Cure All (PM)

Whoa. 
Are you telling me that yesterday, when you came and met me for a coffee and you were wearing your boyfriend jeans and a stripey t-shirt and I thought both you and your hair looked really good, I was just dazzled by your red lipstick?
Whoa. That stuff is powerful.
But wait a second. Now I think about it, I'm pretty sure your lipstick was pink, not red. And you still looked really good.
So explain that to me, Mate!

Cure all (AM)

When you're feeling like a frump

And your clothes look really dumb

What do you do?

Red lipstick

When you're hair is really frizzy

And you're looking kind of shitty

What do you do?

Red lipstick

After the immediate high of discovering the comfort of 'boyfriend' jeans wore off, my blinkers came down and I realised that they actually look quite shit. Still, I can't resist wearing those comfortable little bastards. This coupled with my awful haircut, which with this stupid effing weather is always frizzy as fuck has led to more than a few...how do you say?...days of looking shit. 

One day last week when I was wearing my unflattering baggy jeans and nature had turned my hair into a stupid hunk of frizz on my head I could barely believe I had to leave the house in that state, but then I figured out a way to fool myself and the world into thinking all the ugliness going on was a legitimate fashion choice - red lipstick. Who wears red lipstick? Fashionable women, confident women, women who are making totally legitimate fashion choices. A woman that bothers to wear bright red lipstick must care about what she looks like, right? Pairing ugly hair and jeans with super stylish lipstick must be some  kind of super stylish ironic fashion statement right? Yep? Yep!

Terrific Tuesday (AM)

I feel like having another Terrific Tuesday. No idea what I'm talking about? Read this you guys. It will make as much sense as can be made from within these crabby pages. I guess wanting to have another Terrific Tuesday is code for here I am in front of the computer on a Tuesday morning and I can't think what to write because I am too busy thinking about things I am going to do with my day.
Which, of course, are things I think will make this Tuesday terrific. Which is why I'm telling you about them. Two birds: one stone, people. (Hello to all our duck hunting readers this morning! I believe your season opened on the weekend.)

Ok enough of the small talk. Here is some of the terrific stuff in store for me today.

Drinking a bunch of coffee
It's a Terrific Tuesday tradition, so I might have even more than usual. I can tell you for sure that as soon as I finish writing this I am going to pick one up to drink on the tram on the way to work. Serve it up, lets go!

Experiment with wearing shorts to work. 
It's a risky move, the shorts at work look. But is it as risky if you wear stockings underneath them and a blazer? Or is it just slightly muddled? I'm going to find out today.

Diagnose my knee complaint with the help of the internet. 
We all love the internet. And we especially love it when the internet can be our Doctor. Well today, I am going to ask the internet why my right knee hurts so much when I bend it, particularly on the outer perimeter of the right side. I'm not going to stop until it tells me there's nothing wrong and if I give it a few days rest I can go back to dragging myself around Princes Park like a wounded duck in a wetland in March.
Wish me luck, readers.

Get your groom on!

OK mate, you can totally make this happen and I think you should.

I hear you about the challenge of overcoming laziness though. You're talking to a girl who sometimes just washes and blow-dries her fringe rather than the whole head of hair, because I just can't be bothered and the overall effect is the same (more or less). So lord knows I understand how difficult it is to overcome laziness.


But don't you reckon it's possible that if we had the necessary knowledge and skills, grooming ourselves better would probs require less energy than every day worrying about how to groom ourselves and sometimes really ballsing it up? I mean, people who look good all the time, such as well dressed old ladies, don't look good because each morning they try on half their shit, do their hair a bunch of different ways to find out what looks best, then just end up wearing it in some sort of up do because it's easiest, then slap some make up on because they are running out of time, then rush to the tram stop at a pace that makes their hair go weird and and their faces go extremely red. No way jose. It's because they just do the same good looking thing over and over and over again, and I am assume they've done it so many times it's totally a piece of cake for them now and they can make it to the tram with time to spare.

So the way I see it, we need to overcome laziness in the short term, in order to be able to embrace our true natures in the long term. And in order to do that we need to learn some skillz and practice them. Either that or make a lot of money and maintain a domestic staff because it would totally be straight up easy to look good all the time if you had domestic staff. But that's not going to happen so lets focus on learning skills.

First of all, hair. Mate, I love your hair and I think it looks good all the time. But I'm hearing that you want to know how to do it in other ways so you have more awesomeness options available to you. I think you should totally make an appointment with a hairdresser and get them to teach you how to do some thing with it. I don't understand why more hairdressers don't offer this as a service in fact. Anyway, I think you should do this and I think I should come along with a camera and I can document it for the Miss Soft Crab community.
What do you say? I think you should totally do it!

Here comes the groom

Often I look at The Sartorialist and note that the main reason that the subject looks awesome is their hair or grooming or poise or certain je ne sais quoi. Its not always about the outfit. I am not breaking any ground here. The Sartorialist says as much himself.

It really makes me think that my grooming is letting me down. I know that sounds like I am blaming my grooming like it some independent thing that doesn't help me out. But really I know it's all my fault. I'm letting my grooming down.

Here are a few examples from the Sartorialist.




(Looking at these I wonder if I am subconsciously obsessed with long dresses and it is not about grooming at all.)

As far as I see it I have three main problems:

-fizzy barely manageable hair
-lack of knowledge and understanding
-lack of patience and an abundance of laziness.

Where I once hated my hair I have come to see it's good points and embrace it. But as it stands I basically have one thing I can do with it, dry it big and curly. And while I am happy to do that I wish I had some variety.

Which brings me to my second fall down. Once I asked my ex- hairdresser if he could recommend some hair product to me. But he would not. Well that's not very helpful. Imagine a hairdresser that didn't just cut your hair but also gave you some top tips on maintenance and styling. Something you could take to the world and use for the good of your grooming. But it's not just hair that is my problem. What about makeup, poise, that certain je ne sais quoi? Are these things I could learn?

Not if I can't overcome my laziness.

Once, inspired by these men I tried to roll my sleeves up super neat.

But my version did not look like this at all. If I were more patient could I have done it? I feel like it is barely (not) within my power to look really neat. But I want to!

I feel like identifying some of my problems is an important step forward. People, grooming is going to change around here!