Showing posts with label haircut. Show all posts
Showing posts with label haircut. Show all posts

Friday, April 13, 2012

I need a haircut.

In college I started going to a hair salon down the street.  I started with a junior stylist named Fawn, and when Fawn left and went to another salon, I went there too, and when Fawn started her own salon, I went there for the next fifteen years.  As we ping ponged around the state to north Jersey and south Jersey and back again, I kept going to that salon, even though by then it was over an hour away.

After I had children I found that it was becoming nearly impossible to make the trip--a haircut and highlights was usually at least three hours time in the salon, plus two hours driving there and back added up to a prohibitive amount of babysitting time, plus the cost of the services.  I got recommendations from friends and tried a number of salons closer to home.  None of them were very good, and some of them were truly terrible.  After the world's most horrendous mullet, I gave up.  I kept going to Fawn, although instead of every six weeks it became more every four or five months.  I gave up being blond and went back to mousy brown/just cover up the gray color, which lasted much longer between visits.

Last week Greg found a picture of me from a few years ago, where I had a shorter, edgy blond cut and was wearing makeup.  "Hey Mom! Look! Its a picture you when you were pretty! That was before you had kids, right?"

I have been thinking lately that I need a haircut and my gray hairs need some covering up.  I guess that was the confirmation I needed.

Unfortunately, this means I have to try a new salon. My luck in that department for the last twenty years has not been great.  I am dreading getting a new cut and color.

There is a lot of Very Nice Hair here.  I notice, however, that nearly everyone has Very Long Hair here.  Not even medium long hair.  Its not quite Krystal Gale hair, but its definitely middle of the back, long, shiny, healthy, lustrous hair.

I do not have long, shiny, lustrous hair.  I have medium-ish, thin, scraggly, split-endsy hair.  Clearly I would prefer shiny, lustrous hair, but as Greg so aptly pointed out, my children stole both my youth and my hair.

Getting a portrait of your own hair from the back is not all that easy.


I generally wear the Ponytail of Defeat most days.


Have you ever had a keratin treatment on your hair?  You know, the Brazilian Blowout kind that gives you cancer?  There are no lengths I will not suffer for beauty, unless of course it involves wearing makeup or uncomfortable shoes or pants that are not sweatpants, but still, I am willing to pay lots of money for pretty hair.

Do I just cut it off? I have spent two years growing this mop out, but am less than thrilled with the results. I want to walk into John Frieda and say "do what you will!  Give me a haircut that makes me HAWT and disguises my large posterior!" but rumor has it that John Frieda charges $750 for haircuts.  Although I would totally pay $750 for a haircut that makes me hot and disguises my posterior.

Advise, invisible internet friends.  

Monday, May 16, 2011

hair and moving estimates

One has nothing to do with the other, I'm just going to talk about both.

Two weeks ago I posted on some possible haircuts I was contemplating getting.  The day has finally come.  I didn't get any of those haircuts.

This morning I was perusing Pinterest and saw this picture, so I asked for something similar, but a little longer.  I've been trying to grow my hair out for nearly a year and had hit that patch of "ugh, this looks terrible", but I knew if I cut it all of I'd kick myself.  This cut had a bit of length but also had the swoopy bang I liked about the Mandy Moore haircut.

image via 
Here's what I got:
How much do I look like my Auntie June here?
It looks like there is a weird layer right in the middle, but there isn't.



I am pretty happy with it.  I would take some more pictures, except without fail, every single time I get my haircut it pours, and my salon-beautiful hair is ruined within ten seconds of walking out the salon door.  Today was no exception.  But it looked good for the ten minutes before I left the salon.

***********

I've been getting estimates from moving companies, and holy cow.  I am choking on these estimates.  Each one is higher than the next.

Two years ago when we moved from outside Philly to outside NYC, I had a four week old infant (plus a 2 and 4 yr old), was still recovering from a c-section, and all of our family was out of town.  We paid the moving company to pack up all our stuff, in addition to moving it, since I couldn't lift anything. Because of the distance and the packing, it was a three day move; one day packing, one day loading up the truck, and one day delivering and unpacking the truck. It took three guys and one very large truck.

Paying the  movers to pack was probably the best money we spent.  They showed up at 9 am, left at 3 pm, and the entire house was packed in six hours without me lifting a finger.  The packers looked like the cast of Deliverance; there were maybe 10 teeth total among the three of them, but they were nice guys and quickly packed everything.

The estimates I am getting for moving, just moving, not including packing, are HIGHER than the cost of the moving AND packing of our last move.

Since moving in here we have acquired five bookshelves, one chair, a sofa, and a dining table.  I don't feel like this should DOUBLE the amount of money it costs us to move.  But apparently it does. I also need TWO trucks and SIX guys to move all our stuff.  And they are so judge-y about it.  "Well, ma'am, it takes time to pack up THIS MUCH STUFF."  As if I'm on an episode of Hoarders, for pete's sake.

I am working on purging the garage, but I don't feel that there is much I can de-crapify within the house.  I like my stuff.  I want to keep it.

If you have a recommendation for a mover in the North Jersey area, I'd love to hear it.