Now presenting...The Blonde Afro

No, it's not permanent.

It began like this:

Last night, both John and Ethan were in bed after having made a gruelling 12 mile hike in Glacier. (Ethan walked for a whopping 9 miles and then John carried him on his shoulders, over his backpack for three severely downhill miles in the pouring rain!) I was not so tired, because I did not do the hike. (Yes, I have made peace with the fact that my 5 year old son is stronger than I am.) Anyway, I digress. So they were sleeping and I was watching TV shows on my computer. I had finally decided that I was tired enough to sleep when a brilliant idea struck. (Note to self, not all ideas that pop into one's head in the middle of the night are worth acting upon.)



Here's the background that leads up to the story... a little hair history: (This is the part of the story when any men who are reading this have my full blessing for their eyes to glaze over...)

Me and my pin straight hair have always struggled with curl-envy. I have tried to fight it, but when one's best friend in high school has gorgeous red curls (I love you, Marion) it's rather difficult. When I was in grade school, my mother, bless her heart, used to spend painstaking hours putting "rag curls" in my long hair. (For those who have never done this, you take small strips of rags and roll a section of damp hair around the center of the strip until it touches the head. Then you tie the rag ends together to hold the little roll of hair tight. And you repeat it until the full head of hair has been done. The end result looks something like little knots of hair tied with whatever color of rag you used. When you wake up in the morning, you end up with a head full of curls that will last for days. You should try it, it's pretty cool.) When I was old enough to work with my own hair, I put sponge rollers in at bedtime. I also occasionally practiced on friends. (Julie, considering the above picture, you should feel thouroughly avenged for the time I made you look like Bozo the Clown in highschool.)



I then spent years getting permanents. The problem is, my stick straight hair would even rebel against the perms, and they never got curly enough or lasted long enough. Which is how I met my hairdresser, Cece. I walzed into her salon one day, with long straight hair and told her that I wanted the curliest perm she could give me. She said that she could do it, but tried desperately to talk me out of it. I was adament. So she did it. And I loved it. But I later had her cut it all off short. This led to the years of perming and highlighting so that I could blow dry it into the cute flippy Meg Ryan cut. I loved that. Then Cece moved out of town. And I stopped the perming and the highlighting. Talk about breaking two addictions cold turkey! Yikees. By the time Cece came back, I was desperate for something new. After fixing my months of self-coloring (which is a very painful story that we don't like to remember), Cece gave me a cut that made the most of my straight hair. And that was when a miracle happened... I had finally, for the first time in my whole life, made peace with my straight hair!! I have now spent years of happiness with my sleek, straight, short hair. (I am still addicted to highlighting, but that's another story. It turns out that somewhere along the line - no one knows exactly when, because my natural color has not exactly seen the light of day in a very long time - my naturally blonde hair turned brown. Cece says that childbirth is the culprit.)



After moving here, I found my hairdresser, Katrina! She's wonderful, and has done a great job following Cece's origional cut. I was happy. But then I stopped going for a while. I figured that I might like to let my hair grow a bit. My bangs are now too long, so I pull them back in a clip. I guess I just got kind of bored.



Which brings us to last night:

I no longer own curling irons, hot rollers, or even the dreaded sponge rollers. What do I have? Rags. Lots of them. Oh yes, I did do that. If anyone out there acted upon my earlier suggestion to try this because it's so cool, before you read the rest of this post, you totally deserve what you got! (And this is what brought me to the realization that my mom had never been properly thanked for all of the hard work she did on my hair as a child! I thought my arms were going to fall off! It took almost an hour - and that's with short hair. What makes it even more impressive is the fact that Mom didn't just do it once. She did it quite a few times! Now that's love. I love you, Mom. My little girl self may not have been thoughful enough to appreciate it, but I sure do now! And not because I'm thoughtful. Because my arms hurt.) You should have seen John and Ethan's faces this morning when they saw my head covered in little knots with white ties. (I know, I really should have gotten a picture.) The problem is, I woke up and went "oh no. I think this may not have been such a good idea." As I took out each rag, the little knots of curls just kind of sprung (sprang?) back into place against my head. So I gently proded them with my fingers. Uh-oh. The whole mass of hair just grew and grew... and, well, you know. You saw the picture!

So now I had the choice to just wash my hair and be done with the whole fiasco, or try to work with it. Like I told you, it was too much work to dismiss that easily. I ended up combing and working with the curls until I got this result:



So there you go. I am very easily bored, and easily amused. It was sooo worth it! It's not every morning that you get to spend in gales of laughter... and in bringing laughter to everyone you see. Or rather, those who see you!