Long as God Can Grow it

You haven’t heard from me in a while, I know. I should write some kind of treatise about work-life balance, about making time for creative pursuits, about this completely messed-up capitalist system that we have all been suckered into, or I might even write about six bad work habits and how to correct them so you can streamline your day, maximize your time, reach optimum productivity and all kinds of hooptedoodle.

Okay, well, not doing that today. I have serious problems.

I used to have a giant mane of curly unruly hair:

  

It took years for me to learn how to deal with it, to embrace it as uniquely mine. But every now and then (every five years or so) I get tired of dealing with it. There is SO MUCH of it. I could knit a sweater for a cat with all the hair I shed every day, which would be a completely pointless exercise, but honestly, sometimes I get tired of dealing with the sheer bulk of it. And then I find myself thinking about cutting it into a bob, or even (lured by pics of Halle Berry or Eva Pigford - oops now Eva Marcille), a cute little curly pixie, like so:

 

 
 
So last fall I cut it all off, right before Thanksgiving. And I liked it. And here’s the thing:  I have a lot of hair, and it grows really fast. If I wanted to have short hair, I had to commit to a regular schedule of haircuts. That quickly grew tiresome, and I missed being able to put my hair up, or back, or whatever.

Now I am growing it out. And I have middle-aged mom hair. And I hate it.

The standard advice here when you’re growing out your hair and are in the unhappy middle stage is to do something fun like coloring it. Oh, but that would be too easy. At the same time I cut my hair, I committed to no longer coloring it. I turned 45 a couple of weeks ago, and you know what? I think it is perfectly reasonable for someone my age to go gray.

The combination of the silver coming in and the hair growing out means I am doubly unhappy with this middle stage. My hair does not lie down until it gets long and the weight of it stretches the curl out a bit, so right now it is just growing up, stretching toward the sky, and it won’t be tamed. It is long enough to look like this:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

or maybe this:  

 

And yet it doesn’t look like that, not anywhere close.  I am not a high-maintenance person. I am a big fan of the “five minute face,” and my hair styling routine pretty much takes about five to ten minutes in the morning. I am struggling with hair bands and headbands and little clips and such. All this to say: not feeling quite the kickass glamour goddess these days.

Poor little me, I know. But we’ve all been there. I am trying my best. A wise person once said it’s not what’s on your head but what’s underneath. I’m working on that, too.

 

 

 

What I Did on my Summer Vacation

Thanks to the kindness of some old and very dear friends of Sweet Dub's, we spent most of last week at a beautiful resort near Palm Springs. For free! We got a block of rooms and our kids played happily for days in the pool. I feel very blessed.

To the obvious question, "Wasn't it obscenely hot in the desert in July?" I say to you, yes. Yes, it was.

However, the resort had several pools and its own little water park on the premises. Our friends rented a cabana at the pool so we had plenty of water and shade. And one day they took all the kids to an off-site water park and gave us a day to ourselves! I can't even tell you how nice it was to have some carefree grown-up time. Look upon our glee!






I am super leery of water mixing with my phone so I have no pics of the kids in the pool. But here they are, getting ready for fun in the sun:







And some shots of the hotel grounds:







It was 107 degrees out in Rancho Mirage, and just 100 miles away and a few days later, it's 71 degrees at the beach today. Pretty amazing.




Back to work on Monday. Feeling pretty rested...although we came back to a notice of a rent increase. Ahh, reality. There you are!

Nonetheless, can't beat the lazy days of summer. Hope you are enjoying yours!