Hair today, gone tomorrow

Oh feck, I cut all my hair off.

I've been trying to find a sprightly, cheery way to say that but, feck, it's gone, it's all gone. For the good, I suppose but still ...

I was trying to come up with a not-worst photo to show you and inadvertently I came across a photo taken last winter. I was so cute a year ago. My hair was so bouncy! So dark and shiny and fluffy. I cry looking at it, thinking, "I was so adorable and now I'm HIDEOUS."

I look like a cross between a leather-wearing butch lesbian in a biker bar and a polyster-sheathed middle-aged matron in the Bingo Barn's doughnut department. I'm not joking.

Yesterday one of the salesmen at my work came up to my desk, leaned in really close and said, "WHAT did you DO to your HAIR?"

Other people have said, "Oh, you got your hair cut!" And I've said, "yeah," and they've walked away because their mamas always told them "if you can't say anything nice, clamp your big mouth shut and RUN."

But I had to cut it. I was at "that" point – that place in life where I just couldn't colour my hair one more time.

My hair is naturally dark brown; at least it was until a hairdresser discovered grey hairs on my head when I was only 18. By the time I was 35 I was colouring my hair all the time to keep the greys at bay. For a brief period in my early 40s I let the grey grow out but with my long hair I looked like a witch, so I coloured it again and have been colouring it ever since.

With my hair so dark and the grey so light, it seemed like I was getting skunk-head within days of getting the colour done. There was a photo of me and the gang on a fishing trip. I was looking at it and asked Dave who the person with the big bald spot on the back of her head was. "You," he said, "but it's not a bald spot, it's just your roots."

"GEEZ LOUISE," I said, mortified. "You mean I was walking around looking like that?" He nodded. "Dude, I love you, but you have to TELL me when I got a skunk sitting on my head!"

Another problem with dying your hair brown is the dark pigment accumulates in your hair until it's as black as the inside of a bowling ball and, I swear this is true, you look like an Italian grandmother. It's not a flattering look. Even on Italian grandmothers. That's why they cook so good, so nobody will talk about their godawful hair.

I decided to try dying it blonde a while back, thinking it would blend in with the grey hair better, but I still had more dark hair than grey, so a minute after the bleach job, I got dark roots. SO STUPID. I was getting dark roots with blonde hair and white roots with brown hair! It was driving me CRAZY!

Then I remembered Diary of a Square-Toothed Girl, a blogger buddy named Lisa, who was also prematurely grey, but a lot braver than me. At the tender age of 32 she went to a salon and asked them to chop it all off.

She wrote, "The hair I had been fighting against for so long was gone. I had never felt so liberated from my body. Usually, it was something I fought against. Frizzy hair begging to be flat-ironed, tiny crow's feet needing moisturizer, nails and toes that need polish--the list could go on and on...there is just a lot of upkeep. And one huge item on the list was gone."

I didn't want to deal with roots growing out so I did what Lisa did. I went to the hairdresser's and had them cut it all off, about a half an inch long all over my head.

Eventually Lisa's hair grew out and now she's got this sassy, beautiful hair, complete with grey streaks. That's what I want to have happen, too. 

A year from now I'm hoping I won't look like a matronly biker dyke anymore. Just skunk-headless Cathy with a few grey streaks.

In the meantime, I'm hideous. Thought you should know. 

Sam's Photo Shoot

Sam-I-Am had a haircut today. See that picture of him – yup, the one up there. Up, look UP. Yes, that one. The one with the hair. I took that photo a month ago and up until today he still hadn't cut his hair which grows, by the way, faster than Pamela Anderson's breasts.

Yup. It was long. Longer than the line-up for free samples at a Viagra convention. (I just realized something – erectile dysfunction pills are blue. Hair rinses for elderly women are blue. Does blue hair turn old guys off, necessitating blue pills??? Huh. Must think long and hard on this one.)

So to make a long hair short, Sam got his haircut. This was such a momentous occasion that I felt the need to commemorate it with photos.

Sam, being a typical 11-year-old boy (who turns 12 on Wednesday), does not know how to merely smile for the camera. The minute he sees one, his normally casual grin is replaced with all kinds of facial theatrics. Today was no different. In the space of a few moments I took these photos and then decided to post them here for his future embarrassment.

How I love being a mother.

Great, now my fingers stink

Uck. I accidentally touched goo from Dave's salmon sandwich when I was cleaning up the kitchen just now. I had purposely avoided touching any crumbs on the counter but didn't discover until my fingers were in the goo that he had made the sammich on top of the dishwasher. Touched the goo, smelled my fingers, went "blech," scrubbed fingers with Palmolive. Smelling my fingers just now and they still have a lingering fish smell. May have to go wash fingers again. Once a guy from work brought smoked trout and sauerkraut to work and heated it up in the microwave. The whole building smelled like gack. The boss came in from lunch and said, "Who the fuck died in here?" So the legend goes. I didn't actually hear him because I was at my desk, retching.

The key word in that paragraph? Dishwasher! It's, like, the best thing that has ever happened. In. My. Entire. Life. Some day I'm going to do an entire post about the dishwasher, complete with erotic photos of its loveliness. Maybe even a centrefold with a staple in it's silverware rack.

Lost three and a half pounds at Weight Watchers this week. That's 14 and a half pounds in four weeks. Nobody has really noticed any changes yet but I know, for a fact, that my ass is getting smaller. My underwear actually go around it now, not hovering nervously waiting at the top, worried about stretching over the whole thing. My ass is like a planet, but not Saturn, because it doesn't have any rings, unless you want to count my underwear, which sort of ring it. So yes, it's exactly like Saturn.

Tomorrow I have a hair appointment. Did I mention my hair? I hate it right now. What's left of it. About half of it broke off. I seriously have hardly any hair. I look like I've been through chemotherapy. I have to do a comb-over or one side is balder than the other. My once thick locks are now stringy and thin and fried to a crisp. It's the blonding that killed it. Bleached it off in chunks, it did. Made it all brittle. Then I went to bed a couple times with a ponytail and it snapped off where the ponytail holder was. So now I have a dilemma. Do I get it all cut off and start over? Do I cut off to chin length and wait a couple months for the balding areas to catch up to the rest? Do I keep it blonde and risk killing hair in order to avoid skunk head? Or do I go back to brown and do root touch-ups every week? Will seriously consider any advice on this very important topic ...

Splitting Hairs - #fridayflash

"I have broken my hair," said Ravina.

You can't break hair.

"Well, I did. It busticated. Right at ear level."

Pffft.

"Look at how puffy my hair is here," she said, pointing to the pouffy sections at the side of her head, "and look how thin my hair is here." She held up the limp and somewhat dispirited lank of brittled blondness.

That is odd, I have to say. You look rather like a yellow version of Bozo the Clown. What happened?

"My ponytail ate it."

Really.

"It was too tight. Broke the hair right off at the elastic band. Then it disappeared. The hair, not the band. Wasn't in the band. Wasn't in the bed. Wasn't in the shower or my hair brush. Just gone. Like the wind. Only Scarlett O'Hara didn't have a bald spot, did she."

I couldn't argue that point, although Scarlett did have an inordinate number of hair bows. Maybe she was hiding something.

"Doubt it. She wasn't hiding her cleavage. And her lack of acting talent was certainly on display."

Cleavage? Did someone say something about cleavage?

"Anyway. I look like a freak. I can't believe I broke my hair."

Krazy Glue? It works on broken china.

"I have actually Krazy Glued broken fingernails together," Ravina said thoughtfully. "I might actually consider trying that... you know, if the ponytail hadn't eaten the hair." D'oh, she added, under her breath.

Yes, well, I have my moments. I also have teeny-tiny razor sharp teeth. And bad gas. Heh-heh. Sorry.

"What was that?" Ravina asked, disgusted.

Hairball.