One of the only good things I can say about the illnesses that I have is that they are invisible to the naked eye. Just looking at me, you wouldn’t guess there was a bunch of pain and yuck going on, so one thing that is important to me is trying to maintain looking at least as good as most of other ladies my age.

For me, that means dying the premature grey out, and keeping up a look that says, “I have pride in myself.”

But hair dye isn’t super-duper cheap, at least not the good stuff. And anybody who buys and uses box dye knows that if you’re a red-haired hair dyer, Feria reds are the strongest and longest-lasting pigment out there, and you’re used to the price fluctuating between $8 and $10 for it.

Today’s Los Angeles Times has a Red Plum insert that has 2 coupons in it from L’Oreal. One says Save $2.00 on any L’Oreal haircolor product and the other says Save $5.00 on any TWO L’Oreal haircolor products. Clip both coupons. Then grab the Walgreens circular. Walgreens will also have extra copies of this circular at the store in case you have to do this transaction in 2 transactions instead of one. (This may depend on your cashier.)

In this week’s Walgreen’s circular, there is a coupon for L’Oreal Feria or Root Rescue Hair Color, Limit 3, priced at $6.99.

Thus, using the Walgreen’s coupon and both of the coupons provided by L’Oreal, you ought to be able to purchase 3 boxes of Feria Hair Dye for $14 (2 boxes @ $6.99 – $5 = $9 + 1 box @ $6.99 – $2 = $5; $9+5 = $14).

This puts the cost of each box at about $4.67 — a significant savings!

I know that Red Plum and Walgreens are both nationwide, so even if you don’t get a the paper, check the websites!

To all you saucy and sassy ladies and gents out there in the world who are working hard, I hope I’ve helped you to look good and keep a bright attitude!

I wear red because it ties to my grandmother, who colored her hair red when she was going through chemotherapy for leukemia and was the kindest, strongest woman I have ever known, and to remind me of Carol Burnette and Lucille Ball who always make me laugh.

I hope this deal brings smiles to you like it did to me! 🙂

Usually when I get existential, especially all the way down, the happiest answer I have found involved an Ancient Chinese tale about a child who received the gift of a plain clay pot from her grandmother.

The grandmother said that this pot would be her granddaughter’s finest gift, and so the granddaughter kept it and took very good care of it. Finally, on her deathbead, the grandmother asked the child how she had been enjoying the pot, and the child shrugged and said that she supposed it was okay to look at. The grandmother, with tears in her eyes, explained that a pot means nearly nothing if you do not know how to use it — if you never look inside of it, and that she felt had failed her granddaughter entirely.

The granddaughter said, “But Grandmother, it is so heavy!” and the grandmother replied, “That is because it is full.” and she passed away.

When the granddaughter got home, she opened the pot and found that it was full of coins.

Life is like a pot. There are times where it seems empty and meaningless, and it is at that time where it is up to us to fill it with meaning or to find the meaning that is already there but that we simply cannot perceive but that is right in front of us.

Our friends and our family members fill us up with love. We try to fill ourselves up with achievements and knowledge. But the unexamined pot is hardly a pot at all. 🙂

So sometimes you won’t see the point. And that’s okay. If life had a point, we wouldn’t struggle and we all would be the same. There would be no advancements as a society.

Emptiness is just another way of your brain letting you know there’s opportunity for more fulfillment.

Anonymous commenting has been disabled. If I’m going to be courageous enough to live my life out loud, you’d better have guts enough to be yourself if you’re going to step up to me.

One bottle of Lactase Drops will remove the lactose from 12 gallons of milk. (So that’s how they do it!)

Each half gallon of lactose free milk at the grocery stores around town (at least here in Glendale, CA), costs between $3 and $4, making a gallon of lactose-free milk $6-8, whereas normal milk costs an average of $3 a gallon across California.

That sounds crazy, doesn’t it? I couldn’t believe there was such a significant difference in the numbers, so I figured that cost of the lactase drops would make up for it — but it doesn’t. Not even close.

Savings Comparison

Lactaid @ $3.50 per half gallon * 24 half gallons
+ CA 9.25% sales tax
= $91.77

Milk @ $3 per gallon * 12 gallons
+ CA 9.25% sales tax
+ Lactase Drops @ $17.95 plus shipping ($21.44 total)
= $60.77

An actual savings of $31 on milk! With no loss or negatives for us!

Adam and I usually go through at least 1 half gallon of milk a week, so that’s about 26 gallons a year, meaning that if we remove the lactose ourselves, we should stand to save about $100 a year!

Not too shabby when every bit counts. Not too shabby at all.

Ladies and Gentlemen… Boys and Girls…

I have finally found a religion that I can get behind, at least enough to get ordained on the internet. 🙂

Dudeism.

Hey, man, don’t give me that look.

Yes, the movement has a fuckin’ hellacious name, but the contents of this philosophic mamajama are nothing to be scoffed at. Sure, Dudeism is a religion deeply inspired by The Big Lebowski, but a second glance will show that it cherry picks from Taoism, Zen Buddhism, American Transcendentalism and humanism. However, it is not affiliated with the film in any way, and if I had to guess, since it does pull from American Transcendentalism, other films (like Kung Fu Panda and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off) will probably end up in it holy works eventually. They will at least end up in my list of works that bring the world towards a higher understanding of what it means to “just take it easy.”

Dudeism’s Ethos

From what is Dudeism trying to liberate us? Thinking that’s too uptight.
To what state of being is Dudeism trying to bring us: Just taking it easy, man.
By what means does Dudeism attempt do this? Abiding.

A Message From The Dudely Lama

“Life is short and complicated and nobody knows what to do about it. So don’t do anything about it. Just take it easy, man. Stop worrying so much whether you’ll make it into the finals. Kick back with some friends and some oat soda and whether you roll strikes or gutters, do your best to be true to yourself and others – that is to say, abide.

All joking aside, this comes so extraordinarily very close to my actual philosophical belief system that if you rolled up some Jewish morality in there, you’d have my total belief system. And to be fair, Reform Jewish morality is extremely close to that of humanism. There’s just always the question of “Is there or isn’t there a supreme being?” And I’m on Team G.O.D. I believe there is a God. I don’t care what you call Him/Her/It. I believe it exists outside the realm of our perception, and I believe it will continue to exist whether or not we worship it or recognize its existence.

In fact, I believe that God is possibly the most Dudelike of all in His abiding of us all. I believe we have a spark of whatever God stuff there is that makes stuff happen, and that someday scientists might have a name for it that will make my writings sound like prophecy.

Because Science is Magic like that, and I believe God speaks through us all.

And there is so much in this world that each of us cannot possibly know. There are 5 billion plus human beings living on this planet. Each one with their own eyes, their own ears, their own perspective, their own experience, their own plans, their own pain… and that’s just right now.

You look at this world, this amazing planet earth, and I wonder if it had a sign like McDonalds what it would read like. 60 Trillion lives served?

I’ve said, “It’s their world, we’re just living in it.” when on the road before, so many times not thinking about it.” but really, if you think about it, each of us lives in our own consciousness. Imagine a metaconsciousness that somehow is supposed to know 5 billion unique experiences at every moment of every day and somehow also control the environment around them. That’s what we’ve been told God is. Can you imagine having access to the 5 billion worlds that exist on this one planet at any given moment on any day? It makes me kinda giggle to think about it. Some folks on Quora were discussing whether or not this world and life were a simulation… if so, we’d be God’s video game!

My response to them was, “Why does it matter?”

Opiate of the masses or not, I believe religion has its place in the world and so does philosophy.

We need to ask ourselves the important questions. We need to find out the answer to the question that toddlers ask incessantly. “Why?”

Dudeism answers that question in a way that I like better than any other. It says, “Sit back, relax – the world will show you.”

Got a call from the Access Group this morning.

Turns out that my final federal loan came back where the guarantor denied my status as disabled because (and those of you who practice law will really appreciate this) my neurologist checked the box “No” under “Ability to Work.”

What my doctor failed to read, unfortunately, is that after the large, bolded ABILITY TO WORK heading, under which there were boxes for Yes and No, there was a question in fine print: “Does the patient have a disability that impairs them from working?” Not reading the fine print, my doctor checked “NO” under “ABILITY TO WORK” and continued to fill out the form.

So, even though the government guarantor had ALL of the necessary information which explained how I am unable to work, because the wrong checkbox had a check in it, I get to start this loan-forgiveness process all over again. 🙂 Including hits to my credit record for having not paid on this loan for more than 6 months while we’ve been waiting to find out why they haven’t been taking the loan off my hands to begin with.

All for want of one check box being inaccurately marked.

Don’t you love bureaucracy?

When it comes to being disabled and needing assistance – when you really genuinely need help, it is up to you to be this level of persistent and diligent.

You must doggedly fight to prove what they already know.

To them, it’s only money. It’s just business. Nevermind that on your end, it’s your life that you’re having to prove to them again and again and again. You can’t take it personally or let your pride come into it. Pride is a luxury for fools who haven’t felt it stripped away too many times to bother with it anyway. Ain’t no pride in student loan debt collection when you can’t practice your profession anyhow.

I wonder how many years I have to suffer with these indignities before I can just let law school’s memory die.

Edit: Ok, that was a shitty attitude to have when I first posted this.