A Bad Hair Day

Kevin and I are going to New York City for the weekend. My college roommate and friend Kari (who now lives in San Francisco), will be in town for a conference, so Kevin and I decided to cash in a few of our frequent flier miles and join her. I'm really excited, but also kind of intimidated...Kari is very accomplished and polished, and I am, um, not so much. She was wearing Ann Taylor when I was still in Osh Kosh B'gosh! I am surrounded by animals every day, and since I know that my clothes will get furry and muddy, I don't buy anything too nice or expensive...I am a Gap girl. But, since I actually want to be allowed in to New York City restaurants and night clubs, I did go out and buy a couple of articles of clothing which require dry cleaning...eek!
I also decided to do something with my hair, which may have been a mistake. I have very, very fine hair, so I generally can't get it to do anything. (Unless the humidity is high, when it quadruples in volume...remember that "Friends" episode when Monica was in Jamaica for Ross's dinosaur conference, and her hair kept expanding? Yeah, that wasn't just a sitcom gag, that is my reality!) Anyway, my usual hair routine is to shampoo it and put it in a ponytail. It's not particularly attractive or interesting, but it keeps it out of the way. I have been noticing a lot of gray in the past few months (I blame Norway completely--I left the U.S. with 5 gray hairs. I knew where they were and I plucked them out whenever they started to grow in. I returned from 15 very stressful months in Norway with dozens--if I tried to pluck them out now, I would be bald! Yep, it's gotta be Norway, it couldn't have anything to do with the fact that I'm getting old!) Kari not only dresses well, she also has the prettiest, shiniest hair ever, so I decided that my ratty gray ponytail just would not do. On Tuesday I went to a local salon, hoping to magically erase the gray and maybe get a sleek bob. The stylist was really nice and gave me some suggestions which, under the influence of the hair dye fumes, seemed like good ideas. She said that because my jaw is wider than my forehead, we could create the illusion of a wider forehead with lots of shorter layers on top. This made me nervous, so in a panicked voice, I said, "But I don't want a mullet!!!" She assured me that she wouldn't inflict a mullet upon me, so I relaxed and gave her the green light to work some hairdressing magic. When she was finished, my gray had been covered with some light brown highlights, and my hair had that kind of sexy, tousled, bed-head look. The stylist showed me how to achieve the soft, loose waves with mousse, volumizer, a blow dryer and a round brush. (Sadly, I owned none of these tools, so after my hair appointment, I dashed off to Target to stock up.) Unfortunately, what the stylist didn't realize is that I am a moron when it comes to my hair. (In junior high, while trying to create mile-high mall bangs, I got a round brush so tangled in the front of my head that my mom actually had to hack it out with scissors. I had a massive bald spot where my bangs should have been, hence the super perky side ponytail I sported for several traumatic weeks in seventh grade!) But I figured that I am older and wiser now, so on Wednesday morning, I hopped out of bed, showered, and eagerly grabbed my new hair styling tools. It's funny, I'm capable of writing and drawing and typing and opening jars and all sorts of different activities which require opposable thumbs, but as I held the round brush in one hand and the dryer in the other, the 31 plus years of experience using my hands just vanished. After 20 minutes, all those layers looked like they had been chopped by a weedwacker. No soft, tousled waves, just strange tufts of hair sticking out at odd angles. On the plus side, the gray is definitely gone. Unfortunately, it doesn't matter what color the hair is if it looks like it has been groomed by chimps!
It's okay, though, I have a new plan. I am just going to buy Kari lots of strong cocktails all weekend so that she never notices that a muskrat appears to be hanging out on my head. Or maybe I'll just buy myself lots of strong cocktails all weekend so that I don't care about my stupid, shaggy hair. Yeah, that seems like the best solution!