September 21st, 2022

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I finally FINALLY got  my arse to my hairdresser so that I could become  transformed  from a sheepdog to a human.  Geez!  It was more than three months between haircuts this time around and wow, that is just too long.

I am always astonished at how transformative a haircut can be.  And obviously, the longer between trims, the bigger the difference.  Once again, I wish I had thought to take a before photo but I did not.  The closest I could come was about two weeks post surgery, which means the end of July.  At that time I looked like this:

The hair was not great at that time, but it was also not horrible.  That was probably the point where, normally, I would have been heading out for a trim.  Instead I waited.  I was trying to wait until I felt up to at least pretending to be a normal human being and then I waited a bit longer.  And then a bit longer than that.  In fact, I waited until September.  Whoa!
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I'm not sure why I waited so long.  I suspect that, at that point in my recovery process, my hair just wasn't a priority.   Too many other, more important things on my mind.  But eventually I knew that I just couldn't put it off any longer.  If for no other reason than to get my bangs under control.  

Growing out bangs is one of the most awkward of all hair related moments.    I've written about it before here.  I've tried clips, barrettes, braiding, hair bands, pretty much everything you can think of and honestly, none of it is a good answer for me. Usually.  This time, it didn't bother me much.  Again, other priorities.  I was, shall we say, distracted, from the hair issue.

And then all of a sudden one ordinary morning I woke up, showered, attempted to do something (anything!) with my hair and realized that it looked horrible.   Not merely bad, no it had gone all the way to truly horrible.   And this wasn't just my opinion.  When I arrived at the salon, my lovely hairdresser came around to corner to greet me, came to a complete stop and her eyes opened VERY wide in shock. 

Oh she is a professional. She caught herself, smiled warmly and said, "don't worry, I can fix this".  HAHAHAHAHA!  She did a great job and when she was done the floor was littered with bits of hair that were about 3 to 4 inches long.  And I once again looked human.

 A little different wouldn't you say?

The one good thing I could say about my hair before the appointment was that for the first time in a long time, I could whip it up into a ponytail. On a really hot and humid day, that felt good.  But this looks better. More kempt. Tidier.  More intentional.

Have you ever known a person, man or woman,  who always looked the same to you?  I mean no matter the hair length or style, regardless of the combination of beard, mustache, once they have radically changed something,  nobody notices?  Not only have I known people like that, I always thought I was one of them.  Until the day, a VERY long time ago, when I came home from getting a perm so instead of long straight hair I had long big loopy curls and while my older two children ran up to me with no problem, the youngest one burst into tears and demanded his "real" Mama.  I guess I did look a little different after all. 

A change in hair colour is a whole different thing.  A horse of a different colour, as it were.  It's really hard to miss a different hair colour than usual. Especially if it's wildly different.   When I used to have a standing appointment for hair colour, every 7 weeks, faithfully, I would show up and let my hairdresser do her magic.  And sometimes the colour was in the blonde family, sometimes red and occasionally different browns.  We both had fun with it. Until one day it stopped being fun and started being a chore and then I stopped. 

It felt like forever waiting for the artificial colour to completely be gone so that I could find out what the real colour of my hair was.  Frankly, I expected a lot more grey/white/silver and I was more than a little disappointed to learn that the actual colour of my hair is kind of mouse brown with bits of grey/white/silver here and there.  I can only assume that will change as time goes by.

It was just another change in a lifetime of changes.  When we were very small, our mother used to do Toni Home Perms on Joy and I.  They were supposedly especially made for children and called "tonettes". The smell was ghastly, I vividly remember the smell. Eye watering!  And the results were never good.  We always ended up looking like sheep.  Fuzzheads.  When the perm would start to grow out, Mother would trot us off to the hairdresser who would cut the remaining fuzz off and then trim what was left into a "pixie" cut.  Not everyone looks good in a pixie cut.  Joy does.  She looks adorable, like an actual pixie :)  I look like a boy.  It's not good.

As I grew up and began to take more control over what my hair looked like, I opted to grow it quite long.  Drove my poor Mother mad.  She really hated it.  Sometimes I just wore it the way it grows, long and straight. Other times I would braid or ponytail it. 

Once I had children, long hair was a bit more inconvenient and I began having it cut to somewhere between chin and shoulder length, depending on the mood of the hairdresser that day.  As the boys got older, my hair once again, got longer.  Until I started working in medical offices. Oddly enough, they preferred that their professionals actually look professional and back in those days, it meant returning to the somewhere between chin and shoulder length again.  Sometimes I had bangs, sometimes I did not.

I actually do care what my hair looks like,  just not enough to spend a lot of time or money on it.  Additionally, I don't have a lot of skill in that realm either.  When I meet a new hairdresser for the first time I always tell them the same thing:  "I need something super easy that does not look like a hat, a wig or a helmet"  That's it.  Those are the parameters.   I'd say the guidelines were met.

I just do not have the patience or the talent for fussing with my hair.  Once upon a time I owned a set of "hot rollers"  and if I wanted to change up my look, I would slap those  babies  in my hair in no particular order or pattern, rather willy nilly, and for a few hours anyway (my hair is stubbornly straight) I would absolutely look different.  Better?  Probably not but definitely different.    Nowadays,  the only time I look different is when I'm overdue for a haircut.

I will try to be better now about going regularly again.  I loved that big transformational moment, but I think just attending to it regularly so it's not so monumental a change would be a good idea.