Apparently I just don't speak hairdresser

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Yesterday I made a mistake of colossal proportions. Ignoring the begging, pleading, and whining of the Husband, I proceeded, with my stubborn mind made up.

Girls, I am telling you now. Listen to your husbands. Sometimes, they just might be right.

I had decided that the time had come for me to cut my hair. And not just trim a little off the ends, but really cut. my. hair. It has been varying degrees of long for about the last six years.

And humidity and long hair? They don't get along so well.

I was tired of it and ready for a change, but also not wanting to go too short. So, for the last several weeks, I have been perusing websites, magazines, and people-watching in search of my new hair. One lucky day, I found it. It belonged to a girl who was innocently walking around the City Museum with her kids. Unbeknownst to her, I was stalking her hair, snapping away with my telephoto lens like a paparazzi. I had pictures of every angle of this hair, lest there be any confusion when I went in.

I need to pause in the telling of the hair story to tell you that I have not found my hair "person" here in St. Louis yet. I have gone in a few times for trims, but never really felt like I had found my stylist. Just haven't found that special someone. And if you're anything like me, this is a relationship that MUST be just right. It requires almost as much thought and prayer as choosing your spouse.

You know it's true.

So, armed with my arsenal of pictures, I made an appointment. The day arrived, and I excitedly headed in, ready to meet the new me.

Well.

The stylist I had blindly chosen did not agree with my hairdo of choice. She flat out refused to give it to me. Then, in a move I'll never fully comprehend, told me I was too old to be able to pull it off. Oh, and that it would accentuate my fat neck.

Excuse me?

There are a lot of parts of me that I will agree are fat and jiggly, but up until that moment, I was fairly confident my neck wasn't one of them. I should have gotten up and ran from her chair right then.

But the coward that I am, I stayed right there. And with a few thousand flicks of her scissors, she gave me her version of the haircut, which in no way, shape, or form resembled the one I was looking for. I left the salon in tears. My hair was not only A LOT shorter than I wanted, but I looked like I had a giant poofy bell taking up space around my head, ringing as I walked. It was HORRIBLE.

Calling and sobbing to the Husband did very little good, as he had advised against cutting it in the first place. To his credit, there were no "I told you so's," but we all know how well the men deal with the tears. They really don't know HOW to deal with them.

So, I frantically ran to my friend Mindy's house, tears streaming, and hair-bell ringing. Thankfully, Mindy is someone you can count on to be brutally honest, but in a kind, loving way. And with a hug and a diet coke, she handed me the phone and the number of a male stylist, the likes of which I should have seen in the first place.

A few hours later, lots of laughs in the second salon at my botched job, and my hair is as fixed as it can be. It is, unfortunately, really, really short. So short, in fact, that I am not in a mental place where I can even take pictures of it yet. In a few days I might be ready, but not today. I'm still working on coming down off this ledge.

Which would probably be easier to do if Hannah would stop telling me just how ugly it is, you know, every eight minutes or so.

By the way, she's for sale. Cheap. And she comes with a lifetime supply of polly pockets. Any takers?

The only bright rainbow in this cloudy hair storm? At least I found my new hair person. If only I'd found him a few hours earlier.

Picking the collective brain of the internet

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After a weekend spent ignoring my family reading, I finished a few days ago. [And I will only say that I liked it, was mildly disappointed in the anticlimactic ending, and would rather have had a little more written detail about the you-know-what that was going on ALL OF THE TIME, apparently. Stupid young adult audience. Spoils it for the rest of us.]

Anyway, I am left with just one question.

Now what do I read?

I have been on a reading frenzy ever since our catastrophic vacation. I have sped my way through all of Philipa Gregory's Henry VIII books (and loved each and every one of them. I may even be a little in love with crazy Henry now. I know. Don't tell my boyfriend Edward. And certainly don't tell the Husband).

I have devoured this, this, this, and this in the last few weeks alone, among others.

But I find myself at a loss. Browsing my favorite online bookstores is not netting me any inspiration. What should I read next? Where can I focus my near-obsessive personality?

Certainly not my husband and children. Oh, no. Not them. They wouldn't know what to do with themselves.

So, I look to you, dear interpeeps, to help me in my time of need.

What are your favorite reads? What have you read lately that you loved and could not put down?

Please tell me another book or series that I can become addicted to. Give me some more reason to ignore my laundry, dirty bathrooms, and children [as if blogging weren't enough, right?]

Right. You know what I'm talking about.

A plea, in spite of myself

/

Tomorrow, the fourth installment of my Edward fix the Bella/Edward/Jacob saga will be released. And you know that because, like me, you, too, have shred every ounce of dignity and self-respect by caving into the mania that is the Twilight series.

I wanted to NOT like these books. Really, I did.

I tend to want to buck trends simply out of spite. I don't like to do something, just because everyone else is doing it or saying that I should.

I resisted reading even the back cover of the first one until well after the first three had been published and were dominating all the best seller lists. I listened to friends prattle on about how romantic they were, how lovely Edward was, BLAH, BLAH, BLAH.

And teen fiction?

I wasn't reading that when I was a teen.

But Ms. Meyers has created another tragic, haunting hero that I have grudgingly put on the mental boyfriend shelf next to Heathcliff, Mr. Darcy, Edward Ferrars, and Atticus Finch (come on, you know you all want him, too).

Edward (in spite of the fact that he's a blood-sucking vampire) has become a household name at women's gatherings. We talk of him, we dream of him, and some women out there even make shirts, plastering his name across their chests. In my grown-up, semi-responsible mother world, I have never seen anything like this. It feels like the Beatlemania of our housewife generation.

And here is where I make a solemn plea to our dear Ms. Meyers.

Tomorrow, I will pick my copy up, bright and early at the bookstore. I will most likely spend a couple of days ignoring my family while reading this new book. But should I get to the end and find that Jacob The Dog wins, I will be seriously ticked off that I wasted any time on these books at all.

You did not suck me into this teen crap to leave our darling boy alone for all eternity. Do not go for an ending with controversy, as some authors are prone to do. GIVE US WHAT WE WANT ALREADY. Have him suck the life out of her, turn her into one like him, and let them spend eternity hunting mountain lions together, as two perfectly beautiful stone-cold vampires.

[Oh, geez. Tell me I did not just write that last sentence. I really need help, as do all of you, vehemently nodding your heads in agreement while reading this in your "I heart Edward" t-shirt. Come on, you know who you are.]

But seriously. If it doesn't end well, I be one unhappy mama.

Please let it end well.

Torturing her brothers, one ABBA song at a time

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What happens when your obsessive tendency towards all things musical combines with your daughter's obsessive tendency towards all things musical?

I'll tell you what happens.

It began last weekend when a perfect storm presented itself in the form of, "The boys are going to Batman, what should we do tonight?"

In a moment of weakness, I took her to see my new obsession.

And now it has become her new obsession. She spends hours and hours every day, rocking out to the soundtrack from Mamma Mia. The boys come begging and pleading, fingers in their ears, offering to sell their souls if I can only MAKE IT STOP, ALREADY.

But I can't make it stop. (And secretly, I don't want to.)

For she IS the dancing queen.



Young and sweet, [thinks she's] only seventeen...


She can dance, she can jive...

Having the time of her life...

See that girl, watch that scene, digging the dancing queen...

I think it's the perfect payback for their little soldier firing squad. Don't you?