Rapunzel, Rapunzel, Let Down Your Hair!

So, remember when I told you I was going bald? I was trying to be funny and light-hearted and all that crap but, really, I was a little nervous about it. You know how when you are pregnant, you see ALL these other pregnant women and you think, "Wow, everyone else is pregnant, too!", when, in reality, there were just as many women pregnant around when you were non-pregnant, you just never noticed them!

Same exact thing with going bald. All of a sudden, I noticed all these other women my age who had, like, seriously thinning hair. I mean seriously. Where did all these women come from? How come I never noticed them before? And, last and by far most important, AM I GOING TO LOOK LIKE THAT? But. At least at this point, it seems to have stopped falling out. I mean, I still get random hairs in the shower and on the sink but it's just a few here and there. It's not like the wads I was taking out of the shower drain after every single shower. So, I'm thinking (and hoping) maybe it was a fluke. A one time thing. A surge in hormones. Or it could have been my hairdresser.

I mentioned my hairdresser (who knows nothing about this blog so I can LAY HER OUT) in another post about divorce and how I felt sorry for her, divorcing after 14 years of marriage. Well, I take it all back.

She and I had a knock-down, drag out fight last time she did my hair and if she didn't normally do such a good job and I hadn't been going to her for years and if I wasn't a wuss about finding someone else to do my hair, I would totally never go back. She refused to admit that she had made my hair a different color the last time she colored it. Adamantly refused. Even though I was sitting there with a different color on my hair and everyone had agreed with me that, yes indeed, it was a different color, she insisted that she had done exactly the same thing and it must have been my hormones. My hormones turned my hair from a pretty strawberry blonde to a brassy, metallic looking dark blonde? Uh, no. I know hormones can do crazy things, including messing with your hair but it WAS A DIFFERENT COLOR.

I was insistent, she was insistent, it became kind of embarrassing because the other stylists were all listening and shuffling their feet and acting like they couldn't hear.

Anyway. We worked it out. She fixed the color. It's still not perfect, but it's better. And now I'm thinking. When my hair was falling out was one of the times she had made it kind of a weird, darker blonde. I'm sure she wouldn't do it on purpose because, really what kind of as stylist doesn't want return business, but maybe...while she was thinking about her cheatin' husband...she mixed up the dye a little too strong.

I'm hoping that was it. And it was just a one time thing. And also. I'm thinking now maybe it's not a good idea to piss off the person who was maybe responsible for making some of my hair fall out. I really don't want any more to fall out. So maybe I just won't worry if the color of my hair is not exactly right.

As long as it's all there.

Can You Get There From Here?

I was just reading an article in the July issue of O Magazine called "You're Middle-Aged But Are You Done? Discuss". The author, Caitlin Flanagan, got a group of middle-aged women together to take stock of their lives and discuss them. The women all had different takes on the way their lives had turned out, but one of the things I found the most interesting was the questions Flanagan used to get the discussions started. I found myself answering them.


1. When you were 18, what did you imagine your future would look like? How close does your life today come to that vision? I imagined I would be a teacher, happily married with children and grand-children, living in a nice house. Pretty darn close to my life now. I'm very lucky and I never take it for granted.


2. What is the one piece of advice you wish you'd been given as a young person? Don't change your major in college. Stay in education. It's really what you want to do and, instead of becoming a teacher/librarian at 36, you can do it at 21 and have SO many more years in the system when you retire.


3. What was the best money you ever spent? The money we spent on our first cruise for our 20th anniversary. Tom never wanted to vacation before that - never felt the appeal - but he loves it now. It has literally changed our lives. We will be traveling until we can't get around. And maybe we will push each other in a wheelchair even then!


4. What was your biggest financial mistake - the complete waste of money that haunts you to this day? All the money we wasted when we were first married. We didn't save, we didn't invest, we just wasted money paying on credit cards and doing other stupid things. We should have planned better.


5. Is sex with your husband a pleasure to savor or just one more item to check off your to-do list? If the latter, when did that change take place - and do you actually care? Since my daughter AND my mother read this blog, I'll just say a pleasure to savor. Enough said.


6. What has been the best surprise about married life? And the worst? I never realized how close we would become when our children grew up and left home. We are best friends now. But it's a real pain to have to cook dinner some nights when I would be happy with a bowl of cereal.


7. What is the best thing about being a woman? The worst? My friends. I love spending time with them, talking to them, sharing things with them. Men don't seem to have that same experience. The worst was first having periods, then going through menopause. Both are a real pain. Literally.


8. At this point in your life, is there a dream you will never get to fulfill? What is it - and what makes you so sure it's out of reach? I don't think I am ever going to write a book, which I had kind of always thought I would. I like to write, but I just don't think I am talented enough to describe the characters and the settings. Just don't think it's going to happen. Although you never know. Who knew a year ago that I would be writing a blog?



What about you? How would you answer these questions? Share in your comments if you want, of send me a link to your blog. I'm interested.

Bald and Beautiful, Baby

So, I'm going bald. OK, that may be a SLIGHT exaggeration, but it is a little annoying to have some of your hair fall out. It took me a while to figure out what was happening. I have been noticing, just in the last few months, that when I style my hair, I can see a tiny bit of pink scalp right in the front, through the hair. Huh. Never noticed that before. I just rearranged it absently so it is covered. Then, I noticed that there is hair in the drain after my shower. Huh. What about that. I don't usually have to clean the drain. Well, do, de, do, just cleaning the drain, not even thinking about WHERE that hair was coming from and that I'm the ONLY ONE who takes a shower in there and that hair must be coming from MY HEAD. Until this morning. When I noticed hair in the drain both BEFORE and AFTER my shower. I cleaned it out and there was more hair there AFTER my shower. Which apparently sloughed off my head during the shower. Hair. Coming out. After one shower.

Then I got a little nervous. So, I accessed the trusty Internet and, sure enough, this is another of those lovely side effects from menopause that they don't tell you when you are blithely, happily living your life as a skinny, lovely 20 year old. Not only do I get to experience bursts of irritability, a hot flash which encompasses my entire body in, like 30 seconds, causing me to burst out into a drenching sweat and wrench off as many clothes as possible (depending on where I am located at the time, this could result in almost total nudity), lie awake sleepless wondering why in the world I can't sleep, then fall asleep only to wake up drenched in sweat and having to pee and wanting a drink of cold water, only to have the cycle repeat itself - no, now I am going bald as well.

Just when we reach the point in our lives where we are comfortable financially, happily married, able to enjoy our families and friends, getting ready to retire to travel the world - I'm going to be this hot, sweaty, irritable, bald woman. What a great companion to travel the world with. Tom is very excited.

One the plus side, as soon as I mentioned this to some other women, they told me they were going bald also. One said her husband had mentioned he could now see her scalp. If Tom says he can see my scalp, I will drive straight to a divorce lawyer. And, apparently, you don't actually go totally bald, your hair just thins to a certain degree. Sweet.

I stopped at the mall on the way home and bought three new pairs of pajamas. When I got home, I put on the hot pink pair and informed Tom that we were ordering dinner. Since I had already informed him that I was going bald and I was NOT HAPPY about it, in fact I was pretty seriously annoyed about it, he said the pajamas looked great, I should even go buy more pairs and dinner delivery sounded fine, just fine, then he beat a hasty retreat. You BETTER head on out of here. Get out of my face. You man. You better believe my pajamas look good. And dinner is going to be delivered. I may be bald. But I look good. And I don't have to cook tonight.