An Evening with Dickens

Last night was the “Dickens Christmas” program at church. It was in lieu of doing the play “Scrooge”, which we did 3 years ago. We started rehearsals in October, but had to cancel the play due to the fact that the lead role came down with the super bug and was near death, seriously. He had double pneumonia and was under medically induced coma for 8 days. He is still recovering from it.

The program was fun, festive and elegant. Several of the cast members and church members dressed up in the costumes and sang Christmas carols, made and served the desserts, and served the guests. The sanctuary almost looked like it was straight out of the movie. The stage was set with a few of the props from the first time we did the play, with a stone wall and fireplace, poinsettias, greenery, lights, and ornaments. The program was set as if Scrooge had already been converted to Christianity. All of the tables were elegantly set with real cedar, red, shiny material and candles. Some of the church members made cookies and other desserts, along with punch and coffee. It looked delicious! I had one cookie, left over from Jeff’s plate, and a glass of punch (trying, trying to get some weight off!) I did make some cookies, and I was a caroler for the opening song and a server for the rest of the time. It was fun, but tiring! My feet were killing me due to the high heeled ankle boots I was wearing. Some people took some pictures so I will see if I can get my hands on them to post them.

At the end of the program, I noticed a woman there, that I had just met a couple of weeks ago at Brother’s Coffee & Tea, so I went up to her to say “hi”. She couldn’t remember where she met me at first, but then when I reminded her, she was all excited. She is a tiny woman, probably in her mid 30’s with 4 kids, 3 biological and 1 adopted from Guatemala. But, at our first meeting, the first thing I thought was that she reminded me of Tia Leone, the actress. Her looks and her personality, only shorter…lol. Actually I don’t know how tall the actress is, but Heather is probably only 5 feet if not a little shorter. Anywho, she is cute and I love her personality! Very outgoing, and she has this way of telling a story, a true story about herself, when a subject is brought up. For instance, last night we got to talking about hair color because Karlie just took out all the blonde in her hair, and darkened all of it, except for a swatch on the side that is now what is called a “coon’s tail”. (I’ll get to that story in a sec.) So, Heather proceeded to tell me a story of a hair coloring experience she had in the past, when she was going to Guatemala to pick up her daughter (I think it’s a daughter, not a son). Her hair was green, and her hairstylist couldn’t figure out why, but I guess it had been that way for a while, because they had their water tested and everything trying to figure out why her hair was green! Well, finally it dawned on the hairstylist that she was using an ash color on her hair that was making it green! I can’t believe her hairstylist didn’t know that to begin with! I’m not a hairstylist but I know when ash is used on some people it makes their hair green! Anywho that is why I like Heather. You can give her any subject, and I bet she has an interesting story for it! Funny.

Now, back to Karlie’s hair. Karlie went to her friend Nikki’s in Grayling Friday night for a concert. Everyday Sunday (a Christian Band) was playing at The Matrix (a Christian youth club in Grayling, in which Nikki and family started and run out of the Res. Life church there). So, Karlie comes home and announces she wants her hair dark, except for the “coon’s tail” which is a chunk that is stripped like a racoon’s tail. So, Karlie and I went to Sally Beauty supply and got what we needed to do this process. Now mind you, I’ve never bought hair color that you have to know the ratios of color to developer....I use Nice and Easy…so we had the lady help us get what we need, which included a filler so when we colored the blonde to dark, it would help it turn dark easier and faster. And then we had to buy powder bleach for the stripping of the coon’s tail and a different level of developer for the blonde. It ended up costing just under $40 for all of this, plus a cape and a couple of the applicator brushes and an applicator bottle, which is much cheaper than having my good friend Lora do it. I'm sure Karlie will take some pics of her new hair, so I will try to get them posted soon, too!

Well, I guess that’s all I have time for today! Please give me some feedback on my blog posts, if you think they are interesting, or boring, too long, too short – Ha!

God bless!

mary