Hair Cuts and Embarrassing High School Photographs
Whoa, y’all. I just looked back and realized that with the exception of one satire piece, everything I’ve written recently has been sort of heavy. Depression, dead cat, OCD, and so on.
How about something completely different? And by different, I mean random bits of moderately interesting randomness.
The last time I had a haircut was during the whole, “omg, am I going bald?!” stage of postpartum torture fun. I figured if I was going to shed like a husky, the hairs might as well be shorter and take up less space in my drain. I didn’t have a plan to grow my hair out afterward, I just didn’t go get it cut. When I get my hair cut I always take out my cartlidge piercings because stylists have a habit of getting their comb caught in them and yanking my head backward. Taking out my earrings was just tooooo haaaaaaaard. I’d have to like find somewhere to store them and then eventually put them back in. I can’t do all that work. Basically, laziness.
But then my hair-stylist cousin (shout out to Alison at The Beehive in Carrboro, NC) saw me say that I hadn’t had a haircut since 2015 and she fainted at the thought of all that neglect. And then she perked up at the idea that she could be the one to finally cut it. I’ll be honest, I usually go to Great Clips, so a haircut at a fancy place was both tempting and intimidating.
I think it turned out awesome!
I was in a go big or go home sort of mood, especially since we all know it’ll be another year before I get it cut again. Whenever I cut my hair short it loses a lot of its redness, which is unfortunate. So she did some balayage, which I’m pretty sure is French for, “really subtle highlights that look real perty.” I haven’t had my hair highlighted in probably 9 or more years, so this was a fun treat.
A couple of friends and I were talking yesterday about our hair over the years. Two of us used to use boxed dye on our hair in high school. We decided that that’s the pinnacle of weird adolescent self-confidence issues — my hair color is one of my favorite things but yet I used to try to make it different. Actually, maybe the pinnacle was the ill-fitting clothes and lack of brushing of said hair.
While I was looking for those high school photos, I also came across this picture of me from sometime in the late 80s and realized that I really did give birth to a mini version of myself. Oh, don’t get me wrong, she looks like my husband’s family, too — but that attitude is all mine. It will mostly serve her well as an adult but school may be a little rough.
Anyhow, back to my hair. As we were deciding how much to cut, we realized that there was definitely enough there to donate. So now I have a handfull of little ponytails ready to go be part of a wig. Does anybody know of a really good option for that? I know I’ve heard mixed things about Locks of Love. Someone suggested Wigs for Kids. I know it’s more than 8 inches – it might even be enough for places that require 10 inches.
I also learned that I have a lot of hair. For decades I’ve been saying the opposite. I guess although it’s really fine, it is also abundant. It’s like everything I knew about myself is a lie. This also explains why my short hair cut in middle school made me look like a brown-topped truffula tree.
Switching gears in the name of randomness
I’ve had blogs for many, many years and journals before that — so, writing is not a new thing to me. But a little less than two years ago the trajectory changed somewhat. I was offered a chance to write content for a new breastpump company, Moxxly. They were in the early stages of planning and production trials and I was in the even earlier stages of writing for money (as in, I had never done it before). A lot has happened since then, but those first short essays remained dormant while Moxxly went through the rest of the stages of development. The other day, I got an email saying they were ready to start rolling out their community feature on their website, which is where a lot of what I wrote will live. These are mostly really short essays of 300 words or less, and they were a ton of fun to write. There’s one about poop that I cannot wait to see up there. For now there is just one, but here is the page where they will live (and while you’re there, go check out the other posts and the product itself!)
Sans segue!
The other day when I picked up Lorelei from camp she said, “do you think we should tell daddy to get a van? We took a van to our field trip today and I didn’t even have to sit in a booster! I got to sit in the seatbelt like an adult!”
My head basically exploded. Some of you know that I am a total car seat nerd. Lorelei was rear facing until she turned four. She’ll be in a booster until she can completely pass the five-step test, which is usually somewhere between 10-12 years old. She cannot even legally ride without a booster yet – the law is 8 years or 80 pounds (almost no kids will be ok without a booster at age 8… the law is nowhere resembling best practice). So what in the everloving fuck was she doing riding in a van without a booster?! I still have not figured out how to approach this. I don’t want to be that mom but this is a safety issue. She said the bus didn’t come, so they had to take a van instead. For her field trip today they were leaving early enough that I had visual confirmation of a bus in the parking lot. It was a little bus, which is not as reassuring to me as a large bus but at least it was not a freaking van.
And last….
You know that app that changes your photo to make you look old, or young, or like a girl, or boy? It turns out that old Rowan bears a striking resemblance to Hillary Clinton.
