Monthly Archives: November 2004

Institutional old-people hair

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The hilarity of life in southmost Texas continues.

On Friday I had a good haircut that had grown out far too much. Today I have a bad haircut that will take a long time growing in before I can go and get it fixed – which will involve being told off by a sarcastic Irish hairdresser for letting someone with no clue anywhere near my hair. I know, but I couldn’t help it. It was one of those avalanche things where once I’d started the ball rolling I just had to go ahead and get the inevitable bad haircut.

This is how it happened. I grew my hair for the wedding, to put it up, as you do, and all my friends (not my mother, though, who apparently won’t be happy till I have a buzzcut or something) said my hair was lovely long and I should keep it that way. It seemed to be behaving much better at home than it ever did in PA, though, and I had no way of predicting how it would react to the reported extremes of humidity in Texas, so I thought I’d keep it like that for a little while and see how things went. It did okay, but by last week – by weeks ago, really – there was just way too much hair and I really needed to get it cut. My hair is very thick and slightly wavy, and my face is not large, so too much hair swamps me. (This is why Mum is always trying to get me to cut it.)

Fine, but I’d been reliably informed that there were no decent hairdressers in this neck of the Texas woods. Impossible, I thought. We have a mall. We have civilization. On the other hand, on further examination, the place in the mall charges $12.50 for a unisex cut, which seemed a bit below my budget. I’m prepared to pay, ooh, even twice that for a cut that will grow out well. I just have to find one. I looked in vain at the women I know to find one with a cut I considered good, but they all have the sort of hair that doesn’t appear to have any style. You know, American hair, in the bad, Rikki-Lake-audience sense. I communicated this to my mother, who now thinks I live in a town populated only by 300-pound people with bushy hair. She’s only half right.

Finally, I took my life (hair) into my hands and asked my co-worker: the self-styled she-who-knows-everything. (Self-styled there doesn’t relate to her hair. She has a stylist who’s a friend, but is out of town and therefore not suitable for me.) Triumphantly she came up with an answer: her sister’s lady. I’ve never met the sister, but was informed that her hair is good. Or maybe it was “fine”. Not “crappy”, anyway. I would have remembered that.

So, my co-worker (let’s call her Maria) rings her sister (let’s call her Leonora) and puts her on to me. Leonora says yes, she has a very good lady she’s been going to for ten years now, very reasonable, knows what suits your face shape, and so on. Just one thing: she works in a nursing home. Here’s the number; give her a ring and say Leonora recommended her to you.

Ohhhkay. That all sounds fine. Except for the nursing home bit. What? Is she a receptionist who will turn around and snip at my hair between answering the phone? Is she a nurse who’ll pretend I’m a patient in need of a haircut? Well, anyway, now I had to call her. I couldn’t say: “No Maria, I’m not going to use your sister’s recommendation because it sounds funny and I’m prejudiced against people who work in nursing homes. And I don’t trust your taste and I think your sister who I’ve never seen has a bad American-lady haircut.” So I was committed. I knew this would happen when I asked Maria in the first place, which is why I’d put it off for at least a week. I didn’t know it would involve a nursing home, but I knew there’d be something funny and nonstandard about it, instead of just saying, “You could try the salon at York and 5th [made-up address to preserve anonymity of non-existant salon]. I hear they charge a bit, but they do a good job.” Oh no. Instead I get Mrs. Funny Nursing Home Lady.

So I called, and she said “Saturday, 11.30?” and I said fine, she gave me directions, and that was that. Okay. So she hadn’t actually answered the phone as if she was the receptionist, but I got the feeling it was a cellphone.

Saturday morning I looked at my long locks in the mirror and knew in my heart that this was the last I’d see of a good haircut till at least Christmas. Then I set off to find the nursing home. Unfortunately, it was exactly where she said it would be. I entered, smelled the institutional old-people smell, and knew everything wasn’t going to be okay. I asked for the lady by name: let’s say it was Jacinta, which is an Irish hairdresser name and was not this lady’s. She evidently wasn’t the receptionist, at any rate. I was sent to the beautician’s room, which for a short moment made me think things might turn out okay. A glance around proved she did have a basin, so presumably my hair would be washed and blowdried, not just cut. There was a price list on the wall: cut $10.00. Yers. I would have paid a little more than that, but I suppose the senior citizens can’t have an expensive beautician.

Jacinta sat me down, asked me what I wanted, picked up a plant spritzer, and started cutting. Yup, it was a dry cut. She didn’t even bother to re-comb my parting so it might be straighter than wherever I’d put it that morning. A little spritz, a little chop, there goes my hair. I had to take my glasses off (since due to my Bumpy Eyelid condition I still can’t wear my lenses; come to think of it, I don’t have a prescription for lenses so I’ve none to wear. That was cunning of my eye doctor), so I couldn’t really tell exactly what was going on. The obligatory hairdresser conversation ensued:

- Are you from around here?
- No, I’m from Ireland.
- Harlingen?
- No, Ireland.
- Oh, Arlington, Texas.
- Irlanda.
- Ahh.

Clearly, she had nothing to say about Ireland, so she told me about how her grandson’s hair is going to be the same colour as mine. Then her husband and son turned up and her son told her a long and boring story as she continued to chop away at my pride and joy. Soon I was being handed a mirror and turned around to appreciate her handiwork. I would have liked it better if I hadn’t bothered to put my glasses back on. The left side was longer than the right, which I pointed out and she happily fixed. After that there was nothing more I could do, despite the sinking feeling. (Sunk, really.) She said I owed her five dollars. Yes, very reasonable around here really is very reasonable. A little too reasonable, even. And off I went, hair still a bit damp from the plant-spray water and wavy in all the most annoying places. Not quite the straight, shiny, bouncy salon-fresh-fabulous hair you expect the day you go to the hairdresser, even if it turns out to look just the same as usual, only shorter, as soon as you wash and dry it yourself two days later.

So now I am sad and I have Bad Hair. There’s no point going back and asking Jacinta to fix it, because she obviously thinks it’s a perfectly good five-dollar haircut. And indeed, the longest bit is down to my collarbones and the rest is layered, which is exactly what I asked for. But to me, “layered” doesn’t mean “there’s one layer here, at the bottom, and then there’s another here, an inch and a half higher up.” I shouldn’t be able to see the line where the layer starts – it should all blend seamlessly. This would be way beyond Jacinta’s scope, because the old ladies with blue rinse perms don’t ask for that sort of thing. (And remember, Leonora’s been going to her for ten years. I can’t wait to meet Leonora.)
So the first thing I do when I step off the plane at Christmas will be to go and find a hairdresser in Dublin, possibly called Jacinta, who will ask the dreaded question “Did your mother cut this?” I’ll confess to living in the back of beyond in the continent that taste forgot, I’ll show due remorse and beg forgiveness for being so stupid as to get my hair cut in an old people’s home (no, I won’t admit to that bit) and I’ll entreat them to make me look like a person who can in fact tell her arse from her elbow and a hairdresser from a receptionist. In the hopes of ending up with a cut that grows out so well that it lasts me until the following Christmas.

2:23 pm – 15 November 2004

Disillusionment and insomnia

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Oh, I was so pleased with myself last night. One: I made dinner. Not fancy, but it had acorn squash which I’d never cooked before, and real potato wedges. Both roasted, using the oven to full capacity and not the stovetop. Two: Then I made muffins. This used up the last of the can of pumpkin – okay, now I know what pumpkin is like: I can make more interesting muffins next time – and even went into the oven as soon as dinner came out. I was an environment-saving maniac. Three: The piece de resistance . I took my brand-new wedding-present slow cooker down from the top of the fridge where it has lived since we moved in, unwrapped it, and made dinner for tonight. Having researched crockpot cookery at length and bought a bargain recipe book, I decided I was above all that and invented my own recipe, because I had chicken thighs and lentils and I wanted to slow cook them. I browned the chicken and placed it lovingly on top of a mixture of onion, garlic, lentils, tinned tomatoes, a splash of red wine and some water. Two presses of a button later and my fabulous slow-cooked to perfection dinner was going to stew itself lovingly overnight. Oh yes, I was delighted with myself. Next thing you know, I’ll be making that granola. And then the homemade yogurt to go with.

The reason I decided to do the maiden voyage of the slow cooker overnight was so that if the house burned down I’d know about it. I was a bit leery of heading off to work and leaving it to do its thing for eight hours unattended, just this first time. I didn’t want to come home to an embarrassing charred hole in the ground. I’d prefer to be right there in the thick of it, you know. Also, whatever about throwing raw materials into a pot before work, I’m not up to frying chicken at 7am.

This turned out to be a Bad Idea. I should have waited for the weekend and done it on Saturday or Sunday when I was around to keep an eye on it. Instead, I looked in on it at 10.30 and it seemed fairly happy, though I was thinking maybe I should have put in a bit more water. Those lentils, they’re thirsty little critters. After due consideration, I risked raising the lid just long enough to add some water. And then I went to bed.

And lay there, smelling chicken. After 20 minutes, I’d decided that I didn’t like smelling chicken as I tried to drop off, but there was nothing to do about it. After 40 minutes, I was too hot, and the chicken wasn’t helping. After an hour and a half, himself came to bed. He didn’t seem to mind the chicken, and was oblivious in seconds. I was still too hot, though the window was open. Our air conditioning is off, but our upstairs neighbours are still running theirs, and their air conditioning unit is helpfully positioned right outside our bedroom window. Every time it kicked in, for a second I would think it was the slow cooker blowing up. Then it started to rain torrentially. We both sat bolt upright with the shock, but he went straight back to sleep while I went back to smelling chicken, being too hot, and straining to hear the dinner bubbling or spluttering or doing anything it shouldn’t over the torrential rain and the roaring air conditioner. (Probably neither torrential nor roaring, and definitely no bubbling, but it’s amazing how loud noises are when you should be asleep.)

Finally, I could take no more. I got up and went out to look at the chicken. It looked good; maybe a bit dry. But I was afraid to mess with it. I went back to bed to lie there some more. Eventually I decided the smell of chicken was getting a definite edge of burning tomato to it, and I got up again, threw caution to the winds and added more water to the pot. And back to bed. Percy the gorilla sat on B’s head and wondered what all the fuss was about. I swore to myself a bit (a lot) and composed letters of complaint to the slow-cooker manufacturer for keeping me up all night. Fupping stupid fecking slow cooker grumble damn chicken fupping baxterd lentils damnit feck feck stupid.

Later, I realised that I was having trouble opening my eyes to stare at the window, and that I wasn’t concentrating hard enough on listening for the telltale bubble. In fact, now and then I felt like I almost didn’t care if the dinner was burning. This must be what falling asleep is like, I decided. Maybe I should go with the flow.

Then there were anxious burnt-tomato-smell-induced dreams where I couldn’t get to sleep because B. kept inviting people into our room to chat, and hogging the duvet in annoying ways so I had to sleep sideways across the bed. And one where I was chased by two alligators in a deserted school building while trying to reach my mother on the cellphone. I had to kill one of the alligators with a sculpture thingy I pulled off the wall, bashing it as it almost grabbed my arm, until I managed to pierce its eye with a pointy bit and it finally died. I got to the bolt on the door in time to keep out the other one. And then I dreamed five separate times that the alarm had gone off, or failed to go off, and I had to get up and I was late for work and very tired.

Eventually the longest, most aromatic night in history ended, the alarm really did go off, and I did have to get up. And I was really really tired. Tired like a wet sock. The slow cooker, my nemesis, was glowing “Keep warm” but the damned stuff was still bubbling like an evil death swamp. It had lost its pleasing blood-red hue and was a muddy brown with crusted burnt bits round the edges. I nearly cried trying to haul out a dish to ladle it into to put in the fridge. Its fate will be decided later. (I imagine the chicken pieces should be okay. For sandwiches or something.)

I am disillusioned with the wonderful world of crockery cooking, and will wait a while before my next attempt. I will use a real recipe and follow it to the letter. I will do it on a Sunday afternoon. I will use ingredients I don’t care about, in case I lose them. Or, I will just use a saucepan like I always used to.

A nasty case of Bumpy Eyelid

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I’m sadly disappointed. But apparently this is what America wants. Voter turnout was high, and surely everyone who was raring to get Bush out of office made extra sure they voted. So that must mean that Bush really is the man the majority wants. He won the popular vote and the electoral colleges. This is democracy. That’s how it works.

I just can’t believe that more people think he’s a good president than don’t. More people want to keep sending their children to a die in a war nobody wanted or asked for than don’t. More people want the man who clearly lost all three of the candidate debates to be their representative to the rest of the world. More people want one type of religious values prescribed for everyone, whatever their beliefs or non-beliefs.

It’s a big country. I suppose it’s only to be expected that the undereducated outnumber the well educated and the slow outnumber the smart. The people who respond to a man who talks at their level and calls everyone “folks” outnumber the people who’d like their president to be more intelligent, better read, and better informed than they are. I don’t know why the president should be a man of the people. He should be a man of the elite, the few, the intelligencia …

Yeah yeah. That was yesterday. The world keeps turning. Probably there are people I know and like who are actually Republicans, or who I would like if I knew them, and I’m sure they have their reasons and sincerely believe they’ve done the right thing. Who am I, not even a citizen of their country, to tell them otherwise?

In other, far more exciting news, I have a Condition. (No, not that sort. Not a Certain Condition.) I went to the optician yesterday because I have all of one contact lens left, and some day soon I’ll need a new one for each eye, so I need a new prescription to let me get more. And just for something to do, I thought I’d have a stab at telling the nice man about my sniffliness.

Ah, my Sniffliness. For ages now, it’s been as if I have an allergy to not wearing lenses. The days I wear my glasses – about half the time since I moved to the States – I find my eyes watering and my nose running to beat the band. I thought it was just my personal bodily wierdness. I mean, before that I’d been wearing lenses every waking minute of every day since I first got them, three weeks after I left school. Ten years later, when I finally took the radical step of going out in public wearing glasses, I just thought this was what my eyes did now, that they were overproducing lubrication after all those years behind plastic (or whatever it is). I just thought I was naturally sniffly.

I suppose it’s been getting more evident lately, but I really didn’t think it was a Thing. Turns out, it is. It’s a Condition. In fact, it’s quite serious and I’m not allowed wear my lenses (what lenses? I don’t have any now) for at least a month. I’ve got two sets of eye drops to be put in four times a day each, at different times, requiring a complicated timetable and I may have to get a digital watch with fancy bleepy alarms to remind me when, and I’ve to go back in two weeks to see if it’s clearing up. It’s called Bumpy Eyelid. Well, no, it’s not, but that’s what we’ve christened it. Apparently I have tiny bumps on the inside of my eyelids (upper and lower) that irritate my cornea every time I blink. Hence the weepiness and the runniness of nose. And when I wore my lenses they would actually protect my cornea from the bumps, hence the feeling better when wearing them. It makes perfect sense, and I feel a bit of a prat for not immediately thinking “Normal people don’t have to blow their nose every twenty seconds. Perhaps there’s a reason for this that’s not just Me.”

So now I’m blowing my nose even more and my eyes are brimming over with added liquid, but so long as I can wear my lenses by Christmas, that’s okay, and if it means I’m not a chronically sniffly wet-eyed person any more, I might even happily wear my glasses lots of the time.