My hair is red!

Here are some pics of my adventures in henna-land so far! The top two are "before" pictures, with and without the flash (so you can see the difference in bright light and dim light). The middle pic is what 300 grams of Punjabi Prime henna prepared for hair looks like. I skipped pics of the process because it was so messy without a camera involved, and I skipped a pic of me with a hennaed-hair-with-Saran-wrap-beehive going on because I just looked silly. Then the bottom two pics are the results, day one! Probably should have worn the same colored shirt for the pics, but the light purple one got henna on it...I told you it was messy!!!

Henna!

I did it. I hennaed my hair. I took "before" pics, and am photo-documenting my adventures thru henna-land. I actually just stepped out of the shower from rinsing it all out, and since it's still wet, I'm going to wait till the morning to snap an "after" pic. And, according to my research, henna oxidizes after it's on the hair and darkens to a deeper shade after 3-4 days, so I suppose I'll have to take another pic then. Right off the bat, I LOVE the results!! I got 400 grams of Punjabi Prime body-art quality henna from mehandi.com, which was more than enough for my mid-back length hair. I actually only mixed up 300 grams, and still have a baggie of mix left over in the freezer for root touch-ups. So that leaves me with 100 grams to do with as I please...there are some girls at work who want to try it, so I might give them some. Or I might try a little bit of body-art on my feet and see how that goes. Or I might just hang onto it for the next henna episode. I have to say, it was a bit messier than I thought it would be, and SO heavy! Once I had my hair up in a saran-wrapped beehive, it weighed a least 5 lbs more than it normally does! It felt so good to wash it out. Next time I might recruit Travis, or see if there's a salon in the area that would apply it for me if I bring in the mixed henna. Anyhoo, I'll post pics over the next day or so.

On the workfront, all is well. My manager has officially offered me a full-time day position as staff, and HR is supposed to call me tomorrow to give me an offer. We'll see how all that goes. I DO know that they're not planning on using travelers on that floor anymore past the summer. There will be travel positions available elsewhere in the hospital, but I want to stay on the 9th floor. I like it there. If for some reason I don't take the staff job, I MIGHT be able to extend once, but after that I'll have to leave. I hope we get to stay.

A time to wait...

So, after looking at the application for Frontier, I realized a few things. First off, I'm just going to have to apply for the CNM program first, then do the FNP later if I have the money. I just don't know if I can commit to doing both programs at once, not knowing how I'm going to finance it. Since midwifery is the direction in which I am DEFINITELY going and FNP is just a "perk" to make my awesome-continuity-of-care dream true, I'm going to go for midwifery first. Also, I realized there's no way I'm going to have all of my paperwork/references/transcripts together in time to have the whole lot sent out and arrived by February 14th (the deadline for starting school in the summer), so I'm just going to have to send it in as soon as I can and meet the deadline to start in the fall. That's good, in a way. We'll have a chance to figure out what in the world we're doing, find out if we're going to go staff here or not, etc. Kinda' bums me out a little bit, but it's also a relief in a way, to know that I have a little bit of time to formulate my answers to some of the questions on the application carefully, make sure that everything is together and professional-looking, etc.

I'm at a weird spot in my life. Since Gavin was born, we've had a couple of pregnancy "scares" that turned out to be nothing. We had one such episode a week or so ago. But now, instead of feeling glad that I'm not pregnant and being relieved, I find that I'm sad. I wish I were pregnant. I miss it. I would love to have another baby. I would love to have a blooming belly again. Baby fever? I don't really think so. But these emotions make me wonder if it's not time that we start thinking again about having another baby. I look at our life and think "My gosh, what terrible timing it would be if I get pregnant now!" But at the same time, neither of our sons were conceived at a "good" time. I thought I would want to wait another year or so before thinking about having another. But here I am, with such a desire. Strange. Maybe if we go staff here in Fresno and are in a solid place for a while, we'll talk about it.

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Well, I just had a chance to sit over coffee and talk about this with Trav. We're both hoping that a long-term contract works out so we can stay in Fresno for a while longer. Well, Trav said that if, in 6 months we either go staff or have a long-term contract set up so we have some stability, he'd be all for trying again in July! I hope this actually happens!

A day of driving and thinking...

We made our trip to San Francisco today, 2.5 hours one way, 5-6 hours round trip! That leaves a lot of time for me to talk and think and crochet. I finished my red wool tam, and I like it quite well! I would have taken a pic of it actually on my head (I wore it most of the day today), but I'm oiling my hair right this second and don't want olive oil all over my nice new creation. Came out rather nicely, did it not? It's mostly a double crochet, with a little accent close to the headband part, then the headband was decreased and a single crochet, with an eyelet row for a tie so it's more adjustable and doesn't slide around as much. Me likey! I'm going to have to make one in black or some other less bright color now, so I can wear it to work. I hate wearing my hair up all of the time, and this would allow me to wear it "down", but it would still be contained. Trav likes it, and tells me I'm turning into more of a hippie every day. I'm assuming that's a compliment?

After I write this post, I'm going to go back and see if I can paste in some pics of stuff from a couple of posts ago into the original post without totally screwing it up. My camera died and I couldn't find the battery charger while we were in Newport Beach, so I'm bugging my mother-in-law to email me pictures of Donna's t-shirt yarn bag. I love it so much! I totally wanted to keep it!

So, on to the "thinking" part of the trip. I'm so glad that I have a husband who's so supportive of my desires to go back to school! We've both gotten to the point where we can't imagine life any other way than me being a midwife. That's so awesome. Anyhoo, I'm not going to go on and on about midwifery, for once. We were discussing, instead, how we envision our life in the future. We hope to live on a decent plot of land, 5 acres at the minimum, hopefully more like 10+. We would love to have animals...chickens for laying, a milk cow for dairy and to hopefully calve once a year, providing us with meat for the freezer, a couple of goats (also for milk), maybe a few sheep for the wool, and a couple of horses for pleasure. We want a large garden, and fruit trees, and an herb garden. We want a simple life, one filled with family and the service of others. Our hope is that Travis will be in the ministry in some capacity, pastor or assistant pastor perhaps. And of course, I will be a midwife, with a home visit practice and hopefully with a birthing home. For all of our animals, we'd have to have a decent barn. It would be totally awesome to build a bunkhouse in the loft of the barn, like we had at the old 2x4 Ranch. It just had a bathroom, a ktichenette, and 4 "bunk" areas, for sleepovers and guests. Trav wants to be able to hunt, and we want to be able to build an awesome treehouse for the kiddos. We would both be in positions of service, and our living situation would also allow us to serve others. We could offer food to those without, our of our freezer, garden, and pantry (canning...woohoo!). We could offer shelter to someone who needs a hand to get on their feet, giving them privacy and allowing us to help without having people in our actual home (bunkhouses rock...). We would be almost totally self-sustaining, as far as food and basics go. I really hope our lives end up this way.

Trav took long enough from gaming to look at some pics of hennaed hair, and he's O.K. with it! So, I'll be placing an order, then I'm sure will have pictures to follow!

Trav just emptied the trash (being the good man that he is), and made a terrible face. Gavin is crying because he wants to play with the garbage, I guess. Travis told him that he doesn't want to play with it, because if it sat for much longer, it would have grown legs and hurt him! Ick...

I'm working two days, off one day, then working three days, so I don't think I'll be blogging that much for the next week-ish. Well, I'm off to shower the oil out of my hair...ta-ta for now!