Hair Cut

The first thing the stylist did before she washed my hair for a hair cut was massage my scalp. Oh, it felt sooo good! I shut my eyes and let her fingers dig and move round and round. I haven't gotten my hair cut in probably two years, so it falls long down my back. It was too long. Or maybe it was simply too unstyled, wild and free. I started feeling like the crazy lady when I wore it down. I tried putting styling gel in it to make it manageable, and it tamed it a bit, but mostly I only felt comfortable when my hair was either up piled on top of my head in a bun or pulled back in a pony tail. A nice thing when its hot, exposing the back of your neck, but today it has rained, and yesterday it rained, and the forecast is for more rain tomorrow. What perfect weather to let your hair down.

I told the stylist to give me bangs, cut off two inches all around, and add layers. My hair naturally wants to curl, and with some pieces cut shorter in layers, there is more curling going on. I told her that I was thinking about getting it cut really short, a drastic change, but then, I might end up going home and crying. So instead, just a little shorter and I wait a month to see if short is what I really want. But the results of her cut were superb. I'm wearing my hair down and it looks elegant. Lots of waves. They are really afraid to give you heavy bangs so what little bangs she gave me (even thought I said as she snipped with the scissors "more bangs, thicker, heavier") get swept to one side.

We went walking yesterday in the rain. My husband's co-worker gave him an enormous umbrella as a gift, and my husband, me, and the dog in-between all fit under it. We cover the sidewalk. We did get a little damp, as the rain drips off the edges of the umbrella and down your back or outside arm. But we need exercise, and the dog needs exercise. That morning, having gone noplace because of the weather the day before, Cherry Blossom pulled a vine out of a plant, chewed it to pieces, and pulled back the edge of a large rug, chewing on the edge of that. I didn't get angry. She has to take her frustrations and her energy out some way. The dog trainer said dogs don't get ulcers from stress, they instead act out in bad or destructive ways. "A tired dog is a good dog" we learned.

Painted the body of a huge bug yesterday. Not the wings yet, they are going on last. The body has to dry before the wings. It had been a while since I had painted. But I do confess, I fell in love with what I was doing. It was so pleasant. The bug had already been painted once, but now, I was shading with the color, creating a really round and interesting form with patterns of light and dark. I'm starting to think that the more patterning of light and dark the better. I painted only a little this morning, being nervous about the hair cut. It is pleasant being so close to town, I could walk to my appointment. In fact, I can walk to the bank, the grocery store, the pharmacy, the library, the dentist, my physician, and my medication nurse. The only one who is a half an hour car ride away is my therapist. For a while he was looking at an office downtown, but it was in the same suite as his daughter's therapist (I guess his daughter gets therapy!) and he felt that that would be a little weird and infringing on her private space.

Tonight I'm going to have a glass of wine. Last night my husband wanted to eat at a bar (they serve good fried fish) but I nixed that idea because I had just eaten a large bag of popcorn and wasn't hungry. Told him he would have to wait a day to go out. Now I've skipped lunch, and I'm ravenous. My husband was disappointed that I wanted a small supper yesterday, but I said it wasn't my fault - if he wants to eat out he should call me from work and tell me not to eat anything. He keeps trying to put responsibility on my shoulders, at first he told me that I should be the one to call him for permission before I ate late in the day! I got mad. This lecture came after another little lecture that I should shout at him while he is going to the bathroom to go faster if we have someplace we are supposed to be - or else he is going to take his sweet time and read his book while he leisurely poops. Again, not my responsibility to nag! He's got to be responsible for his own hunger, his own bodily needs, and not have me interfering with them. He wants to be an irresponsible child and I'm supposed to scurry around and make certain plans fall into place. My husband is a dreamer and will naturally take the easiest course of least resistance.

And I'm not going to nag at him to train the dog either. He watches me put in the effort to train her, maybe he will get motivated through observation. Cherry will get trained, it just puts more responsibility on me if I am the only one doing it. In one instance, the trainer wants in a weeks time one hundred repetitions of a command with the dog. I ask my husband before he goes to work in the morning to do two. Just two. I know I can't ask more. I won't nag and make my husband train the dog. Bottom line is he doesn't care. He wants a dog that performs well and makes him look good, but he thinks somehow this will come naturally with Cherry's good nature and fine breeding. But it will come, I think, because of my hard work. I don't mind too much. My husband at his job is noted for being a hard worker, his boss values him for his work ethic and his willingness to be a team player for the company. It boggles my mind how the dreamy man I know can become so focused and motivated when he's on the job. I think the key to the success of my marriage is to give him freedom to follow his own blissful paths and private pursuits when he isn't on the job. So he works a 9 hour day to pay all our bills - is it so much of a stretch that I train his dog for him? Isn't that a small way of my giving back? Me who has just taken a day off from painting to get my hair cut?

After I got my hair cut, I was feeling so good that I went next door to a second hand clothing store. But this isn't any thrift store. A lot of the clothing has the original store price tags on them (shop lifted, I'm sure) and the owner has a keen eye for designer names. I'd say half of the clothing has designer labels that you would find in New York City, and the other half has labels that you would see in the mall. And she sells sturdy leather pocket books - oh she doesn't sell quality cheap. My best find was a black Coach leather bag. Thick, black leather in a timeless style. I'm certain her store does very well. The girls that work there know me. My favorite find is a cashmere sweater. She sells a lot of those, and you can't buy them retail cheap. People bring in clothing for store credit or sell on commission, she will out right buy what she is certain will sell. So people go into her store with clothing hoping to make some money. And they do. Its funny, you see moms and their teenage daughters both looking at the clothing. With designer clothing you can be just about any age to wear it. I bought a designer shirt that almost fits (need to lose a couple of pounds) and a shirt that fits perfectly and a scarf. As luck would have it, the scarf goes well with the shirt that fit perfectly. Happy coincidence that didn't even occur to me until I got home. And I spent half or a third of what it all would have cost in a retail store.

Tomorrow I'm going to paint some tiny horses. They are miniature but they are detailed, and I have to work from a photograph to make them seem realistic.