Unexpected extra time

I had a pretty full day scheduled for today. But when I reported to work at MMO, it turns out that I wasn't needed to sub today. It occurred to me that I suddenly had 4 hours of uninterrupted Loosey time. I could do whatever I wanted.

So I went Christmas and furniture shopping, but fueled up the car first. Then I stopped at Prairie Gardens first for their Christmas sale. I was surprised to find a kitchen table that I liked for a decent price, but I wanted two side benches, and they only carried the 60" table with 4 chairs. It's too big of  a table for only 4 -- and two benches would be perfect. Therefore, the kitchen table search continues. Then I headed up to Slumberland Furniture to look at their inventory. Brown, brown, brown for as far as the eye can see. I'm not a brown person. Then I did a swing through Macy's furniture just to check. No surprise, there was a large white couch and a purple couch, but that doesn't work either.

I picked up laser paper from Office Depot and then headed over to Wind, Water and Light in Urbana. I'm ashamed to say, I hadn't been in their new Lincoln Square location. I think I was partial to the old one because it was so much more crowded, but Larry and Mary the owners were just as friendly as usual. I didn't find anything for anyone left on my list, but I'll keep looking. I also swung through Art Mart (both toys and housewares while I was there) and then I drove over to Bella and did a swoop through their store, leaving with a pair of Calvin Klein peep toe pumps that were 65 percent off -- for me.

I got home at 12:10 and ate lunch and made a critical decision -- about hair. I was using one of the coupons I picked up from the Chambanamom's Night Out to get my hair cut and colored by Deanna at Spa Envy.

In the end, I decided to go with what would require less upkeep (because we all know I'm hair lazy). The sun had done a doozy turning my hair golden blond this summer. So I got a partial high lift (somehow different from a high light) to blend the top which was becoming mousy brown with bits of gray. So now my hair is more blended. Then she gave it some body with some layers, and boom, I don't quite feel like putting it up in a ponytail all the time now.

Afterwards, I packed up my Mom's birthday present and dropped it off at the post office before returning library books and picking up X-man from school. He proclaimed today the worst day ever. I won't repeat what the issues were, but he's doing things that other kids know to be unsanitary -- and he's doing it enough that they notice and his teachers are worried that X-man will be shunned socially for it. So, we're all trying to work on stopping the bad habit before he starts to feel like an outcast. It's a seasonal problem, he had it last year, too.

It's hard being 4.