Bob the Corgi

Skunk Hair, And I Mean That In the Nicest Possible Way

It's the same thing every time I go to get my hair highlighted:

Nancy the talented hairdresser: So what are we doing this time?
Me: I want big skunk stripes and make them very very blonde.
Nancy: Skunk Stripes?
Me: Skunk stripes.
Nancy: OK

Then she gets out the cap, pulls little delicate feathery wisps of hair thru and colors it to Number 13 even though I clearly asked for Number 11. In the end, it looks natural  and beautiful and I am enamored of my own reflection in the mirror. But I really wanted skunk stripes. So this post is really just a reference for me so that I can find this photo of Lisa Marie and Priscilla Bowlyoleo Presley to print out and wave it around the next time I go.

But I feel bad that I wasted your time so I'm going to do something for you to make it worthwhile: I'm going to give you a shopping tip for the weekend.

Beach towels are on sale everywhere and those in the know will step back to allow the thundering herds to snap up the tasteful palm trees, fish and multi-colored stripes at LNT and BB&B. The smart shopper will quietly head to The Big KMart for the Lynyrd Skynyrd Beach Towel, on sale now for $11.24.

Get in the groove. Thank me later.

Ear of Beagle

So here we are about three weeks into life without puffy hair.

I didn't think I would make it this far due to the annoyance factor: it's much hotter laying flat against my head and irritating in the same way that loose socks are. When my hair was puffy, I had no sense of it being on my head. Now I feel it every time I make a small movement. Its like being in charge of a small kid that you can't stand.

But yesterday, someone said this to me: "How do you get your hair to be so nice and flat?" and they meant it as a compliment. Perhaps it looked good was because I started to tuck one side behind my ear and that gives the whole thing an element of style instead of two beagle ears laying there like lox next to my face.

It pretty much looks, in terms of length and limpidity, like the subject of this painting. I found this in an article about an art exhibit in London called Faces in the Crowd. It was lumped into the category of "depictions of individuals used to present a tortured or exhilarated inner life".

I ask you, who among us does not have a tortured or exhilarated inner life? Ye shall know us by our eyebags.

Otherwise Known As "Well, At Least She Washed It ... "

I was born on the same day that Fanny Brice died.

Draw your own conclusions.

To celebrate the occaision, I have decided to stop fighting nature and give up my life-long quest for puffy hair. From now on, my fine limp poker straight hair can do what's it's been trying to do all along - give into gravity. I've already taken the first steps to growing out my layered, lacquered and leaden 'do and had Nancy the World's Most Talented Stylist start shaping it into a stacked bob. So far, it looks like I got a free haircut at a state-run mental hospital.

But I am determined to simplify things. From now on, its going to be a little less Ethel Mertz and a lot more Sherwyn Williams. Puffy no more.

White Female Businesswoman

Right about now, I can feel my sap running. It's the change in seasonal light that is making me think I need to do something, to start something, to change something.

I'm thinking of changing my hairdo. I've been observing the graying pageboy bobs of the middle-aged business women that I travel with and they are far more casual constructions than mine. To me, this symbolizes that they have reached a point of acceptance of who they are and are comfortable with it - not like me, still battling my fine, limp hair and insisting that it go big and puffy.

And it's not working anymore. Even on days when I mange to wrangle it up into something passable, someone will say to me that I am not as puffy as usual. What's the point? I think I'll let it grow out, lose the blonde and get myself some dignity. But who am I kidding? I have deeply ingrained life patterns and even when I think I'm doing something new and different, it turns out I'm doing the same old thing.

When I got my first apartment, there was a 12" wide strip of drywall on a wall that was mostly closet. I got a 10" high folding stool, placed my avocado green phone on it and over directly over that, hung up a wooden plaque that had a copy of Robert Indiana's LOVE  on it. So new and different for me considering the conventional style I grew up with, so spur of the moment, so fresh. A year or two later, I got a visit from a nursing school colleague who took a look at my arrangement and complimented me on my consistency as she recalled that I spent all of nursing school saying that I was going to do exactly that when I got my own apartment.

Shortly thereafter, I boldly bought a coffee table and end tables from a thrift store and painted them red. Of course, they were impossible for me to live with so I chucked them.

And there we have it - I am derivative and unable to change. I probably will stick with the Ethel Mertz 'do that I have had since junior high school and I'll never have red furniture again. I'm going to take the kitchen radio outside to the deck and listen to it while I plant pansies today, the same way I do every year on the first nice weekend in spring.

I am what I am.