Mountain coolness from Blowing Rock last week, to refresh my imagination, at least, for the end of this week. High of 92F today --- but tomorrow, again, is supposed to be 98F. Saturday 95. Then, by some miracle, the heat is supposed to break, hallelujah.
I'm glad Dora and I had our long walk yesterday. Today won't be so bad, but I think that for the next several, until it cools down again, we'll take short ones, and I'll work out inside instead. I want to make up the upstairs beds today and look for a sketchbook the Artgirl left behind and wants me to send. The Viking got some little package in the mail yesterday, so I can pack them together, slap a label on, and ship them out.
SLIGHTLY LATER:
Washed my hair again today, though I only washed it on Tuesday. The heat makes my scalp feel sweaty and gross, and I'd bought some V05 clarifying shampoo, a whopping 98 cents, because it's been a long time since I really tried to clean residue off my hair.
The routine went like this:
*Wash with clarifying shampoo, giving my scalp a good scrub and working shampoo all through my hair to get it cleaner than clean.
*Rinse, then apply Olaplex 3, brushing it through with a wet brush, to leave in for approximately 10 minutes.
*Wash again with Head & Shoulders sulfate free, giving renewed attention to scalp.
*Rinse, squeeze out excess water, comb, and smooth on Treluxe Reflex Serum, raking and smoothing it through hair. Then wet brush in sections --- a styling technique that has never really worked for me the way it does for the Instagram girls, but it does ensure that the product gets distributed evenly.
*Diffuse first on medium heat, then on cool, to remove more water and speed drying time.
*Get fed up with that and quit.
*Later, as it's drying, smooth on a little gel to hold it, then diffuse a little more.
*Once again get fed up and quit.
And so on, until my hair dries some way, and that's that until the next time I wash it.
It might seem stupid to bathe and wash my hair and bother styling it at all, when I'm just going to walk in the heat and work out later. But this is a case of striking when a particular iron is hot. I do get hot and sweaty when I'm out walking, but then it evaporates, and I don't really feel any dirtier than I did when I left the house. And I work out in small doses throughout the day, doing reps of this move or that, depending on what set of muscles I want to target --- but I don't really work up a big sweat doing it. And anyway, I wash my hair to last for a couple of days, at least, and during those days I live. I don't encase myself in shrink wrap.
So the idea of living life, then cleaning up to be presentable . . . to do what, I don't know . . . seems out of whack to me. If I don't take the bath when I feel like taking the bath, then I will not take the bath, and that's a lot worse, especially if I repeat that pattern for multiple days. This way, I've done it, and I'm ready for whatever happens in my day --- and if I need to refresh anything before I go out tonight, I can do that quickly and easily, without some total-body song and dance. I'd just get hot again walking to the pub, so what's the point?
Wearing today:
Audrey, for a fourth August wear. I really like her as a night-out dress. Pairing her today with my "jeans blue" Kosher Casuals crop top for a little more neckline-and-armhole coverage without weight or heat, and with my Birk Balis, for happy feet. I could change to Xero Jessie sandals for a strappier look for the pub, but odds are I won't bother. I will probably toss on my linen shirt as a top layer for indoors.
Rear shot, because reality. But also you can see how nice this blue crop top is.
I'm comfortable and put together, at any rate. For whatever I need to do, I'll do.
And now I had better go do it.