7 Quick Takes Saturday!

those were the droids — Yes, the picture has no relevence, but it's awesome

I’m a day late and a dollar short, as usual. At least I’m keeping it consistent.

Remember those posts I wrote a while back about how my hair has declared war on me since we moved to the State of Dreadful Humidity? Way back then, KT left a comment in a my combox with a link to a youtube video about how to make no-heat curls. The video has since been removed, but here’s a link to a nifty picture tutorial. (Does anyone else obstinately refuse to watch videos on the internet for no particular reason? Unless I’m in the mood, I refuse to click on videos. I don’t know why. Yesterday I grudgingly watched a 2 minute video on how to turn fresh tomatoes into crushed and even though it was an awesome technique, I was bitter for like an hour about having to watch a video to learn it. Is that normal internet behavior?)

As I said in my follow-up post, I watched the video but didn’t try it. I have this intense fear of 40’s-style hair. (I tried to explain this to some friends yesterday and they looked at me like I was on acid, so just be warned that nothing I’m about to say is going to be logical.) 40’s-style hair, in my mind, conjures up images of A-line polka-dot dresses, red heels, red lipstick, Ryan Gosling and Josh Hartnett. This is doubtless due to the fact that everything I know about that era of fashion I learned from watching The Notebook and Pearl Harbor. (There’s no accounting for my abysmal taste in movies.) The thing is, in my mind I can’t square those glamorous 40’s mental images with me, perpetually pregnant, perpetually in jeans or yoga pants, and unable to even look at heels without having a panic attack and tripping. So I ignored the tutorial even though it looked promising because I’m afraid of waves that curl up and away from the face. KT even tried to reassure me in my combox, but I stuck to my irrational guns.

Stop Taunting Me — Image courtesy of Allie Bosh

And yet, much like the sneaky hate spiral, the memory of that video stuck with me. My original hair woes began in January; it’s nearly July now, and what I thought I knew about heat and humidity and how my hair reacts to it back then is laughably naive now.

Now, my hair waves and frizzes all over, all the time. I used to blow-dry and straighten my hair nearly every day. These days, I pick up the blow-dryer once every two weeks, and by the time I’m done drying my hair I’m so sweaty and tired that I have to take a nap and spend all day on the couch recovering and no one even sees the fruits of my labor except my children. Mostly I shower and scrunch my wet hair with some frizz-control spray and forget about it. Sometimes I’ll braid it, but even that just seems like too much work. My hair has become a sweaty, frizzy, and embarrassing fact of life that I’ve just decided to ignore.

But every once in a while I’ll look in the mirror and the memory of that youtube tutorial will come back to haunt me. “See how simple that was?” the youtube poster will taunt me with her Germanic accent, 40’s waves and red lipstick. And I’ll frown pout and stomp off to bed, annoyed at everyone involved in the creation of fashion in the 1940’s.

The night before last I had made plans to meet friends at the children’s museum at 10 am, which meant leaving the house by 9:15. The kids have been going to bed later than usual since the sun doesn’t go down till after 8:30, and they’ve been sleeping till 8. I refuse to set an alarm for earlier than the children wake up, so I knew I wouldn’t have time to shower, get ready, get them ready and feed everyone. I was going to just put my hair in a braid when the stupid mental torment began again.

And I snapped.

I just lost it and went into a headband-hunting frenzy. The only headbands we had that were thin enough to do the job were the girls’, but that didn’t stop me. I grabbed one and furiously began winding my hair around it. I was like a woman possessed.

I figured it would take me 20 minutes or so, but it took about seven. It was so quick that I half-thought I must have done it wrong, and briefly considered taking it down and doing it again before deciding to go watch TV instead. When the Ogre got home and saw my hair he looked shocked but, God bless him, managed not to laugh. (It looked nothing like the cute picture in the picture tutorial I linked to. I looked like an idiot.)

I went to bed thinking that if it was a disaster in the morning I could always just braid it. But when I took it down in the morning I was…shocked.

It was seriously awesome. All I did was run a brush through my hair and I had these Pearl Harbor-esque curls that didn’t look all that weird with my jeans, T-shirt and flip-flop ensemble.

I got a little nervous when we walked to the car and felt the 85% humidity choking me. The curls definitely frizzed a little, and then a lot more after spending an hour outside the museum watching the kids run around, but a good brushing and running damp hands over them calmed things down. My friend even complimented my hair, saying that it looked “really glam”, an adjective which no one has ever applied to me except during my awesome Cindy Lauper stage in college. And even then, I think they might have meant it sarcastically.

Unfortunately, we were so busy that I didn’t have time to get a picture until after dinner. So keep in mind that this is 10 hours after I took the curls down, and in the elapsing time my hair was subjected to insane humidity, sweat, grocery shopping, multiple brushings, and even rain.

Pretty impressive, huh? Here’s the back:

It definitely went from curls to waves in the wake of Florida’s destructive summer weather, but that’s a whole lot better than what my hair usually does, which is go from frizzy to frizzier. Best of all, it was super quick and easy. The only downside is that the headband gave me a major headache before I went to bed, and it was apparently so bad that I was talking about it in my sleep. I’m pretty sure that can be fixed by buying a properly adult-sized headband, though, instead of using a child’s headband.

It doesn’t matter how many times I do it, I still feel like an asshat taking a picture of myself and putting it on my blog. I don’t know how Grace does it.

I really meant to do one quick take about my hair and the rest about, you know, marginally more interesting things. I kind of feel like you deserve a reward for reading this entire post now (if you’ve made it this far. If you haven’t, I don’t blame you…but I guess you’ll never know that now!).

So here. Here’s the music video to my current favorite song, thanks to the As You Like It cast.

(PS: Don’t be like me and refuse to watch it. It’s an awesome song. You’ll be glad you watched it, I promise!)