Hairy

I feel as though I have come to terms, once and for all, with my preference for short hair.  When I was a little kid, my mom kept my hair short so she wouldn't have to deal with it, and it wasn't until around 3rd grade (mind you, this is how I remember all this, and not necessarily how it really happened) after much begging that she finally relented and let me grow my hair long.

I never knew how to take care of it, so it was basically a long frizzy mess from then until some point in high school, maybe 10th grade, when I got a pixie, and thus began my addiction to getting drastic haircuts.  Everyone does a double-take when they see you, and you get so many compliments!  It's one of the most fun things you can do, trust me.  And the best thing about drastic haircuts is, even if you don't like it, even if you HATE it, you only have to live with it for a couple of weeks.  I think even the worst haircut ever would resolve itself into something at least OK within a month.

It feels so great to take that huge leap, when the reward is an exciting new look, and the only risk is a few weeks of mediocrity.  The only time this happened to me was when I dyed my hair and it came out Barney purple, and even though I tried two more boxes of dye to fix it, it didn't work and I had to walk around with the worst dye job ever for a few weeks.  But even that faded pretty quickly.  And I'm also resolved, though not as a result of that incident (I've dyed my hair many times since about a year or 18 months ago), to never dye my hair again.  I like its natural color quite a bit; it'll get lighter in the sun anyway; it's much cheaper and less hassle with no dye; and this way I'll know as soon as I get any grey, and I can let it come in gradually so I can ease into natural grey hair and never have to worry about my roots.

My hair was long again, like past my shoulders, my freshman year of college, but has been between super short and chin-length ever since then, until the past year when I started growing it long again during pregnancy.  I don't know why, but something in my brain told me I needed to be able to make a ponytail by the time I had a baby.  I achieved that, and lasted until today with long hair, but I feel fairly certain that was the last time.  It's been coming out in handfuls for a couple of weeks, in the shower, all over our bathroom, all over the house, in Penelope's hands, breeding dust bunnies in every corner...as soon as I made the hair appointment, it couldn't come soon enough.  I've been counting down the days for a week, and this morning when I woke up, I couldn't wait for 11:30.  Now I smile and sigh with relief every time I remember I have short hair again!  I can't wait to wash it and start playing.  I'm still addicted to drastic haircuts, though, so in a month or so I may go back and get it DRASTICALLY short, and then let it get shaggy over the winter because I love every length between super short and chin-length, and then by next spring it will be long enough again for another satisfyingly drastic cut.  But never again will I get to experience as drastic a cut as I got today, from well below my shoulders to above my ears!  There was so much hair on the floor that it filled up an entire dust pan, the big bin-sized kind.

I feel like my experience as a kid with not being allowed to grow long hair should make me want it to be long now that I can, but...Mom was right.  Plus, I have two cousins who have the most amazingly thick, beautiful, dreamy long hair, that mine just seems so BLAH to me in comparison when it's long, all limp and thin and boring.  The true strength of my hair can't shine through unless it's short.  It's just the way of things.

And that, my friends, is more than you ever wanted to know about my hair.