Dep-itty Do Dah Day

Pictures can be found here. The before picture is me about a month ago, doing my monkey face. The after pictures are one wet, with gel still glimmering on my bonnie brown hair, and the other is after it's dried and gotten mucked around a bit. In the background of the latter is my hammock, which is right now the best thing I own. (Well, other than the bottle of Dep, of course.) I've had this hammock since I went to Brazil in 2000; I bought it because everyone there sleeps in hammocks all the time--at least in small villages in Amazonas, which is where we were. So, romantically, I thought I would use it to kick back on the boat we were in. Then I realized that all the hammock hooks on the boat were right over the sides; while our Amazonian boat dudes cheerfully swung their hammocks from these hooks each night, I was confident that any attempt to mount a hammock hung in this fashion would end with me dropping about 20 feet straight down into the dark waters of the Rio Negro, never to be seen again. Undaunted, I brought it home to my rental house whose yard contained.... One. Tree. You see the problem. So when I moved here I was all about the hammock again, plenty of large trees here. So large, in fact, that I would have had to drill a huge eyebolt into them to secure the hammock since there were no branches at the proper height. Once again, I failed--didn't want to drill, and didn't trust the hardware I might have used to secure it. Now, finally, Restoration Hardware has come to my rescue with a miracle product: Tree Straps. With no harm to either tree, I am now swinging blissfully outdoors in my authentic Amazonian hammock on a daily basis. It rules.

(By the way, MLE, this is your cue to say, "My god, Cathy, you haven't aged a day since college!" Since I don't think we've actually seen each other since 1991.... Or at least, don't say "My God, Cathy, what happened to you....")