Hair Sytles and Early Mornings

At lunch we got to talking about how much time people sleep and what time they do it after a guy was asked where his wife was. “Still sleeping,” he said. It was nearly one o`lock in the afternoon. “Is she sick?” someone asked. “Nope,” he replied. “She was still reading at 3:00 when I got up to use the bathroom. She does that. Reads all night and sleeps all morning.”  

One guy here likes to go to bed at 9:00 and get up at 4:30. I think he’s crazy to set an alarm that early but he likes the quiet of the mornings to read or drink coffee with his own thoughts. I get that in a married couple. 24/7 in retirement could get on anyone’s nerves no matter how much you love each other. This couple have been together since they both served in the Air Force during Vietnam. He’s also got the best deck in the complex to watch the world wake up over the lake in one direction and in the woods in the other direction. I do understand the attraction of early mornings; it's the kind of thing that inspires poets. But I'm too old to change my body clock...even though I know it's coming in my future when they'll drag me out of bed at 6:00 in an assisted living facility where everything runs on institution time. Got a taste of that when I was in Respite Care after breaking my ribs.

Another guy living here is a fixture at the lunch table but wife never comes with him. She likes to eat alone in the apartment or goes shopping while he socializes over our 2 to 2 1/2 hour lunches. A lovely couple but recently she came back from a morning at a spa and asked us all how we liked her new hairdo. It was shoulder length and was teased to stand out as wide as her shoulders. It looked like a rat’s nest on steroids and I had to slap my inner bitch from blurting out, “If I got a haircut like that I’d be looking for a new stylist.” Before the makeover she wore her hair in a messy bun at the nape of her neck. And before anyone else says it, I know that voluminous, full-to-the-shoulders look is in fashion right now but her hair is too thin for that and even with the teasing you could see right through it to her scalp. On her, it looked like she stuck her finger in a light socket which proves my theory that some hair styles need to stay in their own lane age and ethnicity-wise. 

Okay, I just opened up that can of worms, didn’t I. I remember having this same ethnic hair discussion back in 1979 when Bo Derek shocked Mr. and Mrs. Mainstream Public with her blonde cornrows while promoting her movie, 10. In a recent interview she said, “I get in trouble for it now. I get a lot of criticism for being a culture vulture, that I’m being insulting and even worse, hurtful to African American women that I copied their hairstyle. However back then, the reaction was totally different. I can’t tell you how many African American women came up to me and said things like, ‘Thank you so much. I work at a bank and my boss would never let me have that hairstyle at work but now I can.’”

The evening we sat around with neighbors discussing Bo Derek the room of four couples was split down the middle by sex. The women all hated her hair and the guys all loved it. It would be interesting to gather the same group of us together again to see if we still think ethnic hairstyles should or shouldn’t cross the color line. Now, we'd probably be talking about dreadlocks or sisterlocks instead of cornrows. We see a lot of sisterlocks here because all of our waitresses have them---waist long and tall enough to add another 6-7 inches to their height and full of twists and patterns with locks of color here and there. I really don’t like their hair because it’s the only thing you notice about the girls.

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They also have me wondering if the hair is real and if it itches or is hard to sleep on. Does all that hair make their necks hot and their shoulders sweat? Does the weight of their hair give them headaches? All questions I don't ask, of course. But if they were white I probably would get around to asking and I wouldn't think twice that I'd be stepping over a line. All I know for sure is it's supposed to be rude to feel an African American's hair texture. A little boy in an iconic photo with Obama did it but if that boy had been white the story drawn from the photo would have been entirely different.

Ohmygod, does this post make me sound racist? Hair is (or should be) just hair, a fashion choice as much as a practical choice. When I was in high school I was trying to wear smooth pageboys with my Italian, thick and naturally curly hair. I slept with my hair rolled around OJ cans. Didn’t we all at one age or another want a hairstyle that was totally wrong for our type of hair? Well, maybe all of us white women wanted that but having cornrows and Jheri Curls labeled as acceptable hairstyles for black women was wanting a hairstyle that was suited for their hair texture yet those Employee Handbooks forbid them for decades. White people setting a nearly impossible standard for women of color in the work place. Nothing racist about that, she types while rolling her eyes.

I need to remember to be more tolerate and less critical the next time I see the shoulder-wide bush of white hair around this campus and the over-the-top sisterlocks that look like they outweigh the tiny girls who wear them. It truly is just hair and subject to our personal whims. Mrs. Bushy White Head is having fun with her new hair style and our waitresses are doing the same.

Recently the Enrichment Director asked all of us to submit photos of ourselves when we were young. Fifty of us did it and those photos were pasted on poster board and we were asked to identify as many pictures as we could for a contest. One person as able to correctly ID seventeen of us and the person who was identified correctly the most often was none other than me. Apparently my smile hasn’t changed since I was a kid. But what I thought was more interesting is how many of us still had the same hairstyles. ©

Bits and Pieces

 

This post is going to be filled with bits and pieces of disjointed topics. If I’m lucky I might get a paragraph out of each topic I bring up starting with something that occurred to me while I was standing in line to return a hair dryer that had buttons so tiny and stiff that I couldn’t operate/push them. It occurred to be that I was happy I’ll soon be living across the hall from a gym and finesses center. Opening things like pickle jars has gotten to be a real struggle and, yes, I’ve got 4-5 styles of openers that were supposed to be heaven-sent for seniors. After I move I’m just going to pop across the hall with all my pickle and peanut butter jars and announce that I need help. And if none of those old duffers like me can't do it, I'll start timing my "pop overs" around a scheduled class when they'll be a young instructor on site.

One step forward, one step back: I’ve got a job list of things to do before July 1^st but it seems like when I cross something off, I have to add something new to the list. I was in the bedroom when I heard a crash coming from the kitchen. It was night and dark in the house and at first I thought someone was breaking in. But when I got to the kitchen---finger poised over the 911 quick call button on my emergency dialer---I found one of the built-in, under the cabinet light fixtures (3 feet long) had pulled loose and was hanging by the wiring at one end. Eighteen years it’s been up there, why now? Does the ghost in the house not want me to leave? Is he trying to sabotage my planned listing? All six screws that used to hold the fixture in place are stripped and there is no way I can fix this on my own. I can’t even change the bulbs inside that fixture on my own because I can’t get the glass hood off with my lack of arm strength and finger dexterity. I cut a couple of pieces of foam core (for art projects) to prop the fixture up, to take the pressure off the wiring, and right now I’m giving it the Scarlet O’Hara treatment of postponing worrying about it until another day. I'm lucky the toaster and coffee maker underneath the fixture came through the 'attack' unscathed. It could have been worse.

Pandemic inspired hair styles: The hair around my face is pure white, a color most people generally would not label as ‘sexy'. In fact there is nothing about me that's ever been labeled 'sexy' except maybe a book I might have in my hand. But recently three people have called my hair ‘sexy’---yesterday from a total stranger. Other people lately have given me less shocking compliments, but I’m guessing the ‘sexy’ label comes from the fact that I now have long bangs on one side that touches the frames of my glasses and covers my entire right eyebrow. I hate that eyebrow, it’s all white while my other one is a mixture of black, brown and white. I almost got them dyed once but the girl about to do it dripped dye in my eye and I thought I’d die or go blind or both so I chickened out.

Hair and Wind: My hair is thick and I’ve learned since I’ve been growing it out that hair is not like memory foam. I go out in the wind, it sticks straight up in the air but it won’t come back down on its own, it doesn’t want to remember where its been. Hair spray doesn’t help keep it from getting wind-whipped nor does that waxy crap that is supposed to hold your hair in place, so I’ve resorted to doing an imitation of James Dean the minute I step out of the wind; I whip a ‘boyfriend pocket comb’ out to tame my mane. It’s the thinnest steel comb I’ve ever seen and it’s designed not to spoil the line of your butt in your tight designer jeans. I don’t have designer pants or buns that deserve to be in them but I do love that comb. I’ve accumulated a lot of hair care products since the pandemic. It’s become a mini obsession but between the wind and not finding a new hair dryer my longer hair style is getting close to its expiration date.

I bought a cheap poster quality print (photo at the top) to fit a large Nielsen frame I didn’t want to dispose of. The original print I had in the frame got badly sun-faded on my porch over the years and I was excited about this new one. I swapped the old print out, put the new one in, not bothering to use a mat. It looked wonderful but if you’ve had any experience in framing you can probably see my rookie mistake coming. I proudly hung up the new print but in the morning I was horrified that it was full of wrinkles. It’s been four decades since I was hot and heaving into framing and I forgot paper needs breathing room. Damn! I had a perfectly good mat on the sun-faded print I could have used but I took it to recycling before I realized my mistake. So I unframed the new print and took it to a frame shop to have them get the wrinkles out then dry mount it on core foam so it won't wrinkle again. You might say I turned my $35 print into a $70 print because of my own mistake. I wouldn’t recommend dry mounting an expensive print, by the way. It destroys it value to most collectors. 

Sometimes it feels like my entire life this past year has been a giant series of steps forward and steps backward. And I haven't even told your about my latest hiccup. My computer lost all its settings, photos and documents just before I was getting ready to pack it up to put it in storage. It's getting the Scarlet O'Hara treatment until next week when my Worry Bucket won't be so full. ©

Gray Hair, No Hair and Widows Shopping

 

Okay, it’s official. They’ve got me brainwashed. I’m not old I’m just entering a new phase of life called elderhood. Old is now a four letter swear word---unless we’re talking about fine wine and high quality, aged meat. I’ve already started the process of being ‘elder and proud of it’ with the decision not to do low-lights in my hair anymore. Last week I had my four inch long hair all chopped off to pixie length and by the next hair cut or two all the darker tones will be gone. It’s not like I’m giving up a long standing habit, though, so no applause, please. I started the low-lights as part of the widow-finding-herself make-over that we each seem to go through at some point in the grieving process. I’d never colored my hair before that and who would have ever guessed I’d be looking at gray-haired women with wistful thoughts, thinking I, too, could have pretty silver hair like hers. We shall see. Six months from now I might be back to low-lights. The real reason I made the decision, though, was because I couldn’t stand the way my colored-treated hair felt---soft and limpy. All my life I had course hair, thanks to my Italian heritage, and I’m inept at dealing with soft hair. Old---oops---elderly dogs can’t learn new tricks in this household.

According to The Journal of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology there is a cure for gray hair just over the horizon, a discovery that scientists made while working on a treatment for vitiligo, a condition that causes patchy pigmentation in skin. Great. Just about the time the movement to make old be cool gets into full swing they will have a cream ready to market that will actually restore your natural color hair, not just cover up the gray.

While I’m on the subject of hair, Saturday I had breakfast with Red Hat Society members---six of us in all. While five of us sat at the table with our hats on the whole time, one woman took hers off the minute she sat down and she is as bald as a proverbial billiard ball. She’s had ovarian cancer for four years and is at the end of any treatments they can give her and at best, she’s got until mid-summer before the cancer finally wins. She will proudly tell you that she’s not FIGHTING cancer, she’s LIVING with it. And from what I’ve seen of her at Red Hat events, she knows how to party hard. When she’s absence from a Red Hat tea others in the chapter say she is their hero for the way she is handling her illness. At breakfast we had the most surreal laugh-fest talking about funerals and cremations versus burials and she started it by telling us what to expect when her time comes. (Hint: She's calling it a party.) Young people sitting near-by in the busy restaurant probably thought we were a weird cult, talking about having husbands made into diamond rings and lockets and feeding their ashes to the crabs down in the Florida Keys.

After breakfast we dropped the bald-headed lady back home and headed downtown with plans to see the dinosaur exhibit or as one woman put it, to see the pets we used to have when we were kids. But after waiting in line for a few minutes and hearing how long it would take just to get inside the first set of doors we decided to go on a thrift shop crawl instead. Having been a fan of the Advanced Style blog for a few months and learning that a lot of the ‘elderly’ women there shop the thrift stores I was excited about the idea of a crawl. I’ve never bought used clothing before and as we shopped I kept saying, “I can’t believe how cheap this is!” Every place we shopped at had tags with three prices on them plus dates when the mark-down prices would take effect. What a clever way to keep customers coming back. And now I understand how some of those women at Advanced Style can put together such arty-farty outfits without breaking the bank. I bought an L.L. Bean vest in hot pink for $6.50 and it was just like a black one I’d bought online last fall for $49.95! I would never paid $49.95 for a vest that wasn’t in a neutral color so I was a happy shopper. Normally I dislike shopping with other women because years ago I kept getting talked into purchases I later regretted. Always the people pleaser back in those days, I couldn’t say no. Apparently thrift shop crawls is something this chapter likes to do a couple of times a year so shopping in groups might be returning to my life.

Next week I have two lectures lined up to attend---one with a rather bizarre topic, Also on my calendar is a Red Hat tea and my Movie and Lunch Club. Life here in the still snow covered north is starting to wind back up.  ©