The Bad Hair Week, Part 1

"How short do you want it in the back?" my young hairdresser asks my mirrored reflection as she holds the scissors above my hair. She has a zigzag part in her spiked hair. The spikes are tipped with a color just this side of neon pink. The silver rod in her pierced eyebrow catches the light as she looks at me. When she speaks, I see the glint from a tongue ring. Yikes!

"Just to the top of my collar," I answer, hoping she knows where a collar would be, since I'm not wearing one.

The scissors fly in a blur as I close my eyes, determined not to watch. I am resigned. It has been more than a decade since I've had a decent haircut. I've developed the philosophy that, whatever happens, I can live with it 'til it grows out.

There is no one to blame but myself. I am too cheap. I only get my hair cut if I have a coupon, and this severely limits my choice of fine salons.

Someday I hope to be able to go to an expensive hairdresser, sit in his chair and have him say (with a French accent), "Who cut zis mess? It is all wrong for you face. Ve need to trim here and grow here." [He sighs heavily.] "I vill see vot can be done, but I have leettle hope." And then he will perform a miracle and I will have the perfect hairstyle for my slightly heart-shaped, round-ish face, making me look 20 pounds thinner and rich. Someday...

The snickering scissors stop. 'Pinky' (as I've come to think of her) runs her fingers through what is left of my locks and says, "You know, we could frost your hair and that would camouflage all this gray and you'd never even know it's there."

Hmmm... I kind of like my gray hair. I've feel I've earned it.

"Well, I don't know..." I say.

"Really!" She exudes confidence. "It will blend right in and will make you look so much younger! Plus, there's a discount with your coupon."

If I hadn't been so intrigued by the 'look so much younger', I might have been more cautious, but she caught me off guard and then clinched it with the discount coupon.

With enthusiasm, Pinky sets out jars and tubs and a box of aluminum foil. She then starts sectioning, applying whitish goo with a paintbrush and wrapping me in foil until I look like a satellite. She chatters away the whole time about her boyfriend and the concerts they've attended.

Nodding politely at what I hope are appropriate intervals, I begin to daydream about everyone's reactions to the new, younger-looking me:

"Have you lost weight?" They'll ask. "Are you exercising?"

"Have you had a facelift?"

"Are you meditating? You seem to be at such peace."

(And, of course, that's all I really want...a little hair peace... I chuckle to myself.)

Many minutes later, I am brought back to reality as we go to the sink to rinse for five minutes.

"Don't look," she warns when we return to her booth. "Let me get it styled first."

I sit in the chair, facing away from the mirror while she combs and blow-dries and mousses and fusses.

"Okay. Here we go," she says and spins the chair with such force that I almost fly out.

For a couple of seconds, all I see are dark spots and a bright light, then my equilibrium adjusts and I gaze hopefully into the mirror. I'm shocked when I realize that the bright light I saw is my hair. Noooo. That can't be right. I shut my eyes and blink a couple of times, trying to focus. I look closely at my reflection. This is not what I had in mind.

The brassy blond streaks covering my head stupefy me. I open my mouth and realize I've lost the ability to speak. I start to giggle nervously, which Pinky takes as a great compliment.

"I knew you'd love it!"

I can only smile an idiot's smile and walk to the front to pay. I hand her a tip and she beams at me (probably reflecting the light from my head...).

"Come back in about a month and we'll touch it up!" and she waves cheerily as I leave.

To be continued tomorrow...

Reflections on the Dating Game

One of my favorite shows, as a teenager, was "The Dating Game". I would picture myself as the young, debutante-like female asking clever questions and choosing the handsomest, wittiest bachelor on the other side of the screen. (In 1967, an unknown Tom Selleck was one of the bachelors. I could have married Tom Selleck!!!)

Later, I married (and, no, he wasn't the handsomest or the wittiest or the most faithful - but I digress...) and stayed that way for 23 years. One of the reasons we stayed together for so long was because we knew there would be a custody battle:

"You take the kids."

"No. YOU take the kids."

"I'm not taking the kids!"

And so on...

In the end, I got the kids and he got the bird - a cockatiel. We had a cockatiel! I got the kids... he got, oh, never mind.

Anyway, for the last 7 years, I have been mate-less and dateless and I have learned to enjoy it immensely. I don't have to explain my comings and goings. I can stay up late and watch TV or play on the computer. I can clip my toenails in bed (not a good idea even if you sleep alone, I've realized...). I can change my hairstyle without expecting anyone to notice. I can order extra onions on anything I want, 'cause I ain't kissing nobody! It is sooo much fun!

Until today, I had only been approached by one man for a date. He was a 68-year-old widower from my neighborhood in Tooele, Utah, and he had helped install the washer and dryer in my apartment. He came back to my door about a week later and gave me a pamphlet about some miracle juice that helps with weight loss and said he felt he was supposed to ask me out. In shock, and shaking uncontrollably, I told him no, thank you, that I wasn't ready to date yet. Closing the door, I sat on the sofa and had my first anxiety attack. Not long after, I heard he married someone else in the neighborhood. Bless his fickle little heart - I hope she was thin!

My daughter-in-law wants me to find someone to marry. HER mother calls me and suggests different online dating sites, and a friend of mine called to tell me there is a Singles Conference next weekend and that I should go. I'm fine, I tell them. No thanks. I've decided that if Fate wants me to remarry, I'll open my door and there will be someone 6' 8", with a great sense of humor, hundred dollar bills hanging out of his pockets and a letter that names me personally as his bride-to-be. I'm willing to wait.

Today, I called my apartment manager and told her the commode in my bathroom had developed a leak. She sent Maintenance right up.

As the head maintenance man worked in my bathroom, he sent his partner back and forth downstairs to get tools and things. Each time his assistant was gone, he would talk to me about his life and raising two daughters on his own, and how his first four marriages hadn't worked, but he had learned that it wasn't what was on the outside of a woman that mattered (and here he looked at me meaningfully), but what was on the inside. "She has to have a good heart. And I think I'm looking right at her," he said.

Now, let me give you a visual. I am six feet...square (at least for the purpose of this analogy). This thin, little man was at least 12 inches shorter than I - when he stood on his good leg. His fingernails weren't just dirty, they were crusty. His glasses were held together with electrical tape and he had...how can I put this tactfully?...a lingering odor of 'spices' mixed with 'work'. All I could think about was how, if I fell on him, I'd crush him like a clove of garlic.

I admit it. Everyone else is right. I am wrong. If this is what Fate is going to send to my home for my consideration, I have GOT to get out more!

Now, what were the names of some of those online dating sites...?

Cliches and Seam Rippers

I read a sentence the other day that completely justified my lifestyle. Having been disorganized for most of my life, I took delight in it:

"Organized people are just too lazy to look for things."

Not that I need justification. I am an adult. I have outgrown the need for other people's approval. (Until, of course, a visitor needs to use my bathroom and I find myself trying to explain my disorganized piles of organization.)

I recently bought a pewter-colored turtleneck sweater. It is soft and cozy and it matches my gray hair perfectly. But, when I put it on, the tag at the back irritated my neck. Really irritated my neck! It was sewn on with monofilament (clear, almost invisible) thread that scratched my neck even when I didn't move. After several hours of irritation (read patient, not lazy...), and waiting for, I don't know, my body heat to soften the plastic thread, I decided it was time to cut out the tag.

I recently moved. Yes, this is March and my official move-in was November, but these things take time. ANYWAY, I still have a box of Goodwill donations and a few other unpacked boxes stacked in a dark corner of my bedroom. In one of those boxes is a sewing kit left to me by my industrious, seamstress mother, from whom I did not inherit her crafty, textile gene. I offer as proof: I once stapled the hem of my son's too-long tuxedo pants for a choir performance and hot-glued another son's Dracula cape at Halloween. In a nutshell - I do not sew.

I sat for a moment, looking at the neatly stacked, unpacked boxes, wishing I had thought to label them when I moved (Hindsight is 20/20), and trying to guess which one held that rarely-used sewing kit that I know holds a little instrument meant for cutting threads and ripping out seams. Oh, yeah, it's called a seam ripper.

I moved to the other side of my bed (where the lamp is) and thought for a moment. There on the nightstand, reflecting the light, was my makeshift letter opener - a steak knife. Inspiration struck! In a most inventive spasm of ingenuity, I retrieved from my desk an inkless Rapidograph pen. This type of pen has a very fine, almost needle-like point. I put the tip of the steak knife carefully under one of the stitches and cut it and then used the pen point to pick out the rest of them all around the label. It worked! I was very proud. More proud, even, than if I had dug through all those boxes and found that silly seam ripper.

They say that "Necessity is the mother of invention", I say, "Hey, whatever works with the least amount of effort." Same thing.

But, considering the phrase I mentioned in the beginning, "Organized people are just too lazy to look for things", it begs the question: If I'm disorganized AND too lazy to look for things, what does that make me?

Well...I prefer to think of myself as creative, innovative, and an 'outside-the-box' kind of thinker!
(Yeah, well, that's my story and I'm sticking to it!)

A New Beginning

Inspiration from my new friend, Pam, has led me to believe that I am capable of blogging. Thank heaven it is nothing like jogging, or I'd have a heart attack! I am glad isn't like logging - I don't think they make flannel shirts in my size. And I am really grateful it is nothing like clogging, or there would be unexplained seismic activity in my neighborhood!

What I hope to do here is to share some of my writing and get some feedback. Most of the things I write are about myself or my family and they are based in reality. If you are an adult over, say 30, and/or a parent, hopefully you will be able to relate to these essays and find them mildly amusing. (I made the mistake of reading a couple of them to a 25-year-old friend, and, though she was polite about it, she merely smiled and said, "That's interesting." I need to understand my demographic a little better, I guess.)

So, here goes... I hope you enjoy what I have to say...

REALITY CHECK

I always wanted to be a mother. I have tried to be a good mother.
With all three of my sons I tried to nurture in them a sense of wonder and a feeling of magic in the world around them.
I thought I was succeeding.

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My youngest son, Jared, age four, lay on my bed, his cheeks flushed with fever, his body covered with chicken pox, his lips wrapped around a freezer pop. I had struggled for three days to find ways to distract him from scratching. I had run out of ideas.

I climbed on the bed beside him and turned on the television. The Disney Channel! There was always something good showing there - something I might be able to share with him to divert his attention from his itchy, warm, little body.

Oh! "Sleeping Beauty"! The live action movie with real actors, not a cartoon with silly looking characters and anthropomorphic animals. This would be great! A story of fairies and wonder and destiny!

We watched together as the good fairies bestowed gifts on Beauty and then, as the bad, angry fairy told her parents that Beauty would prick her finger on a spinning wheel and die.

We were relieved as the good fairies changed the bad fairy's curse from a death sentence to a deep sleep over the entire kingdom for one hundred years.

We heard the king order his subjects to check every room of the castle and the entire kingdom and destroy all the spinning wheels so he could protect his daughter from this fate.

Servants scurried from room to room searching for and shattering any spinning wheel they found. One such servant stepped into an empty room and looked around. Not seeing anything, he closed the door and left.

The camera slowly panned across the room. There, behind a folding screen, was a spinning wheel! The servant hadn't seen it and now Beauty might prick her finger and sleep for a hundred years!

I leaned over to Jared and said, in an awed stage whisper, "Oh, no! He didn't see that spinning wheel!"

Jared leaned over to me, eyes still on the television, and said, in the same awed whisper, "So, only the cameraman knows it's there?"

_______________________________

Some children are just too based in reality to watch The Disney Channel with their mothers.