I used to spend two hours, every day, hot rolling my hair. That, of course, was back in the days BEFORE children because we all know that spending two hours on your hair AFTER children is simply not going to happen.
I totally bought into the big hair style. It was fun to roll it, fluff it out and then use a whole can of hair spray (okay, not whole, but half) on my hair to make it stay. It was doubly frustrating for me because my hair would look AWESOME for about thirty minutes, and then it would start to droop, fall and soon I would just look like I crawled out of bed and was too lazy to comb my hair.
But I’ve reformed. I’ve evolved from those big-hair days and now have I virtually no hair.
I’m nothing if not extreme.
Okay fine, I have hair, but it’s the shortest it’s been … ever. Some days I LOVE it. Some days I HATE it. But I’m learning to live with it, I think. It’s certainly a lot easier to take care of and it literally takes me two minutes to blow dry it in the morning.
Now THAT I can live with.
I just bought some hair wax the other day, but I haven’t played around with it yet. I’m not real sure what to do with it. I mean, I KNOW it goes into my hair, duh, but … then what? Do I scrunch it? Do I toss it? Do I spike it? I suppose I can do whatever I want with it, that’s what this wax product claims anyway.
I bought the cheap stuff. A lot of the wax were $15.00 and over. *blink* I was about to toss the whole wax idea when I stumbled across a can for $5 bucks. Knowing that you often get what you pay for, my expectations are suitably low at this point. We’ll see how it performs. But I would sort of like to make my hair look like Annette Bening’s, only with bangs, if possible.
I went and got my hair colored a few days ago. I wanted to wash the remaining red out of my hair. Red is okay, but I really want to go back to my natural color, which is more of a chocolate brown. (Okay, so it’s more of a mousy brown, but saying it’s a chocolate brown sounds way more sexy). When the gal rinsed me out and we sat in front of her mirror, I could tell, right away, I was going to HATE it. I could tell, even when wet, it was that clown-orange color – AGAIN. AARGH! My stylist could see I was not thrilled and suggested we put in an ash blonde color to tone it down. At that point? I was willing to try anything because I really don’t want carrot-colored hair.
It doesn’t go with my eyes, you see.
So, my poor stylist spent another 30 minutes on me putting in an ash color. But when she rinsed it out, I’m happy to say it did indeed take the remaining red out and it’s now that sexy chocolate brown.
I should rename this blog “The Hair Saga.”
Anyway, as I mentioned before, I’ve been busy digitizing our old home movies and capturing snippets to share with you all. Kevin and I were visiting my folks in this snippet and we were getting ready to do some sight seeing in Kansas City. Everyone was ready to go, but everyone was waiting for me to finish my damn hair. I’m not exaggerating when I said it took me two hours to get ready. After shower and makeup, I would hot roll my hair, and then have to sit around for about 30 minutes to wait for it to cool down. Then I would take out the curlers, fluff it, pick it, make it as big as I possibly could because I knew it would lose a lot of it’s body before the end of the day and then spray the ever-loving heck out of it.
Even though Kevin loved the big hair, I think he prefers not having to wait around all day for me to make that happen.
I also used to be pretty anal about not going into public without makeup on. I wanted Kevin to always think I was attractive and to be proud of me. (Which he will tell me, after reading this, that he always thinks I’m attractive, no matter what I look like – but come on, there’s sweet and then there’s REALITY). I was also feeling pressure to always look my best because Kevin’s mom is like that – the woman NEVER looks bad. I think in the 23 years I’ve known her, I’ve seen her without makeup twice and that was because she had eye surgery and wasn’t allowed to wear any. My MIL is also the sort of person who goes out into public wearing sequins, silver shoes and bright pinks and somehow, it looks RIGHT on her. So I was sort of trying to meet Kevin’s expectations, I think. Even though he would tell you that it really didn’t matter to him what I look like (then or now), I know that deep down he sort of compared me to his momma and I didn’t want to disappoint him.
Then the boys came along and *PFFT* – that perfect hair and makeup mentality sort of went out of the window because I didn’t have the energy to care. I routinely dropped the boys off at school in my PJ’s and oily, makeup-free face and didn’t give a hoot. I figured, you no like? You no look.
Now that the boys are teenagers, I’ve learned to compromise. I still make an effort to look nice every day, but I no longer freak out if I have to run to the store on “makeup free” days. (Which, granted, don’t happen that often, but they do happen).
And before any of you go all feminist on me and say, “HEY! Don’t feel like you have to dress up for ANY MAN,” let me just say, I try and look nice FOR ME, too. It makes me feel good about myself and if I feel good about myself, then I’m more confident and if I’m more confident, then I’m mentally equipped to handle whatever life throws at me.
I also want to look nice for Kevin out of respect for him. Just put the shoe on the other foot for a minute. I’d have a real problem with Kevin if he had a huge beer gut (a little pooch is cute, I think), never shaved, rarely showered and never bothered to put on wrinkle-free clothes whenever we got together with family. I can at least return the favor.
Just because you have a marriage license doesn’t mean you have a license to stop caring about your appearance.
But there’s a happy medium in there somewhere – it just takes a while to find it sometimes.
Write From Karen 