Bad Hair

Originally uploaded by laundrylessons.

Last night at 1:15 John said, “The power is out.” He knew it had gone out because darkness fell on the pages of Harry Potter as he crammed to get to the finish before one of the kids, who all read the last chapter, gave it away. I hadn’t heard any claps of thunder or seen any flashes of lightening, so it must have been a fluke, an odd summer outage. Fortunately, it was a cool evening, so the air conditioner wasn’t missed.

But as I woke up, later than intended because obviously there was no alarm to go off, I was a bit bothered by the lack of power. I was relived when I thought about Merritt’s breakfast of pureed fruit waiting in the freezer. All I had to do was defrost it in warm water. When I fed her, instead of missing her mouth as I watched the headlines, I sang a made up song about a skunk in a funk. Hey, this outage wasn’t so bad. I was managing, feeling a bit green and a tad crunchy, especially when I lit my gas range with a match. And I had a built in excuse to forget about laundry. Bring on the flood warnings or hurricanes (oh yeah, they don’t really reach Pittsburgh too often) or some other disaster, I could handle this roughing it.

That is until I got out of the shower. After I got dressed and put on my make up in the dim light, I reached for my hairdryer. ARRGGGHH. No power. Forget the earthy look. I like to blow dry my hair. When I don’t blow it dry, it goes flat on top and poofy where it shouldn’t poof. My hair is short, and unstyled hair makes me look like a puppy. Now my eyes are kind of nice, so on occasion, like at the beach, when no one sees me, I will slick my hair back, like models do on their off days. This works at the beach with a tan. Not styling hair also works on amusement park day or before exercise class but today I would be out, and seen. On my way to my first errand I passed the place I get my haircut. I actually contemplated stopping off and borrowing a hairdryer. But I fought off the insecurity of bad hair and spent my day looking at my puppy-all-nighter-exercise-class-hair.

Crunchy isn’t for me. I like my hair styled, my room air conditioned, and my food cooked. Tomorrow will be a better hair day, the power is back.