Taking The Long Way Home

I've been somewhat obsessively drawing mandalas lately. Thinking of myself as someone who doesn't draw, it surprises me to suddenly have a growing stash of fancy sketch books and pens. I take them along with me everywhere I go, and in any free moment, with Rick or a cappuccino or a glass of wine for company, I pull out my book and pen and start drawing in circles. I have dozens of them already, and told myself at first to wait to see what they want to do until I have at least thirty of them. As I passed that number, and just kept going, the idea came to me to offer them as coloring pages, so that's what I'm about to do. Have you noticed that coloring books for grown-ups are hot these days? I have no interest in a project like putting together a book. I'm more into draw, share, draw, share. That's enough. Besides, I'm kind of late to the adult coloring book party. There's a growing number of them out there, and what I like about that is that i...

I've been coloring my hair for years. Everyone does, right? It's what we've been taught we're supposed to do as soon as the first rogue grays become too many to pluck without creating a bald patch. My mother bleached her dark brown hair from the time I was a little girl. Her mother was my "crazy red-haired granny" until she died in her 80's. And my father's mother, who had unfortunate, wispy locks and lost a lot of hair as she aged, opted for a terrible brown wig that didn't suit her at all. Hair color seemed natural to me. Just something we do when we grow up. I actually started dabbling in recreational color as a teenager. I went glowingly henna-red off and on, but I think henna is kind of a gateway hair color, that often leads to the harder stuff. The mess of plastering smelly green mud on one's head can become more trouble than it's worth. It did for me, and I eventually graduated to semi-permanent color from a box, to "brighten...