Hair Today

I got a haircut last week, and now I am in emotional turmoil. Not because the haircut was bad, but because it was the haircut-before-the-haircut and this means I have only five weeks to come to terms with my hair decision. A decision which includes getting rid of most of my existing hair, and changing it's colour in a somewhat dramatic fashion. Those who are in the know, let me just say that my next haircut and colour will involve a product called fudge. I'm not sure but I think I'm about 20 years too old to be using it, but what the hell, right?

A brief history of me and my hair is as follows: my Mom has a "thing" about hair, and short hair in general. She just doesn't like long hair, and so it took until I was an adult (okay, a teenager) before I was allowed to grow it anywhere past my shoulders or even below my ears. I have some seriously horrendous school photos. Once I got old enough to grow my own hair, I grew it and grew it and grew it until I realised that long hair requires some serious maintenance. And then I cut it, and cut it, and cut it, and then lost enough weight so that a pixie haircut was actually flattering. And then I gained the weight back and the hair came back, too. (Fat people + short hair = mushrooms. Just sayin'.)

I have very odd hair in that it cannot decide if it is curly or straight, mousy or highlighted, oily or dry. It somehow manages to be all of those things at the same time. I also have a love/hate relationship with hair products - love to buy them, hate to use them. The same is true for hair appliances like straighteners and whatnot. Love to say I own them, hate to have to take the time to use them. Anything more than 2 minutes hair prep in the morning is officially too long for me. It took until my late 20's before I realised haircuts need to happen more than once a year in order to actually be effective. (Okay, I lied. More like my early 30's.)

Last year I had to divorce my hairdresser. She had looked after me from the very first minute I landed on Australian shores, but 12 years later she had to go. Our relationship had lost it's shine, it's bounce, it's spin-around-in-slow-motion gloriousness and it was time to move on. It took a year but I finally found someone ... and now I'm about to let her cut all my hair off. It's time. I'm bored with the soccer Mom look, particularly since none of my kids play soccer and I can't justify the haircut. Plus after 10 months of actual effort on my part, I'm mostly thin enough in the face to justify fun, flirty, short hair again. The deed is also going to be done about a week before I see my Mom, so I'd be lying if I said there wasn't a certain amount of brownie points getting to be done. (Not that my Mom would love me any less with longer hair...it's just that she's a Jewish Mother and all Jewish Mothers love being able to tell you that you did exactly what they wanted, and it looks amazing, and if it weren't for them we'd all be up a creek, and why didn't we listen to them earlier?)

So. It's 5 weeks to hair-chop-and-fudge day and I'm vacillating between a) terrified and b) thrilled and c) what-the-hell-am-I-thinking type of thinking? (can you vacillate between 3 things? Or does it have to be only 2?) All of these are odd thoughts, since it's certainly not the first time I've gone to the hairdressers and had a complete and total change. I've had my hair coloured everything from blond to black, had lengths from total pixie to below my bra line. Hair grows back, and that's what's so fun about it. This time, though, I'm putting my trust in someone whose own hair is at several different lengths, colours and shapes all at the same time.

At this point I would normally end with something snappy like, "Don't worry, I'll post pictures." ... but since my faith is wavering, let me just say: Don't worry, I'm not getting my personality cut and coloured. That's already beyond change.