The first thing I did the morning after we got home from the lake (and I still need to talk about that trip, I know) was prop myself up on my elbows in bed and reach across R's slumbering form for the telephone. And I made a hair appointment. More specifically, I made a hair "consultation" appointment, and I made two of them. I've been wearing my hair really long and really straight for some time now (straight, curly... it's a lot of work either way), and you know why? "Because it looks fantastic?" "Because you can't go wrong with long, straight, all-one-length hair?"
BECAUSE I'M FUCKING LAZY is why. And this way I can spend
all day
every day in a ponytail. It's potentially the most unflattering hair ever conceived. I look like Melissa Gilbert in "Little House on the Prairie". Only with less volume at the roots. You
can go horribly, horribly wrong with all-one-length long straight hair, my friends. You just might not care.
Until a vacation on which you're constantly vacillating between being underwater and being in an eighty mile an hour speedboat wind. It was like Laura Ingalls Wilder on Fear Factor.
So J is currently working for the poshest
hair salon in town. She's only doing it eight hours a week, and only then for the 40% product discount, but whatever. About midweek when I had the entire 17 person vacation crew in Prairie agreement, J decided that I should stop in and make an appointment. And I read "stop in" as "skip the Stylists, Head Stylists and Master Stylists and start flinging desperate money at the Artistic Directors".
And before I start getting a bunch of shit about it, I'll tell you what I told R when he started GIVING ME A BUNCH OF SHIT ABOUT IT: I've paid Arizona Hair Company twelve dollars six times. I've got some hair money BANKED.
BANKED. And I'm going to blow it all tomorrow at 11:45.
The Artistic Directors won't do your hair unless you come in for a consultation beforehand. Which makes sense if you're into wasting time and looking like an asshole, which I totally am. The best part about the consultation (aside from the most flattering lighting in the entire UNIVERSE; I didn't really want to leave, and I sort of became convinced that my current hair is hot, it's that flattering) was sitting down with the Artistic Director in charge of Cuts. I had all these pictures of what I wanted my hair to look like, right, because if I'm paying what I THINK I'm going to be paying, I'm thinking I should pretty much have my pick of the hair litter, and I'm pointing to this and that, and this guy looks me in the eye and goes, "You know it took three stylists five hours to do that, right?"
And I sort of looked at him. And blinked.
He started playing with my hair again. "How long did you spend on your hair this morning?"
Wow. "Um, including sleeping in a wet bun? Or not combing it? Because I did both of those." Point taken.
So I think he has a different plan.
The Artistic Director in charge of Colors was easier.
"Not 'My Little Pony'."
"Done."
"And nothing that might appear to smell like fruit when squeezed."
"No animal cartoons, no fruit flavors. Got it.
So it's on tomorrow.
And no, I'm sure I won't take pictures. I'll be at
Dayment's next Friday and I'm sure she will be extremely forthcoming with the camera. (Yes, I'm really going! This isn't like the tattoo post or the vacation pictures. Or... anything else. I have a plane ticket and I've been practicing my "stomach flu bathroom sounds" for the Friday Call In Sick Scam.)
I was mid-sprint to the mailbox yesterday afternoon, folded newspaper
shielding my delicate head skin from the vengeful nuclear crematorium that
we in Phoenix call "The Sun", when I happened to glimpse the devil washing
his car in front of the house. I wasn't 100% sure it was the devil at first, but then I saw that all of the half-naked hula girls on his Tommy Bahama shirt were writhing in raw silk agony and that pretty much cinched it.
"Son of a bitch, it's fucking hot today," the devil called out, turning on
the hose.
"Dude," I answered, pulling a Carmex tube out of my pocket and squirting it
up my nose. "Is it just me or is this worse than last year?"
"No," the devil grinned, cornering a cowering towel. "It's not just you."
I quickly collected the bills and car loan advertisements from the mailbox.
"Hey," I yelled. The devil looked up, pushing back a gleaming shock of what
can only be described as "to die for" hair. I held up the worthless
envelopes: "Thanks a lot."
He smirked. "You better get back inside," he yelled back, pointing at my head. "Your sports section is on fire."
Which, you know. I'm sure was just a total coincidence.
It's been a bitch of a week. My mom had to have another surgery on her eye, this one significantly more serious than the last. Apparently, they went ahead and took her eyeball out of her head to work on it... much like you would an alternator or a motherboard or a broken ankle. If you can stand to read that without reflexively squinting or patting your eyelid lovingly, then
let me go on to tell you that they wrapped a big rubberband-thing around her eyeball to maintain pressure. And then popped it back into her face.
I happened to call her three days after the surgery, which is when she happened to mention it. Right after she asked me what my brother's name is again. We're a tight crew.
In order to facilitate the healing of this, the blood-red Terminator Eye, she was strictly instructed to spend the week after the surgery on her stomach with her face down. Um, all day. And all night. For a week. She could lift her head and squint and eat and stuff for ten minutes every hour, but beyond that, KEEP YOUR FACE POINTED DOWN.
I'm at work and can't link to anything, but you should all go here (http://www.facedownrecovery.com) to get a visual of the pathetic, heartwrenching shit I'm talking about here. My mom-- in addition to having a Terminator Eye and becoming obsessively convinced that it was shriveling up inside her head and becoming "a little raisin eye"-- had to lay with her face in that thing. Sometimes? When her bones started aching like... like she'd been lying on the side of the highway like an unfound murder victim for the last ninety-four hours? She'd sit up. And then promptly bend over and plant her face firmly in a table hole. Unless your mother has ever had a Terminator Raisin Eye, you're going to have to trust me when I say that walking in to find your mom with her face in a table, trying to watch Cheers reruns by peering upside-down into a sweaty mirror with the better eye, is the emotional equivalent of ripping out your heart... and beating a bunch of tiny, wriggly puppies to death with it.
I brought her a portable DVD player and all of our DVDs that The Jake hasn't eaten. As I was unfolding the player to lay flat on the floor underneath her face, we had a little conversation about "recovery" and "taking shit easy" and "I don't want to catch you at the grocery store
again."
"I might have been a little cocky," she admonished, the Terminator Eye trying listlessly to set the carpet on fire. And then she went on to say something else that I couldn't really understand.
"Shift up, Mom. Your mouth isn't over the hole."
She shifted.
"I said, 'What the hell happened to your hair?'"
So we're good.
