It’s been awhile since I’ve added a post here…under the weather in an alarming way. The new ailment causes typing to make my hands hurt!
LOL! Poetic injustice, isn’t it?
So…this is about the weirdest Christmas I can remember. No, not “about”: THE weirdest. The church — and especially choir — has been closed down for months. Turns out that during an epidemic singing is about the most dangerous thing you can do.
So: Nix on the midnight mass. Nix on the singing. Nix on the Christmas Eve potluck. Nix on Life, the Universe, and All That!
In more pedestrian fields: My hair is halfway to my butt, because I’m afraid to go to the stylist to get it trimmed. Literally, my hair has never been this long, ever. Don’t have much fear of the stylist himself, since he’s a guy with pretty sterling common sense. But you could not pay me to stick my head in a public sink to get my hair washed, with someone lurking over me breathing into my face. I haven’t asked…but if they’d let me show up with wet hair and skip the in-salon hair laundry, I’d probably do it.
Truth is, though, I don’t even know if the beloved Shane is still there or if the salon is still in business. For years, he’s talked about retiring and moving to Prescott, where his family lives. He and his sister bought a house up there to use as a vacation home…he may simply have tossed in the hair-stylist’s towel and left town. Bizarrely, I had an appointment on the first of April, which was right when the whole covid-19 horror descended. My son called and asked me not to leave the house, even to go to grocery stores (or maybe especially not to go to grocery stores. His step-brother and his best friend are both medical doctors, and coincidentally they both phoned him on the same day in a great sweat and told him to keep the old people indoors — that if DXH, New Wife, or I catch this thing, we will be DEAD.
Accordingly, I canceled that appointment, and I imagine a whole bunch of the salon’s other clients did, too.
If you believe their website, they still seem to be operating…but no clue whether the redoubtable Shane still lurks there.
But…now that I have a death-dealing “pre-existing condition” on top of what is regarded as senescence, I guess I’d really rather have eccentric flowing tresses with split ends than risk catching a potentially fatal disease.
Locking oneself up in solitary confinement does, it must be said (à propos of flowing tresses), lead you to diddle away your time on some surprisingly bizarre endeavors.
This morning, as I contemplated the tangle of split ends finishing off the eccentric flowing tresses, I recalled that back in the Dark Ages when I was but a young pup, my mother used to treat my hair and hers with a thick, rich conditioner called “Kolesteral.” It had the consistency of library paste. You massaged it in to your abused tresses, left it to soak for half an hour or 45 minutes, then washed it out. Et voilà! Your hair would be magically transformed!
I think this may be the stuff…
But I thought it was spelled “Kolestral” (or something like that), it was made by Wella, and it definitely came in a tube. But then…so did everything: except for Pond’s cold cream nothing came in a tub. In fact, I don’t think they even made cosmetic jars in plastic like they do today…and a big glass jar like this would have jacked up the price of the product more than any marketer of a low- to mid-priced hair nostrum would have liked.
Not being sure that this really was the original magical mystery hair goop, I set sail for a short cruise across the Internet, in search of laydeez recommending their favorite split-end fixes. And lo! What should I come across but this charming woman!
COCONUT OIL??!!??? Well hot dayum! I’ve got a whole jar of that stuff, sitting on the nightstand! By golly: don’t even have to order some expensive gunk from Amazon!
So as we scribble, I’m sitting here with the oiled tresses wrapped up in a plastic bag, sealed in under a bath-towel turban. We shall see, in an hour or so, how well (or if) this scheme works.
Mwa ha ha! We already know the stuff works superbly as a furniture polish. Why not hair polish, too?
LOL! When I was a little kid, I would have killed to have hair halfway down to my tailbone. But my mother…well…she just WOULD not allow it. No matter how much I begged her to let my hair grow, every two or three months she’d plop me on the kitchen stool and do a hack job on the hair, chopping it off at about ear level. Since the other little girls had their hair done by the lady in camp (we lived in an oil camp in Saudi Arabia) who had worked in a hair salon in her US incarnation and got fancy haircuts in Beirut or Paris when their parents went on leave, this made me look even weirder than I already looked — which as a little girl who wished she was a boy and who was dressed in ugly clothes ordered from the Sears catalog , was pretty damn weird. (Yes: the other little girls got clothes from Paris or, when their parents went to New York on long leave, from Bergdorf’s. Not that I cared: I wanted to be a boy; specifically, I wished to be a space cadet. Or an astrophysicist. Or both.
I do not know what birthed her dread of long, flowing locks on her little girl. It may have been the nuisance factor: she probably didn’t want to listen to me squalling as she yanked out the tangles. Or it may have been a dread of letting me look sexy: sexiness was something to be avoided in her strait-laced world.
Probably, though, she was inspired by abhorrence of our even more strait-laced neighbors, a couple who declared themselves to be extreme Southern Baptists. In their belief system, girls did not cut their hair. They had three daughters, for each of whom they became slightly more liberal as the children grew. The eldest, Ann, was NEVER allowed to cut her hair, ever. By the time she finished the eighth grade (at which point the Aramco school quit and kids had to be shipped either to the American school in Beirut, to a boarding school in Switzerland, or back home to the US for high school), that poor child’s hair hung all the way down to her feet.
The second girl, Mildred, presumably was so inelegantly named that there was little risk of hair sexiness, and so she was allowed to wear her tresses dowdily at about shoulder length. And the third child, a little girl named Helen, was allowed to live and look pretty much like a normal American kid. I believe the pressure on the parents from the other Americans’ disapproval of this silly practice is what led them to allow Helen and Mildred to wear normal hair styles. As for Ann? The instant her feet hit the tarmac in New York when they shipped her home for high school, she was off to a hair salon, where she had the ridiculous mane hacked off.
LOL! Just imagine what those folks would have thought of some woman vlogging from the shower! 😀 About oiling her sexy hair!! 😀 😀
My mother would have fainted dead away. But Mildred’s mother surely would have had a heart attack at first glance.
In another three hours, it’s off to my son’s house, where he proposes to fancify a beef roast. That will be nice. I hope he likes his Christmas present… He asked for a salt cellar. But it had to be a certain size, because he wanted it to perch on the window ledge next to the stove, which is less than one Mexican tile wide.
(Yes. Men do ask for weird gifts.)
So I found a really handsome one that I think will fit there, at (where else) Amazon. Ordered that up…and to my amazement, they sent TWO! So now he’ll have a pair of them. Plus a gigantic plastic jar of Costco’s white salt, plus a gigantic jar of Costco’s cool, picturesque pink salt, which comes with a salt grinder on the side.
He’ll never run out of salt. That’s something. I guess…
Merry Weird Christmas, Funny – I’ve been missing you. Weird is the right word . Our local son delivered dinner for DH and me – would you believe, elk roast, and it was delicious. Followed by lime Jello with huckleberries. His other side dishes were also quite original. It made Christmas without the rest of the family bearable. Please recover soon.
That sounds wonderful! Elk can be awesome… Now to find a way to have a decent New Year’s… Watch the fireworks on TV??
Merry Christmas to you Funny!
I’m in the opposite predicament, hair-wise – I keep my hair VERY short – and require a hair cut every 6 weeks or so. My last salon cut was in early February – so when our initial lockdown started in mid-March I was just on the cusp of having that “need to get a haircut” feeling.
I snipped at my bangs initially, figuring that would get me through. Sweet naivete! Over the months, along with my face mask, I rocked a variety of cotton kerchiefs to keep it tamed 😀
Until I finally gave in, and in September, ordered myself an electric clipper – and went to town, taking 3-4 inches off just about everywhere, LOL. It’s uneven and definitely not a professional job – but given that I’m not spending time in person with anyone these days, and only interact briefly with people at a distance of 6 feet – it’s totally fine 😀
LOL! I used to wear my hair short, too. Problem was, I couldn’t afford Shane (who caters to the rich and the decadent) to keep it up by running into the salon every few weeks, and other stylists…well… A new stylist would do a good job the first time, but then could NEVER replicate that. Subsequent visits would invariably be disappointing, if not disastrous. I found that it looked better more consistently if I kept it long, and it was SURE a whole lot cheaper.
And in my callow youth, I was able to trim it myself — which I absolutely can’t do today. In the first place, this house doesn’t have a mirror that will let me see the back of my head in a room with decent lighting. And in the second, even if it did, I no longer can reach the hair falling down my back.
Long hair doesn’t need a Shane to maintain it — I could go to Supercuts or one of those. But all of the salons seem to insist on washing your hair, and so…until I can get a covid-19 shot, my hair is just gonna have to be long.
The coconut oil idea was a bust, BTW. Didn’t do anything bad, but it didn’t do any good, either. Still have an inch of split ends, all the way around. 😀
When I was 18 in 1966, making 50 cents an hour babysitting, I would go to the beauty shop for a trim with wet hair sometimes. It was only $2.00 then which still was 4 hours of work for me.
I had the long hippie hair of the times too. When it was really long, I would just part it down the middle(wet of course) down the back and pull one side to the front at a time and just cut it off straight. It might be enough to get you through.
But maybe it would be too hard on your hands now. Maybe your son would be willing to take a whack at it. Really sharp scissors and just an inch or so to get rid of the split ends because conditioner doesn’t help them. I like Aussi’s 3-Minute Miracle when my hair gets frizzy or dry.
That might work. The trimming thing, I mean. Shane seems to have trimmed it in such a way that when you part it down the middle and pull it forward, the two hanks are fairly level. I know he doesn’t just chop it off level, though, because I love to watch him working and can see he’s trimming it at subtly different levels. I think the front/sides are slightly shorter than the back. And he may have layered it, so that the bottom-most layer is a tiny bit different length from the top-most levels.
Truth to tell, we’ll have a covid shot in another two or three months, and since I can put it up, there’s no hurry to get a haircut… If Shane retired in response to the shut-down of beauty salons, there’s a Great Clips right down the street — no doubt they can trim long hair. And with it this long, if they screw it up, I can go over to one of Shane’s Scottsdale colleagues and, for a pretty penny, get it fixed. 😀
Merry Christmas to you! A day late, as I didn’t even have my computer on yesterday. It’s been a weird one here, too, but the four of us made the best of it – and we actually got the tree up this year.
I had long hair nearly all my adult life. I once had it trimmed to shoulder-length, but wouldn’t go any shorter. Then some seven years ago I got it buzzed very short and haven’t looked back since. Nowadays I usually buzz it to about an inch long, then let it grow out through the stage where it feathers back from my face and finally trim it again when it starts to get in my eyes and annoy me. It’s nearly to my shoulders now, definitely time for another trim.
Hope you had a nice Xmas. I learned to cut my own hair from youtube. I also cut the husband’s hair too. Give it a whirl, what do you have to lose? Hair grows fast and no one is going anywhere so if you screw up, no will see! There are tons of videos, some easier than others. I just do the easy one whereby one bends over so that all the hair falls forward and down to the ground, give it a good brush and form a ponytail at the forehead like a unicorn horn. Snip away and you will have super layers. Cut an inch at a time, undo the ponytail, check it, and redo the pony tail and cut another inch and so on until you get your desired length. Works for me, I haven’t been to a salon in ages.
On another note, why are you visiting with your son? I almost made that mistake last month (visiting my darling son on a Friday) but decided not to take the risk and good thing I didn’t. 5 days later on the Wednesday he tested positive for Covid and he and his wife have had a hell of time shaking the dizziness, nausea and fatigue. Weeks later, they are still not well and they are young. Just my 10c.
LOL! You’re right: so what if the coiffure looks a little 2020? Who’s to see it? 😀 The ponytail idea sounds like a good idea. Also realized that if you part it down the back and then pull each hank forward over your shoulder, you can see the length and how level it is. Shane’s last job on the hair left it nice and even, so if I just followed his “hemline,” as it were, it should come out all right.
And yes, the same thought occurred to me about socializing at the kid’s house. However, we’re not kissy-kissy types, so we didn’t get that close to each other. I’d say we were rarely closer than 6 feet. Also, he works at home now, his employer having shut down its offices, so he rarely goes out of the house. And he wears a mask when he does. Not having grown up in Saudi Arabia, he doesn’t know about washing every scrap of produce before putting it in the fridge…but otherwise I’d say the risk was relatively small.
I’d say the risk is much higher from the endless stream of workmen traipsing through here, what with my house falling apart like the Minister’s One-Hoss Shay. That DOES worry me, but there’s nothing I can do about it: I have to have functioning plumbing. Plus I do have to go to grocery stores, too: Instacart is great for some things, but their contract workers seem to have no clue about how to select fresh produce…or anything that isn’t packaged, prepared, mass-produced foodoid. There’s a trick to shopping if you eat real food, and those folks don’t know it. 😀
Plus of course there’s the endless traipsing two doctors’ offices. Every two weeks I have to schlep to the dermatologist for more carving away of precancerous (and sometimes cancerous) lesions, or for checking of the wounds thereby created. REALLY don’t like sitting in that waiting room, but again: what can I do about it? Take a chance on having some melanoma spread through the body?
Happy Holidays, Funny! I’ve been busier than usual, so forgive my lateness.
I didn’t realize you had to see the dermatologist every two weeks. Yeesh. I hope you’re done with treatment soon.
Let’s hope 2021 is a better year for all of us.
Happy New Year!
LOL! Surely 2021 couldn’t get much worse. Here at the Funny Farm, 2020 is going out with quite the bang…haven’t got the energy to write about it, but will tomorrow if the present entertainment, which has died down a bit, STAYS died down.
Every time the dermadoc hacks off some new carcinoma or pre-cancer, I have to trot back two weeks later to have it checked. And since she’s cutting stuff off every time she turns around, I’m driving out to her place every time I turn around!!! Fortunately, they’re very nice people so it’s pleasant to see them and chat with them. 😮