During my sophomore year, I'd wake up early on Saturday mornings to dye my hair. My roommate would be asleep, and not many people were awake so I'd have the community bathroom to myself for the most part. It wasn't until my third and final year of college when I moved into an apartment and shared a bathroom with my roommate when I finally shared about my hair dye.  

During those college years, CVS was the place I bought my hair color. I was just using cheap drugstore ammonia-free hair color. Probably not the best thing in the world for my hair, but it was easily accessible and matched my frugal student budget. I could walk across campus, cross the street, and get to CVS. I even looked up the weekly sales online so I knew when the hair color was on sale. 2 boxes for $5. The same hair color is now $3.97 online and the days of 2 for $5 are long gone.

Good ol' CVS.

I have a memory at CVS during one of these shopping trips which I'll never forget. I ran into a boy I'd met through a friend from back home. We hadn't spoken to each other in at least a year. He was just an acquaintance, but he recognized me in the checkout line. As my items were being rang up, he asked me, "Wow, you dye your hair?" I was horrified. Not only had I run into someone I knew, but it was in one of my more vulnerable moments with a secret I had only verbalized to a select few people. 

It was in that moment when the cashier saved me. I was too stunned to speak and my face probably showed everything racing through my mind. But I'll never forget her response. 

You should never ask a girl if she dyes her hair.

At the time, I quickly paid for my things and left the CVS. I don't remember saying anything after hearing that boy ask me such a penetrating question. I don't remember what the cashier at CVS looks like. I only remember feeling like I had to get out of there as fast as I possibly could. 

The older I got, the more I realized how protective her statement was. I so wish I could have remembered the name on her tag or her face, or even the color of her hair. But I don't. I only remember her words, and they will stay with me forever.

This was the first of a few select moments in which I felt supported, protected, and affirmed. As unfortunate as the start of this was from my dad's response that very first conversation we had, there've been many moments which have helped to bring me to the place I am today. Perhaps this was all orchestrated from the beginning to play out in this very way. 

I just never knew it until I lived through it. 

Two Decades of Grey: Middle School - Part 1

I was in middle school when I noticed my own grey hair and began to dislike it. Up until this age, I knew they existed, but they were few enough to lay low and not interfere. By 7th grade, I had to consciously do my hair for school in a way which concealed them. Certain hair styles for me were off the table. Anything with a half updo, I could not wear. 

One evening, I remember sitting at my desk in my room with the lamp on. It was supposed to be the desk used for homework. Very rarely did I ever complete my homework at my desk. I wrote my diary every evening at my desk. I crafted at my desk. I made a DIY sun catcher and used a blade to cut out shapes. For a while I practiced writing with my left hand at my desk. My ambidextrous talent never took off, but I'm decent on a dry erase board.

The DIY sun catcher I made in middle school. Two pieces of
cardboard sandwiching a sheet of iridescent film covered with decorative contact paper.
My first time using a blade to cut. This piece of art has survived decades.

I cut my hair at that desk. Once.

It wasn't your normal hair cut. I had somehow gotten the idea in my head that if I cut all of my grey hairs out, you wouldn't be able to find any and my hair would be restored to a uniform single color again. After all, they always tell you not to pull out grey hairs or else two would grow back, right? What a silly lie. So that's what I did one evening. I sat at my desk with my lamp turned on, grabbed a grey hair one by one, and snipped high up on my head.

After doing this, something inside of me felt more safe, comfortable. I was going to wear a half updo to school now that I'd found a "solution."

What my young teenage brain failed to process was that unless the scissors were placed adjacent to my scalp, (which I didn't do because I would risk cutting other hairs or my scalp itself - this I was able to process logically and correctly,) my greys weren't actually "gone." In fact, they were now even more obvious than if all the hairs on my head were a consistent length. 

I learned this the hard way when a friend saw and commented on my grey hairs being an uneven length compared to everything else. That's when something in my brain clicked and I came to the conclusion stated above. My "solution" wasn't actually a solution at all, and I became even more self-conscious.

***

In 8th grade, I remember being in the library with a few other girls. Our schedules were different so due to what they were doing at the middle school, we were hanging out in the library for an extended time that week. It was a book fair week. I remember us sitting between shelves of books for sale at the book fair. We were sprawled out on the floor just chatting and relaxing as teenagers do. 

Somehow the conversation went to talking about a movie. One of the girls remarked, "It would be really cool to have silver hair like the character." 

I replied, "Oh, I've got some. I'm almost there." 

I will never forget her response. "No, Cathy, yours are grey."

Shut down in five words I'll never be able to erase. She could have said a multitude of other things which wouldn't have had the same sting: 

You don't have enough yet. 

Maybe in 20 years. 

Haha, that's funny.

But instead, she said the worst thing you could have said to me as a response. And sadly, I'll never forget it.

Two Decades of Grey: Intro

At the end of last year, my dad said the most real sentence he's said to me in person in a long, long time. 

Wow, you have grey hair.

We were leaving his house after I'd brought the kids over to visit. It was a rainy day so he was holding an umbrella over me as I buckled my children in. For the extended amount of time it took for me to secure my children into the car and for the closeness of our proximity due to holding an umbrella over both of us, my dad noticed. 

On the drive home, I cried. I didn't cry because he noticed my grey hair. I've noticed it myself for decades. I was crying because he didn't remember or he didn't remember to the extent I wished he would have. Because you know what? I showed it to him nearly 20 years ago, and he shrugged it off. 

I was about 14 years old. I couldn't drive myself yet. Somehow, I made the decision to ask my dad a question that evening. I went up to him in the kitchen, the west side of the room. I remember our positions almost exactly. My dad's back was toward our second refrigerator facing me. I was standing next to the corner of our kitchen island facing the breakfast table, adjacent to him. It was evening time, dark outside. The Tiffany chandelier above our breakfast table lit the room with a yellow glow. I went up to him and said something along the lines of, "Daddy, I have grey hair. Can I dye it?" 

He responded, "You have grey hair? I don't see any." I lifted the top half of my hair to reveal where the majority of it was. He took a quick look and shrugged it off. "Oh, that's not that much. Hair dye can irritate your scalp and make you itchy, You don't need it." Little did he know the things my friends said to me at school or how self-conscious I was.

After that, I made a mental note not to share things like this with my dad. I felt so unheard and ignored in that moment. I knew when I could get myself to the store without him, I was going to buy my own hair dye, and that's exactly what I did. I started coloring my own hair in the summer of 2006. 

***

The last time I dyed my hair was December 2022. It wasn't a conscious choice to stop, but I'd already reached a point where I wasn't dyeing it consistently anymore. Maybe only 2-3 times a year. Around the time I would have dyed it, I started having some health problems. And somehow between life and the way I was feeling, I decided I would not continue to dye it. If I didn't feel this way, I would continue to color my hair, but I'm secretly lazy. So these two sides of me have been fighting each other. It's been almost 13 months, the longest I've ever gone without hair dye in almost 18 years. 

I told myself I wanted to write a series about my experiences and memories with regard to my hair. A lot of them are painful. A lot of them are filled with bitterness and anger. But I want to share it because it is a part of who I am today. And I don't know who needs to read and know about it, but someone might. Why else would women join the silver sisters movement on social media? They want to know they're not alone. 

That's something I've had to come to terms with before I could comfortably do this. Because all my life, I was feeding myself emotional lies based on real life experiences: Your grey hair is weird. You're a grandma! Grey hair is disgusting. What's wrong with you? You're so old. It looks really bad. It would look much better colored. Oh, wow, that's a lot of grey. 

I can't even write out these phrases without getting emotional because they're so deeply rooted with individual experiences I've had throughout the last 20 years and they resonate with statements people have said to me. But I picked this year as the year to tell my story and share all the memories I've buried and hidden for two decades. My dad's statement hurt because it took him two decades to understand what I was feeling as a teenager. But I'm not 14 anymore. 

So in this series, I want to take you through these 20 years with me and discover the experiences, the memories, and the unexpected encouragements along the way. 

Mid Year Check-In

At the beginning of the new year, I wrote a post with a few goals I wanted to accomplish. It's my version of a "New Year's Resolution." Well, Unfortunately for most people, 2020 has turned out to be one terrible year. You can read about my take on the terrible twos here, more for comedic relief than real talk. 

A whole six months has gone by. I can't tell you half of what I did in these six months, But I know the time has gone by because:

• I'm not pregnant anymore
• I have a second child
• There are more gray hairs on my head (I think...I'm not really counting...)

I started the year with three general "goals" I wanted to accomplish. 

1. Finish my cross-stitch
2. Find a new work-life balance
3. Keep my sanity

1. Finish My Cross-Stitch

I did! I finished my cross-stitch. I put in extra hours early this year, stitching at night, but I didn’t finish it before he was born. Somehow, after my son was born, I found time here and there to finish! It took me about three and a half years, but I finished it on June 28, 2020. This is my second large-scale cross-stitch that I've finished. Once again, the irony is that when I purchased this cross-stitch, I was living in China and single. When I finished it, I was living in the USA, married, with two kids two and under.

Originally, I bought this cross-stitch with a goal of finishing it before we had kids. That didn't happen. So then, I wanted to finish it before we were done having kids. That didn't happen either...but to my own credit, I only missed that goal by about three months.

Here it is!

Something often overlooked about cross-stitches is actually the back. If you enter a cross-stitch into a county fair or contest, they actually judge you more on the back than the front. Why is that? The back tells about the journey. Anyone can come up with a nice looking design on the front, but it takes dedication and patience to have a beautiful cross-stitch back.

So what is it about this journey that's so important? 

1. No Knots - cross stitching doesn't involve tying any knots. The ends of each thread are secured by looping your stitches on top of the ends. Every time you start a new thread, it must be secured in this way. 
2. Reaching over vs. starting new - I don't know if there's a technical term for this. If anyone's savvy enough in cross-stitch terminology, please let me know! But this is where instead of cutting the thread and starting in a new location, you take your thread from your last ending point and reach across the canvas to start it in a new location, therefore resulting in a very long piece of thread traveling on the back. It makes the back look messy and sloppy.
3. Consistency - The Xs on the front need to be crossed the exact same way in order to appear consistent and neat. This means if you stitch the bottom left to top right first, it has to be stitched first on every single X. When done correctly, the stitches on the back will all appear to be in the same direction instead of alternating vertical and horizontal stitches. 

Is it obvious to tell if someone's taken their time and cross-stitched the correct way? Yes. If you know what you're looking for, it's extremely obvious. One of the most telling signs is that the back of your cross-stitch should look exactly like the front.

Here's my back:

I have to say, I did a really nice job on this cross-stitch. I've been sloppy on previous ones in the past and learned the hard way, hence how I've been able to come up with my mental list of "what it takes to have a good cross-stitch." The design itself is not a difficult one, especially not compared to the last one I finished, but it fits perfectly for why I wanted to finish it: it's for my children. 

2. Find a New Work-Life Balance. 

I have been able to find a new work-life balance. In doing so, I've cut my students in half, I limit the hours I work, and I'm only teaching online right now. For most of this, I have to thank coronavirus actually. If the virus didn't exist, I would have pressured myself into taking all my students back which would be 12+ hours of teaching a week in five days. Add that onto taking care of my kids during the day while my husband was working as well as breastfeeding, or attempting to breastfeed my son, and that results in one crazy mom. 

I'll never forget the day I put my pump on the kitchen counter and pumped during my 30 minute break in between two lessons while cooking spaghetti on the stove for dinner at the same time after my daughter was born. I don't even know where she was. I think my husband was watching her. 

I'll be eternally grateful for coronavirus that I will not have to do that with my son this time around. But that's pretty much the only reason why I'm grateful for this virus. For everything else, it's ruined a lot of plans, trips, outings, and life in general. 

3. Keep my Sanity

As mentioned above, this virus has helped me to keep my sanity in certain ways. In others? Not so much. It's been a new learning curve to figure out how to plan grocery trips now and be intentional about what I buy. I've had to train my daughter into a daily routine/schedule that doesn't involve going on playdates or wandering stores for fun. But we've found other things that she has enjoyed during these last three months of staying at home and staying out of public places, which has also kept us from going crazy ourselves: going on bike rides in the bike trailer, swinging in our front lawn and "blasting off", swinging in our hammock, watching our neighbors mow and trim their lawns, going swimming in our neighbor's pool, watching bunnies and squirrels, digging in our flower beds which don't have flowers, and learning how to be a big sister, sometimes for better, sometimes for worse. 

Overall, I think the transition to having two kids while maintaining both of our jobs and general lifestyle has been pretty smooth. The kids have kept me busy during all this staying at home, and to be honest, it's been nice. I wonder to myself what quarantine with no kids would have been like. I think I would have had a lot more time to do the things I wanted to do and no will to do them. Chances are, I would have sat at home, watched a lot of TV, or spent a lot of money shopping online, neither of which I have time to do now.

I hope despite all the terribleness this year has brought for many of us, you've been able to find some silver linings to reach some goals or discover something new for yourself. 

Here's to the second half of 2020. 

Color Blind

With staying indoors and going out less, I've been using electronics a lot more with my daughter. Part of it is she's a picky eater and I have no patience to try and cajole her into eating without the assistance of something she actually enjoys. The other option is reading a book to her over and over and over again, which normally I wouldn't mind. But, if I'm in a hurry or I want to eat too, or I'm managing the baby at the same time, it doesn't quite work.

I tell myself what I show her is educational: library story-time, cooking shows, songs from Veggie Tales, or video clips of our friends and their children.

We watched a Reading Rainbow episode a few weeks ago. I grew up watching the show many afternoons at 1 pm or 1:30 pm, whatever the original air time was. She's really into Arthur right now so I picked the episode where they read Arthur's Eyes. It's the one where Arthur couldn't see and got glasses, was embarrassed about needing glasses, and eventually, embraced them in the end.

After reading the book, the show incorporated a series of different worldly applications of some ideas taken from the book. In that episode, one idea he mentioned was being color blind. Levar explained what it means to be color blind and the test for color blindness. He showed a few pictures of the colored circles with numbers inside them. He also mentioned another kind of color blindness.

"There's another kind of color blindness the kind that has nothing to do with your eyes. Has to do with your mind. Not with what you see but how you see it. Has to do with your heart. Not with who you see. But how you see them. People come in all kinds of sizes shapes and colors, and when you see through the skin on someone's face to the person underneath, then you're colorblind in the best possible way."

That episode originally aired on July 27, 1983. It is very unfortunate that in the last 37 years, we have cumulatively moved forward very little in this regard.

Let's be color blind.

The Blue Bathrobe

I grew up being told "no" to a lot of the things I wanted. I still remember the fiasco at Walmart over a pair of shoes when I was a child - I didn't get them in the end because I simply just wanted my parents to stop arguing in the store. I remember the numerous Barbie toys I never received because I was told I didn't need them - I really didn't. But the ones I received, I kept very well: no ripped stickers, all pieces intact, and let me tell you, there are some very small pieces to keep track of. They will be passed on to my daughter if she cares to play with them. I'll make sure she takes good care of them as well. But there was one thing I somehow managed to convince my mother to buy me - a blue bathrobe.

I don't remember how we got this catalog mailed to us advertising women's apparel. My mother didn't care to buy clothes at all and I had just entered the double digits. I loved flipping through magazines and advertisements to see the photographs and pictures though. I flipped through this one and a blue bathrobe caught my eye. It was the perfect shade of blue that spoke to me, a luscious, rich shade of baby blue. The robe was placed on a satin hanger of similar hue, which to an emerging teenager, sealed the deal of luxurious. Clearly their advertising was working perfectly on me.

I asked my mother for this bathrobe and showed her the item in the catalog. She didn't nix my request immediately, but she was extremely hesitant to purchase the item. I somehow managed to convince her that the robe would be ideal for me to have in the winter months because of how cold it was, and I could wear it around the house at night and stay warm until I went to sleep. The robe was $20. I'm assuming shipping was free with a minimum purchase. I can't imagine her buying it with added shipping charges.

Once the robe arrived, I was slightly disappointed. The color did not match the one from the catalog. It was more of an aqua or robin's egg blue - still a nice color, but not the one that spoke to me from the magazine image. And there was no satin hanger included. The luxury factor suddenly dropped immensely, and it was simply a bathrobe.

As I told my mother in my original reasoning, I did wear it around the house for a while in the winter during the evenings. It was nice and warm. However, the sleeves got in the way of everything I did because I was a tiny little pre-teen wearing a women's bathrobe. After a short-lived use, it was relegated to my closet on a regular plastic hanger.

When I got married, I moved the blue bathrobe with me to our apartment. I can't remember how many times I actually wore it, but it came with me. And when we moved into our house, it moved with me again as well. Nearly 15 years later, this bathrobe has come full circle again and served the most purpose it has ever in my years of ownership in the last 6 months. As last winter slowly came upon us, I realized none of my bath towels were big enough to dry off quickly during pregnancy to avoid the after-shower-chills. And of course, being bulky meant moving slower and more carefully.

Enter blue bathrobe. It was large enough to cover the majority of my body to stay warm (because I'm still a tiny grown person) and doubled up as a towel to dry off faster. Who knew an impulsive buy with somewhat silly reasoning approximately 15 years ago would be one of the best pregnancy must-haves in my opinion which I didn't even plan for?

I don't think I could have nearly justified those pair of shoes I never received or all the Barbie toys I missed out on growing up. But I'm glad this was one purchase my mother decided to buy for me.

My blue bathrobe. Still on a plastic hanger. 

Shades of Grey

I went to the store in search of some moisturizer to fend off this winter dryness that was taking over both of our skin. I found what I was looking for, but out of curiosity, wandered into the clearance section to see what they had. I used to venture this beauty store all the time and they would have OPI nail polish on clearance for sometimes more than 50% off retail price.

Sure enough, there was a small selection of OPI available at reasonable prices. One line was a gel lacquer and I was curious to try it out and see how long it would last on my nails. I'm notorious for being careless with my hands and the worst person to get a manicure - I ruin it in less than a week. I've chipped nail polish while cutting vegetables with a kitchen knife, I've chipped it playing piano, I've chipped it working outside in the yard. Yeah, I'm not gentle or kind on my hands at all. But being that I hadn't had a new color of polish in about four years, I was curious to try this new line and try a new color.

At the last minute, I changed my mind and decided I didn't need to spend any money on nail polish, paid for the moisturizer, and left the store.

Well, I kept thinking about this polish and being curious to try it. I kept thinking about it so much that five days later, I decided to go back to the store and get it (if it was still there.) Hubby was with me this time and I told him to help me pick a color he thought would be suitable and nice to try. I showed him the few in the gel lacquer line they had and he approved of the color I wanted.

OPI Infinite Shine 2 Gel Lacquer in "Reach for the Sky"

Once I got home, I was curious to try it and see how the gel lacquer differs from their regular nail lacquer. Overall, my review of the product is probably mediocre.

Ease of application: I felt like this polish is no easier to put on than their regular nail lacquer. For some reason I thought it would be, but I guess that may have been my own misconception.

Appearance: It's a shiny nail polish. If that's the look you want, it definitely meets the criteria.

Likelihood of Chipping: So far, I think this nail polish does hold up better than the regular line. I haven't done anything super hands-on since putting it on, but it's held up to the times I've practiced piano and done chores around the house. I haven't been extra careful or anything and so far there's no chips. I'll have to update this one after a few weeks. 

Now besides the quality of the actual polish, I was quite enamored by this color. Maybe that's why I was willing to drive back five days later to take a chance and see if it was still there. After I painted it on, I instantly liked it. I tend to stick to darker colors because my skin is more tan than fair, and lighter colors make it look even darker, but I really liked this one as a lighter shade of blue grey. 

After putting it on, I also started to see more connections with the color choices around our house.

Our bath rug

Our kitchen backsplash

The bench in my studio

Our wall color

Inadvertently, it even matches the shade of my blog!

The lighting in the pictures don't do all the colors justice, but there's definitely a resemblance to be found around our house. Now, I wouldn't be surprised if a few months from now I completely change my mind because pregnancy tends to change a lot more in women than just their physical appearance. But for now, it's a nice refreshing color to have as a choice. And I might actually choose to take the time and do my nails. ;)