It's like 10,000 spoons when all you need is a knife....

by Patti

This morning I was in the shower, half-asleep, soaped up into oblivion. I swayed slightly under the warm water, once again in complete disbelief that I was now the kind of person who got up when it was still dark outside. Mid-yawn, I rinsed off the soap, reached for the shampoo, and only saw this:

Color me happy, my ass.

Panicked, I quickly looked to another part of the shower rack, and saw this:

Just look at that trio of conditioner, mocking me so

And that is when I remembered with great annoyance that, oh yeah, there is no shampoo. I had just bought some, but S had been complaining that the shampoo she and M use - the one located in the bathroom upstairs (my bathroom is in the basement) - makes her sneeze. So the night before, when I heard her sneezing in the shower, I quickly grabbed my new shampoo and conditioner and took it to her upstairs. "Don't forget to return my shampoo to my bathroom, okay?"

She forgot.

So there I was, shampoo-less. The whole idea of getting out of the shower, all dripping wet and cold, and having to towel off, run upstairs, grab the shampoo, run back downstairs, get BACK in the shower... well, my natural Lazy possessed my body whole right then and there, and I decided to instead raid my "vacation stash" - a collection of travel-sized beauty items - that was under my bathroom vanity. I got out of the shower, soaked, and squatted down, naked as the day I was born, in front of the cabinet, and began my frantic search. Out flew mini deodorants, moisturizers, gels, hairsprays, toothbrush kits (note to self: time to clean out your vacation stash).... and in the end, this is all I could find:

That's right. Nothing but CONDITIONER. I even found a long-forgotten Costco jumbo bottle, its size only serving to further mock my shampoo-less situation.

The shower still running in the background as I sat there in my birthday suit trying to will up shampoo, my bathroom had now turned into a full-fledged sauna. I was desperate and running out of time,and even though there was TWO perfectly good bottles of shampoo a mere flight of stairs away, I grabbed a years-old bottle of this:

I figured the "Protein & Honey" part of the equation might cancel out the "Soap" part, and climbed back into the shower to lather up my hair.

The truth? I am having a seriously good, bouncin' and behavin' hair day.

The Shoemaker's Wife

by Patti

Look around the room. If I'm in it, you'll see that I pretty much have the worst hair in that room. Which, considering that my husband is a HAIRDRESSER, is pretty sad. When people ask me what M does for a living, I say, "He's a hairdresser don't look at my hair." Just like that. I do this for two reasons: People have this misconception that just because I am married to hairdresser, I am somehow privvy to hairdressing services 24/7. No, M does not wake up with me at 5:45 a.m. to lovingly give me a blowout. EVER. If it's a special occasion, and I BEG, he will do something fun with my hair. Otherwise, I'm on my own. Which brings me to the second reason I answer the question about what my husband does for a living with a run on sentence: My hair looks like crap. Always. And I guess that disclaimer is my wifely way of letting people know that even though my hair looks like crap, my husband is actually a pretty talented guy.

Let's face it: I'm lazy. I love clothes, shoes, and makeup, and I love looking "cute". I just hate the work that goes into it. I blow dry my hair only in the winter, and even then, I don't blow dry it with any purpose or stylistic intentions. If I do it, it's purely for purposes of avoiding icicles in my hair when I leave the house. I simply cannot understand why one would want to rise one hour sooner than necessary to blowdry and flat iron the hair. Probably because it looks good?

Don't get me wrong, M cuts my hair. In fact, I haven't been to a hairdresser for a hair cut more than two times in the 23 years M and I have been together. The first time I went out of spite. You see, he is willing to cut my hair, but he gets all attitude-y and drag-ass-y about it sometimes. So one time, just because I wanted to "get him back" for giving me an attitude and making me wait longer than is humane, I went to Super Cuts. Take that. you selfish bastard! Now, I have nothing against Super Cuts - it's affordable and quick, and they actually did a decent job. But the purpose was to GET HIM BACK. Did my plan work? Uh, no. The second time I went outside The Circle was because I had admired a friend's cut. "Go see my hairdresser! She's Korean and doesn't speak English, but she is really good!" So I went, and before I could even attempt to tell her what I wanted, she efficiently shoved me into her chair, whipped a cape around my shocked shoulders, and began snipping, razoring, and fluffing me into probably one of the best haircuts I'd ever gotten.

I never went back. Why, you ask? I told you: I'm lazy. And why buy the cow when I can get the milk for free?

But that's the problem, the milk only comes in spurts. I've often resorted to trimming my own bangs, coloring my own hair, and even getting desperately funky and adding in my own layers. Then, when M feels generous and brings home his tools and blesses me with a professional haircut, he scolds me for the uneven disasters I have created upon my head. "WELL!" I shout out defensively. "If you'd do my hair once in a while!" He tells me that not even the best haircut in the world will look good if the person owning it doesn't actually style it. Oh.

So, all of M's clients - who adore him and are apparently not lazy at all and willing to sacrifice sleep for good hair - have glossy, stylish, masterfully colored hair, while mine is frizzy, two-toned and grown-out. "You treat your clients better than you treat your own wife!" I sometimes complain in fits of self-pitying pout.
"They pay me."
"I've been paying you by BEING WITH YOU for 23 years! I demand good service!"

Sure, the shoemaker's wife has shitty shoes, but I bet she has fabulous hair. So, the other day, fed up with looking like this:

Note the faded, yellow hair and literally fly-aways

I raged my way to a bottle of hair color I hadn't tried before, coherced M into chopping some layers into my hair, and came up with this:

Note the deep auburn hue and flowing layers, and the dreamy, pensive expression on my face.
Also, note the Jay Leno-esque chin.

It's still a work-in-progress, but isn't everything in life? Now, all I need is a new pair of shoes!