CUT!

I can't decide if I want to chop all of my hair off again or not. 

It took me years to grow it out, then last summer I chopped it, like eight inches worth, right off.  Well, not right off.  It took me three trips to the hairdresser to get it right.  I think they were afraid to go radical the first two times until I pleaded with them, "Look, please, get this shit OFF my head."

Then I missed pulling it back, so I let it grow out, and it grew in mere months this time.  Now that it's long again, I am despising it every day.  Every day I have to worry about how it looks and that it's in my face.  Sure I can pull it back, but that was the problem in the first place… ALL I can do is pull it back.

It's in my face.  All the time.  I go outside to shovel, and it's in my face.  It blows around and gets in my mouth when I have the windows open in the car.  It aggravates my neck and pisses my off when it hits the pillow and crunches against my cheek.

And it sheds.  God, I hate the shedding.  Long gray hairs everywhere.  Never the brown ones or the tinted ones, just the gray ones, mocking me.  "Look, here we are again!  Did you miss us, bitch?" 

But, I have to admit, long hair is so easy.  You wash it and let it dry.  No cowlicks anywhere.  You pull it back, and - voila - instant "short" hair.  It's kind of like the best of both worlds.

I have two weddings to attend in the fall, important weddings, weddings in which I am to be photographed.  I've heard the opinion that I should get my hair all done up, have it all swept up maybe, tendrils around my ears.  Smashing!  And I'm certain it would be. 

Except … except …

It's not me.  I'm low-maintenance.  I'm a gel-it-if-I-must kind of gal.  I don't go for the oil or the mousse or the flat iron or the curling iron or the headbands or the barrettes or the clips or anything.   Hell, until last
summer, I didn't even know what the devil a round brush was for.

Besides, when I got my hair cut and colored, people told me I looked younger, which was great even if it were a lie.  I definitely looked different, and they didn't just tell me with words.  The expressions on the faces of people who had seen me with my long hair suddenly gone -- priceless.  I'll never forget the first time I saw my colleagues after cutting all of my hair off.  Double-takes.  Shock.  Maybe even a little fear that I had gone so far rogue.

And now, as I sit here typing, my damn hair is in my damn face again.  I'm heading out to a lacrosse game, and it'll be blowing in my eyes and up my nose as I take pictures from the stands.  But I know that my blowing hair will still look pretty much the same after the game is over.  When I have short hair and it curls, which I can't help it from doing, and the wind gets to it, I end up looking like Phyllis Diller without the cigarette holder.

What to do, what to do?

I'll give it a few more weeks and make a decision by April vacation.  I'll let you know how it works out, but I'm willing to bet there will be locks of hair all over the cutting room floor like an edited movie gone bad.  Then I'll be back here bitching about how I can't pull my hair back, how the curls are driving my nuts, and telling you that I look like a squirrel.

At least it will provide a few weeks of distraction.  There has to be some value in that.