Grandma Henke

It’s Decision Time. To cut or not to cut?

It’s getting hot here and I’m the sweat (not to be mistaken for sweet) queen of Southern Utah. Short hair or pony tail … it’s time to choose. Pony tails are easy and cool for the summer, but I have to be realistic. I am 61 years old, not a B-Bopper of the 1960′s. My hair is thinner now and my face is … creased and saggy, and isn’t particularly improved by pulling my hair straight back into a pony tail. But still … there is the easy and cool part of it … so maybe looking like a Grandma Olive Oil hasn’t entirely been ruled out just yet.

There was a day when I looked spiffy in a “pixie”, but that was also when my friends called me “Twiggy” … not something they would be likely to do these days. I no longer have the Twiggy or Pixie body … but again, does ha really matter when balanced against also be easy and cool.

The updated Pixie look is actually a messed up pixie that is sort of how I look when I get out of bed in the morning before I comb my hair. That’s got to be the ultimate easy and cool look of the summer but knowing me I would spend hours trying to get the messy look to look just right. Either that or I would just go back to bed.

There has got to be a middle of the road cut that would work; something that takes 50 pounds off my silhouette and hides the crowfeet at the eyes … naturally fluffy and enchanting … that wouldn’t look flat when it’s wet … something that would make me look beautiful even in 115 degree weather.

For sure I want it lightened … we used to call it “frosted” when I was in high school, then we called it “streaked”. Now it’s “highlighted” or you have a “weave”. It used to be a torturous ordeal. You’d put on a tight plastic swimming cap and then they’d poke through it and grab pieces of your hair with a crochet hook and pull it through. Torture comes to mind. I remember the year Lynn was in Vietnam and I wanted to have my hair streaked before I went. My hair was long and it hurt so bad having it pulled through I had tears running down my face but we didn’t stop because it was for such a good cause. They colored the strands that they’d pulled through and when they pulled off the cap you couldn’t even tell they’d done it … what a disappointment. So they told me they’d do it again free the next day … I dreamed all night that I was a prisoner of war and they were torturing me by pounding nails into my head. I took two aspirin before I went the next day … and in order to speed up the process they put two hair dressers with their crochet hooks on the job. It’s a good thing I took the aspirin because when they pulled the cap off that time one side was much, MUCH more frosted than the other … it seems the two ladies each had a different vision of the end product. So I had to change my whole hairstyle … get about six inches cut off and part it on the other side to make it match. It did turn out cute and they didn’t charge me for any of it so that helped.

It’s much easier now with the tinfoil process. You go in and $60 later you have the “natural” look. People who have naturally darker hair than I do look nice going gray … but I don’t. My hair has gone from blonde to looking dirty and grungy. There’s the answer. I can just leave it looking dirty and grungy and choose the dirty mussed up style. That ought to be easy and cool. Blech

I can’t decide … aarrgg … so … I suppose this is to be continued …