Beauty Shop Chatter

Every eight weeks I hop in my car and drive down to the beauty shop.

It has been about a year since I discovered that my fine hair looks best without layers.  The Texan in me took awhile to get used to this hair fact about myself.  I had gone all my life getting layers or texture of some sort and only in my wiser old age of 23 did I stumble upon this hair revolution.  One length looks healthier on me.

I am a highlight low light kind of person.  The year I got no color at all put in my hair was depressing.  I looked blah the entire year.  It was unfortunate.  It caused me to eat too many carbs and take too many naps.  So we found a way to get a hair line put back in the budget and I've been happier ever since.  I'm still eating carbs and napping but that is neither here nor there.

Tuesday night I couldn't sleep and was PMS-ing so naturally I watched YOU TUBE hair tutorials until three am.  I was this close to chopping my hair off and getting bangs when the second round of Melatonin kicked in and I finally fell asleep.

One of these days I'm going to do it though.  I'm going to go inside that salon with my candy bar and get a long pixie.  I am you just wait and see.

On a typical non-hormonal day, I am most content with an all one length bob.

There was the addition of my new hair piece that joined the family last Fall.  We have an oriental type store in town that sells all manner of faux hair.  I just wanted a pony tail thingy.  You have never seen so many options in one store.  When I asked the lady for help and told her it was my first time to buy hair, she reprimanded me and said, "Oh honey, you so behind!"

She would not let me try on the hair, per se, because some people, not me, but some people have things in their hair.  Ew.  Fine, I'll just take the one that wraps around my pony tail thank you.  Hair pieces are a fairly reliable option on a bad hair day.  I think the key to making it look natural is to pick it out a bit, but don't, DO NOT take your curling iron to it.  That will result in singeing your newly acquired hair which will result in an amateur emergency cut to remove said singed hair.

The beauty shop teaches me all kinds of life skills.  How to shellac at home.  The best kind of tortilla for a quesadilla.  Where to vacation.  I lay in the chair with my head in the shampoo bowl, country music blaring, and the beauty shop chatter makes me a better person.  Talk of eyebrows and air brushed make-up.  A wedding party bustling around the shop with fancy up-do's getting ready for the big day. Grandma in her white orthopedics along for the ride, her hair already coiffed.

In the olden days when I'd get a style, I lived for red lights so I could check out the new do in the mirror on the way home. Inevitably I'd catch every green light forcing me to wait until I got home to really check out the new do.  Those were stressful days of good fortune, what with the green lights and all.  These days my cut is the same and I like it this way.  Spruce up the old bob, stop by the library to grab my weekend reads, come home and try to take a nap which never works because I don't want to bend my pretty new hair.

The moral of the story is-get your hair done.  A beauty shop education will take you places, so get one every eight weeks.  How do you think I became as smart as I am?  Find you a style that suits you and be realistic.  One time I took a picture of the beautiful Jennifer Hudson in and got my hair done like hers.  Only problem was, she is African American.  Well, OK whatever, it didn't look great on me, lesson learned, maybe stick to a similar hair genre as yourself.  If you are feeling blah, slap some color up in their.  Download a hair app in the middle of the night and give yourself fire engine red hair and fringe bangs just for kicks.  You gotta keep things spiced up.  Sometimes when you've fallen off the fashion wagon, a trip to the beauty salon is all it takes to get you back on.

Three Years

Would you believe it has been a little over three years since I came home fully.

How?

Eight years of pouring my heart and soul into my business ended one July afternoon with an email and a phone call.  The ending of an era and ushering in of a new one happened in ten short minutes. 

It was done, I was free.  Feeling lost, I walked around my house looking around, not sure what to do with myself.  With a husband out of the country and the boys at the neighbors, I found myself in a rare moment of quiet.  Alone.  Unemployed by the doing of my own hands.  I felt like a stranger in my own home, uncertain of what you do when you cut the chains that have held you prisoner for so long, what does freedom feel like?  What am I supposed to do?

Like riding a bike, I did what I do.  I cleaned my house.  Left to right, top to bottom, the order always the same.  Familiar rhythms found their way into the first moments of this new life, birthed only moments earlier.   I started in my bathroom and worked my way around our home fluffing and shining every surface.  Vacuum lines filled the carpets in every room as things began to take shape before my eyes.  Every single lamp in the house was on and the sun flooded through summer windows.  The candle flickered on the ledge of the bar filling the room with a sweet fragrance.  When the last room was complete I sat on the couch and admired the work of my hands.

Order had been restored in my home, and the beginnings of order being restored in my heart had begun its work too.

That evening the boys came home and we ate a simple supper together on the patio.  Slowly the sun set behind the house casting long shadows over the lawn.  The atmosphere felt different that night.  We laughed easy and I felt light on the inside.  Time was spread out before me like an open field.  Dishes cleared and washed, boys in bed, I sat on my couch wrapped in a heavy blanket of peace.

I had done it, I had come home.  I took the leap of faith and obeyed what I did not want to obey.  I gave up what I had worked so tirelessly for.  I traded my fears of an unknown future in for trusting that God was my faithful one, never failing me, not even once.  The numbers made no sense on paper, and only time would unfold the story of provision so lavish, always on time.

Three years later.

How?

Another season silently takes her place on the stage of my life, as the old one quietly folds itself up. This time I am greeting my new post with a soul at rest.  A toddler almost three, two boys in youth, and an energetic second grader.  I have words to say and relationships to build.  My spirit is alive and I am filled with joy.