Wednesday Update

[clevermanka]

Twitter:
Fanart: Shen Wei wakes in the night.
A beautiful Zhu Yilong thread of gifs containing Zhu Yilong being beautiful.
This person was tweeting about Guardian back in September but I hadn't seen any of them. Two of my favorites:
If you watch ANY of the episodes of Guardian and drink a shot everytime Zhao Yunlan and Shen Wei look at each other you will end up in the hospital.
That feeling when you are very seclusive and had to shake hand with a stranger.
Yes, I do have a gun kink in addition to my smoking kink and yes I did bookmark that gif.
How about we all take another look at Zhu Yilong perusing the fridge with his back muscles displayed in high relief. Or the beloved ponytail softly swaying in a breeze.

Untamed:
Remember I said I loved modern/mundane AUs? <3
I'm here for this Nie Huaisang/Jiang Cheng fic.

Got an email from the Herbalism Program instructor (should I start referring to her as HPI? or should I just use her real name, idk, it's a pretty distinctive name...) and I'm starting to get anxious. She's (obviously ) an outdoorsy person and (obviously) most of these people are outdoorsy people as well and you all know I am not an outdoorsy person. At all. Large chunks of my life passed where I literally only went out of doors to 1) get to work, and 2) smoke. And now I don't do either of those things, so... ergh. I can't deny a little bit of anxiety over knowing I'm going to be spending so much time out of doors. I mean, I knew, but it hadn't sunk in until I read the words "Our agenda that first day will start with introductions, maybe outdoors" and this is for the last Saturday of March. Y'all, back when I smoked, I didn't even smoke outside until April.

I gotta buy some different clothes for this. Fuck.

Fatigue lifted sufficiently to touch up my roots today. This was supposed to happen on Saturday. Since I'm allergic to black hair dye (whoo, there's a story), I regularly put myself through the six hour ordeal of a henna and indigo two-step process. It looks great and I get compliments on my hair all the time, but it's Some Work. Oh, vanity.

Got another 500 words of Deconstruction down yesterday, despite Monday's writing marathon. I just...really needed to reconnect with my guys in that story? LOLOL omg I've become one of Those Writers and while I'm not embarrassed or apologetic, I am amused. (also, Shen Wei's about at the nadir of his emotional journey in this fic and ngl it's pretty horrible fun to write)

ETA: I've been coloring my hair with henna+indigo two step for over a decade and I think I've got it pretty well down. If anyone ever wants suggestions on using henna and/or henna and indigo to color their hair, please feel free to ask!

Comments

[jo_lasalle]

I hope that whatever happens with the outdoorsiness is at a level you can handle. But yeah, the right set of clothes sounds important for this...

Six hours?!?! Wow. That is commitment! I get twitchy when my whole visit to the hairdresser's takes longer than 45 minutes... (I mean, your hair does look great from the pics I remember. But, wow!)

[clevermanka]

whatever happens with the outdoorsiness is at a level you can handle
Sheer force of will has gotten me through most of adulthood so I'm sure I'll be fine as long as my body doesn't fail.

And thank you! I'm so vain about my hair and will always take compliments on it. But yeah. Six. Hours. It's ridiculous.

First I wash it, and that alone takes 20 minutes. Twenty minutes to apply henna on the top (30-40 when I do the whole head). Henna needs to process for at least two hours (I usually try to give it three). Rinse out the henna (another 20 minutes). Apply indigo (another 20-40 minutes) and let that sit for 90 minutes. Rinse out the indigo (another 20 minutes). Then wash my hair again, shampooing at least three times (sometimes four) to clear off the extra indigo (which shows up quite well on my pale scalp).

But I wind up with this afterward, so...

[jo_lasalle]

That does sound like quite the project, but on the other hand you can now rest easy that I am totally JELLY of your hair. *g* That is FAB!

[clevermanka]

THANK YOU. I unashamedly love my hair. I ought to make an entry about my hair someday. It means a lot to me. Probably more than it "should," but eh, I'm only human.

[jo_lasalle]

It's GREAT HAIR! Enjoy its splendour! Also nice to encounter the rare exception to what otherwise seems to be the eternal rule of "No, I wish I had YOUR hair..."

(I have very straight, very boring hair. It's got a few things going for it but mostly I always wanted wavy or curly hair, and my list of hair experiments is very very long. Almost every time I said this to someone with wavy or curly hair, they've come back with some version of "GAH, I always wanted straight hair like yours!" and I don't understaaaaaand)

[clevermanka]

I have the best of all worlds, hair-wise. It's curly/wavy like that the day I wash/wet it (and sometimes a day or two after if I'm very careful and don't toss around much in the night). Then after a few days the curl falls out and I get this:


Sometimes my stylist straightens my hair for the novelty of it, but that only happens maybe once a year and it doesn't photograph well*. If straightening irons weren't so damaging, I'd do it more often because I do enjoy the variety.

*Oh hey, I do have a pic of my straight hair that isn't just a blob:

I have always loved my hair except for when I first got sick and so much of it fell out. But tbh that just makes me love it more now that it's returned to me. <3

[jo_lasalle]

STILL JELLY! The little black dress of hair, apparently! :D

[clevermanka]

[teaotter]

You henna your hair when it's wet? I was told it had to be dry!

All these years of waiting til my hair dries to put the henna in, sheesh...

[clevermanka]

I've never heard that! You should try to have it stripped of as much oil as possible, but I've never had a problem with color deposit when it was wet. I mean, it's towel-dried, so not dripping, but... yeah. Happy to help!

[solo]

Thank you so much for all your twitter links. I'm have a twitter account but twitter drives me scatty. I can't concentrate on anything if I try to follow twitter. So mostly I never look, and miss amazing things, or I would except for you. :)

The hair thing sounds like a big nuisance.

As for the outdoors, take a flask of hot tea laced with rum and nothing will seem as bad as it is.

[clevermanka]

It pleases me a ridiculous amount that my curated Twitter finds are making people happy!

[naye]

Good luck with the clothes buying! REI is great. Here "cover skirts" are a thing - I don't know if you can get them over there? They're light-weight padded skirts you can zip on over whatever bottoms you're wearing. I imagine something like that might come in handy in March.

And ah. That gun gif. It's. Very. Wow.

[clevermanka]

Alas, a search for "cover skirt" turned up nothing helpful. It's a very good idea, though! Hmmm....

That angle. Those spread legs. The magazine drop. It's A Lot.

[naye]

Ah! It was a vocabulary issue. They're called "insulated skirts" in the US, and I found the REI listing.

[clevermanka]

Oooo, This one's even kinda...sexy? Thank you!

[naye]

That looks a lot like a fancy version of the one I have! The zipper that goes all the way is super convenient - it gives you a free range of motion when you need it, and tucks your legs in warm and snug when that's what you're after. Mine isn't water-proof of anything, but I've been outside in a lot of rain and just having the extra layer has kept my jeans/leggings dry on my 40 minute walk to work.

I bought a really oversized one I can wear over everything - it hangs off my hips, which is just fine for walking/standing around/sitting on the bus.

[clevermanka]

Thank you very much for the suggestion and endorsement!

[umadoshi]

I'm glad you were able to do your roots! I hennaed for a couple of years and oof, what a process, indeed. But your hair is phenomenal, so it's clearly worth it! ^_^

Yay for more words! *twirls*

[clevermanka]

Love the results henna gives, but yeah, oof.

Thank youuuuuuuuuuu I'm so unabashedly enamored with MY OWN HAIR. XD

[tinny]

I like henna hair color, fwiw. :D

I just...really needed to reconnect with my guys in that story?

Aaah, I know the feeling! I am missing Luo Fusheng a lot these days. *g*

Good luck with the outdoors stuff! It'll be fine once you start it again. Everything you haven't done in a while is daunting. <3

[clevermanka]

Henna is such a PITA but damn for color and durability it can't be beat. I've never EVER touched up any of the length. The hair color at the ends is nearly a decade old!

It'll be fine once you start it again
No I mean seriously, I only ever went outside to smoke or en route to another indoor destination. Spending any significant time outside is gonna be Complete New. XD