Hair and Haircuts

I'm pretty sure most women have issues with their hair. Crowning glory, and all that. I know men do too, but I'm not a guy, so I don't know anything about that perspective.

Lately I have been getting my hair cut at one of those no-appointment hair shops. Not the most glamerous, or even fabulous, or sometimes even competant places to go. Luckily I have found a guy at one of them who does a decent job on my hair. He's also funny, which is good - I prefer a stylist with a sense of humor.

Aboout two years ago my favorite stylist got married to a rich guy, moved 60 miles away and no longer cuts anyones hair for a living. Good for her, but it hasn't helped my hair much.

Right now, my hair is super-short, shorter than a lot of men wear their hair. The good things are;
It looks okay
It's very fast to fix in the morning with 0 minutes left until I need to go catch the bus

The bad things are;
I don't think it's very flattering
I have to get it cut about every 5 weeks - really every 4

I used to have very long hair. It ranged between butt length, and shoulder length. The cool thing about long hair is that you can do a lot with it - I used to curl it, braid it, do all kinds of things with it - you can be as elaborate or as simple as you like with long hair. In my extreme period aka "when I was skinny" I even travelled with a butane curling iron to make sure it was always correctly styled. Yes, even when camping. I would sometimes perm it, which was fun.

However, when I got to a certain age, my long hair wasn't flattering anymore. It betrayed me, the hair I always loved, by starting to change color, and making me look, well, like I was trying to look young. I resisted for a year or so, but finally I chopped it off and dyed it blonde. Honestly, I haven't found a style I like since the big chop. They have all required either major amounts of work every morning, which is so not going to happen, major amounts of upkeep, or keeping it very, very short.

For my younger self, hair was a big part of my self image. If I was having a bad hair day, I almost didn't want to go to work. Now when I'm having a bad hair day, I slap a little more gel on it, and call it good. I'm not quite sure what that says about my current self image.

I didn't really care when it started to go grey. I'd never colored it, because it was always a good color. Now I could try new things, like color, and frosting, and tinting without worrying I was going to wreck my already good hair. It was sort of fun being blonde. I was also a redhead, a reddish-brown head and I even tried jet-black once. (Most people didn't notice the jet black stage.) But color requires upkeep. Which I am not into.

And why is it that;
Unless you have really short hair, you can never recreate exactly what the stylist did
It usually takes at least a week to get your hair back to normal after a cut
The haircut never looks as good on a real person as it does in the magazine
(well, I think we all kind of know why, but still....)

I need to start looking for a new stylist one of these days; someone who will, once again, have ideas about my hair. One with a sense of humor. Who understands the concept of "I have 2 actual, real time minutes to spend on my hair when I am getting ready. Unless I have 30 seconds."

Wish me luck.