Ouch

I went to Cost Cutters to get my hair cut and during my shave, now slightly less tight because Eryn says I look old with a buzz cut and she doesn't like it, making her the first girl to ever influence my haircut, the very short barber reached up high, dipped the razor correspondingly low, and said, "Oops!:" as the machine tried to take a divot out of my head.

I was worried. A bad haircut on me can be easily remedied by tonsure or shaving shorter, but then she assured me, "Oh, it doesn't matter.  The razor just doesn't like it where there isn't any hair."  I'm glad she found the silver lining.

Heavy Lifting

I keep our Christmas tree up in the rafters of the garage.  Not the pine variety.  We got rid of that a long time ago in favor of a fabricated tree.  Not to avoid mess.  It still sheds needles.  But to avoid the trip, selection, return trip, and maintenance of a real tree.  I miss the smell a little, but there are pine trees near my house I can visit if I need a fix, and I can even haul some needles back if I need the smell.

According to my tree, which seems to get heavier every single year (I'm sure it is, it must be picking up something from the air or the ornaments), standing on a ladder and shoving it around on my own is not recommended.  In the past, I didn't think too much of this warning.  But this year, with the plated/screwed hip, standing on a ladder, balancing slightly backward while I gave it a shove onto the hanging planks, my leg gave me a warning that my years lofting it up there might be numbered or, at the very least, that I should heed the sign and come up with a new storage location.  I don't think I'm in any danger of breaking the hip unless I fall.  But I do suspect I'm in more danger of falling given that my leg seems to have shifted length a bit and I'm not as balanced as I once was.  It's very seldom an issue.  However, shoving heavy boxes over my head, and vigorously hopping out of bed in the morning, seem to be edge cases.  The bed statement might be perplexing, but picture hopping up and getting going before your brain and body are really ready, which is often how I get going because I long ago convinced myself half the lying around in bed issue people seem to have is just not popping up as soon as you can.  The result is a lean against the wall because my balance doesn't autocorrect quickly enough to tell me where my shoulder is in relation to the wall.  Coupled with a malfunctioning Marvin the Martian anamatronic art hanging that sticks out a few inches that I now bump into now and then, I know for a fact I lean a little when I get up more than I used to (although the odd klutzy moment in the past had me bumping it, so it's not a unique experience, only different in terms of frequency).

I notice as well that I should get entirely different people to lift my tree box, because both of those guys seem to be much younger, more coiffed men.

Dog Injury

Not an injury to the dog, but an injury caused by the dog. I think Luna really messed up, because I suspect Eryn isn't going to trust her for a very long time. Eryn got down on the floor to play with her and, despite frequent imperatives to the Luna over the last several weeks to stay away from Eryn's hair and stop trying to bite it, she grabbed hold of one of the two new decorative beaded braids Eryn is so proud of and hoping to show off at school and Monday and ripped it off her head by the roots.

It wasn't as bad as it could have been. No bleeding. But you could definitely feel the roots at the end of the disconnected braid. Here you can see her new bald spot, front right on her natural hairline if you're facing the same direction as Eryn. We've assured her it will grow back. But she's very sad and the Boo Boo Pooh ice pack she's had since she was a baby made an appearance from the freezer.


The severed sports braid, indicating she likes soccer twice as much as basketball (so she told me - she's extremely happy about basketball because she made her first basket this week). I feel bad, because she knows I don't ever let dogs near my face. I just don't trust them. I suspect she'll now share my mini-phobia despite how many giggly, happy pictures we have of her frolicking with the dog on the ground and in the leaves and snow over the last two months.

Haircuts

What is with the sort of frill up the center of men's heads at the moment? I think I heard someone call it a faux hawk. I would have thought it was a joke, like a mullet, but I've seen so many of them lately that it seems to be a serious trend, particularly among the borderline young - e.g. 26-32. Is the advantage that it covers up the formation of a bald spot? I'm going to get a triple faux hawk. One ridge on top, and symmetrical ridges on the left and right. I'd put one on the back, but then it would be more of a halo than a hawk and I'd have to give it a new name.

Ditto for women with that What About Mary wave from the front over the top, like some sort of strange comb over. Why? You don't have bald spots. So that can't be the reason. And it makes you look simple. I'm not saying you should have a traditional hair cut and be just like mom. I'm stating that one is dumb and you should put it in the do not use bin, along with overalls, leg warmers, oversized shoulder pads, pink sweats, and Winnie the Pooh anything if you're over age eight.

Is the idea that front hair combup/overs and faux hawks will find each other hip and mate? What does that look like on their children? Do girls have combups and boys have faux hawks, or is it some sort of evolutionary haircut, like a faux hawk with an ocean wave motif, cresting every few inches? Shudder.

One Hair

I know I'm getting old, because weird physical things are starting to bug me that would have been hidden when I was younger. For instance, I have one hair on my head that's below my general, and receding, hairline, that always grows back. To put it another way, while all my hair has, and is, retreating toward the tonsure at the back, this one hair refuses to depart.

My response has been to take a tweezer to it and violently rip it, root and all, from my head. Tonight was perhaps the 100th time I've tweezered it in just a few years. All my other hair is disappearing. Yet this one loner can grow back no matter the depravities to which it is subjected. Why isn't all the hair on my head like that? Why can't scientists isolate those rouge hairs and trick the others into acting the same way?

Stop it. Stop staring at my head.