Archive for August, 2011
Does your hairdo stop you?
Today’s Chicago Tribune features an editorial on women’s attention to their hair may be getting in the way of them getting a good workout. Any dudes reading this are all, “Does… not… compute.” But I’m sure plenty of you faithful female Haulers have had at least one instance in which you had to decide whether exercising was worth the time and effort necessary to clean up your sweaty self afterwards. I know this can be an issue for women of color; it’s a regular topic of conversation among the awesome chicks at Black Girls Run. Even U.S. Surgeon General Regina Benjamin has something to say about the fact that women who’ve recently gotten their hair done may skip a workout or two in order to maintain the look a little bit longer.
“Oftentimes you get women saying, ‘I can’t exercise today because I don’t want to sweat my hair back or get my hair wet,'” she said in a recent story in The New York Times. “I hate to use the word ‘excuse,’ but that’s one of them.”
I can understand why you wouldn’t want to mess up hair you just paid someone a whole lot of money to make pretty — it’s the main reason I haven’t cut my hair shorter than shoulder length in three years. If I can’t pull it back into a ponytail, it means I have to dry and do it — which won’t work. Mainly, that’s because I am a A) lazy and B) a slob. Though I always shower after my lunchtime workouts, sometimes there’s just not enough time to shampoo, condition, dry and style my mop. Today, in fact, I happen to be rocking the “I-came-straight-to-work-from-bootcamp” hair, the linchpin of which is a well-placed hairband. (The braid doesn’t hurt, either.)
You'd never know, right?
Yes, guys, I’m gross. But I smell lovely (I promise!), cutting back on twice-a-day washings has made my hair much healthier, and — most importantly — today’s workout is DONE. Join the revolution! Sweaty heads unite!
The Buns are back
February 24.
That was the last time I hauled my own buns to the computer to post something here. Six months of thinking about stuff to post, seeing cool stuff I wanted to link to, fretting about not getting a post up on a day I’d planned it, vowing to get off my virtual tush and publish something awesome the next day.
Six months of excuses and lameness. It ends today.
It’s not like I’ve been laying around re-watching all of the Harry Potter movies in order… well, actually, I have been doing that. but not just that. For instance, there was this (details to come later):
It—and the move from the dirty Jerz to Manhattan that accompanied it—took up a big chunk of my summer. And while I am extremely happy and adjusting to living with a boy in wedded bliss, it’s taken me quite some time to get myself in order.
I realized today that I was totally falling for the “If I can just ______ and _______, conditions will be perfect for me to do what I really want to do” fallacy. I think you know what I’m talking about. Your blanks may be “get the kids in bed before 9 and get myself in bed before midnight” or “find a new job and lose five pounds” or “organize my sock drawer and figure out how to turn dryer lint into currency.” But it’s all hooey, and we know it; we just forget it every once in a while.
So I’m back, haulers, just as I am: in need of a haircut, a little squidgy around the upper arms, still figuring out how to get my workout groove on, still fighting a daily battle with the Pepperidge Farm Sausalito cookies lurking in my coworker’s snack drawer. (BTW, an entire bag of those chocolate-and-macadamia-nut puppies will run you 40 PointsPlus values. Don’t ask me why I know that. YOU’RE WELCOME.)
But I’m here. And hopefully, you still are, too.
Haul Buns 