Hair dye & growing up

I've been dying my hair since I was sixteen. I've always said that I won't notice when I go grey (which I'm likely to: my mother is entirely grey at 52). But reading floralaetifica's LJ, talking about how she objected to her mother's dyed hair, and something someone said to me the other day 'You're still dying your hair as if you're twenty', have made me think. I guess I'm aware that some people do object to grown women dying their hair, but I don't feel like a grown woman, and I didn't think any of those people were likely to be part of my life.

It seems to me just like wearing makeup (which I don't) or nail varnish (which I do). And it's obviously dyed, although I don't know if that makes it better or worse. My natural hair colour is mid-brown or auburn ish, I think. I dye it red, of varying intensities; every couple of years, I bleach it first, so it ends up very bright. I was going to say that I don't have the kind of job where this could create a problem, and I don't, but it occurs to me that I had it bright while I *was* doing that kind of job ;-) Maybe it was one of the reasons my clients had trouble taking me seriously.

I don't understand what the problem is. Should I - in my mid-twenties - decide to turn into a sensible grown up person? I have no particular intention of doing so. I had short hair for a couple of years, experimenting with the fact that almost all women cut their hair once they're past a certain point of growing up. I've grown it long again now, and I love it. I'm wearing it long and curly like I did at school (although I don't get much choice in the curly thing). I still wear mostly black, as I have since my teens. And I still wear a lot of clothes bought in hippy-Indian clothes shops. My boots of choice are often still DMs. (And my job enables me to wear my hippy-Indian clothes, and my Docs, to work.) Is this a sign that I'm trying to hang onto something I've lost? I'm only 25, and in many other ways I've embraced adulthood - I have a mortgage, a long term relationship, shared cats and shared financial responsibilities. I've been known to take my parents out for dinner (which feels much more grown up than having a mortgage).

Will I be undignified if I'm still dying my hair and wearing black hippy clothes and Docs when I'm 30? What about 40? My other half looks dramatically different from when we met. And that's not all - or even mostly, I think - for the obvious reasons. He dresses very differently. If he had hair, he wouldn't be dying it any more. He's taken out most of his earrings (I still wear all of mine), and he dresses smartly most of the time. I guess he feels like more of a grown up than I do. I still feel like a kid a lot of the time.

Hmm. No conclusions reached there at all, and I need to do some work now. I might return to this subject.

In other news, I've finished, and sent, the review I was talking about ages ago. Very, very late, but at least it's done now.

Books (old)

[This is old. It was somewhere else, but I'm tidying things up. I know it's kind of cheating, and I'm not entirely sure whether to backdate or not, but wtf, this is my LJ, not yours. Bugger off and follow your purist notions in your own ;-) ]

I love books. It makes me angry to hear people say they don't like reading, or they'd like to read more, but they don't have the time. I love picking an assortment of books to lend to a friend, to try to find things they haven't encountered but will like, or new people writing about a subject that's close to their heart, or just a random choice, because I'll be interested to have their opinion on it. One of the biggest joys of books is sharing them with people you like.

I have a library in my house, and it's my favourite room. We were hoping for floor-to-ceiling shelves, until my Dad pointed out that the biggest wall wasn't strong enough to bear books. In the subsequent hunt for book cases, I was distraught to discover that most book cases aren't strong enough to bear books either. Well, apart from the very expensive ones. Do only very wealthy people read? And what do other people put on their cheap, weak book cases?

Even outside the library, all the spare space in the house is full of books. Things I'm reading, or have been reading, or will read soon, in the bedroom; non-fiction in the study; cookbooks in the living room (no space in the kitchen, much to my regret). We're in our twenties, and still acquiring more books. I dread to think where we'll have space to put luxuries like clothes and food when we're 'grown up'.

Favourites authors (old)

I have objections to favourite anythings. In most categories, there are simply so many examples that I love, in so many different ways, that it's impossible to pick one. The criteria can change, and some of them might even be contradictory. So I often refuse to give favourites, or give an arbitrary number of favourite somethings, in no particular order, and subject to additions and deletions according to my mood. Which is what's in ( this list of favourite authors )

Favourite books (old)

Having mentioned some books whilst writing about my favourite authors, which are among my absolute favourite books, I've put together a non-exhaustive, in-no-particular-order ( list of my favourite books )

Cats (old)

I have two, a tortoiseshell called Cobweb (torties are almost always girls, and she is too), and a ginger called Puck (gingers are almost always boys, and so is he, although their mother is also ginger).

( chairs )

( windows )

( Other neighbourhood cats )

( Adventures with finding cats )

( New Year's Eve )

( Glasses of water )

A triumph for roleplaying and bullshit

This afternoon, I was an interview guinea pig for an interview skills course. The job they were 'recruiting' for was an area in which I have no skills or experience, so my application was a work of fiction. This seemed perfectly reasonable to me, but my colleague who organises the course was rather surprised, and so were the people running it. The man in charge of the course advised me to use real examples from my actual work life to answer their questions, and this seemed reasonable, until the panel asked me for experience I don't have, have never seen anyone else having, and know nothing about. So I invented something. The organiser, debriefing me afterwards, said 'those were all real examples, weren't they?' in the manner of someone who is experienced in these matters, and can tell the difference between true stories and false ones.

They thought I was a wonderful candidate. They talked, at the feedback session, of how the panel had managed to elicit enough information from me to confirm I could do the job.

When I came clean (only to the organiser, not the trainees) he didn't believe me, and said he was surprised I'd been able to sustain my story through repeated questioning. Even once he'd believed me, he seemed to be of the opinion that, of course, I knew what I was talking about, I'd just chosen to use someone else's examples instead of my own.

Roleplaying as practice for lying at interviews ;-) Now all I need is someone willing to fake me a reference, and I can get a job doing anything.