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Happy Blogging, everyone!

Well, it’s been a long week! 

We spent the weekend in Kent, WA.  G had a show at Pacific Raceways, playing keyboards for the band that was backing a Neil Diamond impersonator.  It was really fun! They put us up at the Hilton, too!  Niiiiiiiice!  On the way to the Hotel, we went a little further north to Seattle, and G bought his first Utilikilt!!! I’m so excited!  He’s been wearing it ever since, too!  I’m so proud!  I think that he’s a convert.  I’m all for it! 

So, I know that this is very snobbish, but I really hate working with dumb people.  And maybe they aren’t dumb, as in, can’t do math, or read, but they DO DUMB things!  It really drives me crazy!  New girl at the store, yesterday, completely out of dress code, which I wouldn’t be such a stickler about, except that she’s wearing a tank top that doesn’t conceal her well “rounded” midriff, or her bra straps.  She chews tobacco, and she was cutting a customers hair with a big wad in her lip.  That was the last straw for me. I told the manager that she needed to get her act together quick.  A BIG WAD OF CHEW IN HER LIP!!!!!! DEEEEEE-sgusting!!!  I mean, I know it’s just a chain hair cut joint, (we’re not some fancy shmancy big name salon, or anything) but can we TRY to dress like a professional, and not like we just woke up rolled out of bed, and threw on some clothes to go get the mail???? Puuuleeeease.   I’m ranting, I know, but I have to WORK with her.  ugh.  Hopefully she’ll be reasonable.

AND….there is the matter of our non-existant management.  The assitant manager just went on maternaty leave, and the manager booked herself out for a week for vacation.  Um…it’s back to school time!!  A little help would be NICE!!!

*sigh*

I really need to chill out and just do my job.  I DON’T want to be the manager.  I DON’T want to be the manager.  I DON’T want to be the manager.

My son had a breakthrough today!  All day with underpants instead of a diaper, and NO ACCIDENTS!!  HURRAY!!!!!  I’m very VERY excited about this!  We cleaned his room out today, too….maybe the two things are related?  We took out the evil anti-Feng shui shelving that was blocking everything up, and he really like it.  In fact, he went in there to play for, like and hour, and he NEVER does that.  It was very cool!  I think it at least helped him be more relaxed and comfortable.  He didn’t even leak while napping!  *mama does the happy dance*

This week, major grind…40 hours!  Ack!  I’m not ready for full time, dammit!  I guess I better get ready, though, cause here it comes…

An average day in the life of a hair stylist…Show up to work, chit-chat with the girls who worked before me.  Talk about anything but work. Clients come in.  Getting warmed up.  Everyday, you start fresh. There are many different types of clients…not the neat little personality trait categories that they taught us in school.  There’s the simple hair-do mom, very easy going, as long as she can get it into a ponytail at the end of the cut, she’s happy.  There’s the “My three year old has to have perfect hair” mom.  She stands right behind you, literally causing you to trip over her feet as you work, so that she can see every little hair you cut off the childish head.  This child is, of course, bouncing all over the chair, flicking hair into his eyes, crying because he has hair in his eyes, trying to take the cape off, squirting himself with the water bottle, and generally making it impossible to do a really good hair cut.   There are the cut it so it looks good, you’re the professional people.  The I don’t want to look like I had a haircut people.  The haircut twice a year whether I need it or not people.  Then the after-work crowd starts coming in, and the shop is free of screaming children for most of the evening.  (MOST small children do NOT want a hair cut…there are a rare few who like it a lot.  I actually watched a little 18 month old girl fall asleep during one last week…SO cute!)

The client from hell

This client stumbles into the shop saying that he “just got off work this minute”.  I think to myself, well, he must have been hittin’ the sauce while he was still there, because he’s clearly loaded.  come on back the chair, and have a seat (before you fall down, I think to myself).  He sits down.  He doesn’t care how it’s cut.  Except for the back, and over the ears, and this bushy part here.  And make sure the front is short enough, but not too short. Okay, we get started, and he cannot hold his head still to save his own life.   He’s trying to talk to me about the economy, I can only understand about every other word, so translation is tricky.  Plus, I have to keep grabbing him by the ears and putting his head back where I can reach it.  While trimming the hair around one ear with the edgers, he does one of his quick bob and slide moves, and blam!  A huge line carved right into the hair above his ear.  I stand back and sigh.  He doesn’t notice because he’s too busy talking to me about his ex-wife and how he should have been a better husband, blah, blah, blah.  The slurring is getting worse.  I try to blend it in as best I can, so that it will, at least, grow back somewhat normally.  Continue cut, while smiling and nodding in the appropriate places. Agree with everything he says.  don’t want to piss him off…you never know when the drunk is going to turn on you.  Cut is finished, and he’s at the counter.  He can’t figure out his own change.  He doesn’t know he’s supposed to leave the store now.  He keeps talking.  I stand there smiling like a lunatic, wishing that a family of 10 would come in right now, so I wouldn’t have to talk to him anymore.  Finally, he says goodnight and goes to his CAR AND DRIVES AWAY.  I take down the license plate number and call the local police, wondering if they’ll actually pick him up.   

End of the night, nothing out of the ordinary.  Of course some night’s there are the People Who Like To Piss You Off.  They call 1/2 an hour before closing and ask if there is still time for a cut.  yes? Okay, we’ll be there in 5 minutes.  Twenty minutes later, we’re closing out the til and cleaning, because there hasn’t been anyone in the store in an hour.  They show up, family of 4, 10 minutes before close and want you to cheerfully stay until an HOUR past the time you’re supposed to be off work, cutting their hair.  AND they are completely obnoxious about the details.  They have to look in the style books for pictures first. They’re not sure if they want bangs or not.  They want a change, but they’re afraid to go much shorter than it already is.  *silent screaming in my head*

Of course there are also the clients that I wish needed a hair cut every day.  They are a delight to talk to, and they appreciate your service. They are pleasant to work with, and even if they’re not sure what they want when they come in, they are willing to work with me to get something that is nice looking.  They remember me and ask about my son by name. They tell me about their own kids, or grand kids, and they are so proud of them!  They tell me funny stories about the day, or week.  Tell me about the vacation they took since the last haircut. The philosophize.  They are sympathetic.  They are human. 

I really do like my job.  The few freaks that you run into no matter what profession you’re in just make it more interesting.  Breaks the day up a little, you know? 

Average Morning:

Get up between 7 and 8.  Get booted out of the bed by my son, who wants to share our bed, but apparently not with me. Let the dog out to pee. Go to couch and try to catch a few more Z’s. Let dog back inside.  Get ousted from the couch from kid, who now wants to watch a movie.  Start movie, then go to kitchen make kid breakfast, and then make tea and toast for myself.  Escape to computer (upstairs) for a few minutes, before kid realizes where I am.  “Can I come upstairs with you, Mommy?”.  “Sure!”. 

Check e-mail (not much these days).  Read about Pamamama’s latest catch.  Try to think of clever things to fill my own blog.  Back downstairs, doing the dishes while listening to Mark and Brian on the radio.  Get ready for nail appoitment.  This is my day off. 

Today:  I have to take G. to Gresham, where he’s meeting up with the drummer/manager of the Rock and Roll Legends band that he’s playing keyboards for this weekend.  He won’t be back til MONDAY.  Whew… that’s kind of a trip. Litterally. Tonight I’m going out to dinner with my folks and one of my brothers and his Fiance.  Should be nice…Italian.YUM!!

Yesterday, I woke up so stiff and crabby, I couldn’t stand it anymore.  Called mom (where else can you turn when your desperate?…she’s always there for me!! Thanks mom!)  and told her my woe’s of the bed I’m sleeping in….(waterbed, very uncomfortable, belongs to G. who won’t - WON’T give it up for ANY reason…*grump*grump*). She took me to the local matress store and ordered me a new matress for my side of the bed!  HURRAY!!! The idea is that I take the water Bladder out of my side and replace it with the REAL matress…the Festival Plush!  Hurray for me!!! Next week I shall be FREE from that awful bed!  FREE AT LAST!! 

Oh WOW.  I really hurt myself this weekend!  Monday now, and FINALLY, I feel normal again.  *oof*  No…..more…….tequilla……

Friday night, about 5pm. Supposed to be Girls Night, but hal and I got stood up by the other girls, so it was more of a Cuz Night.  Great Fun!!  Started with the pool…the new one, that is marvelous, btw,  and the Nekkid pool party.  And drinks of course.  And then some more drinks.  And then, the last of the liquor (except the Blue Cuaracco…can anyone drink more than a table spoon of that at a time? *shudder*).  Around 7:30, we realized that we were out of booze.  “The liquor Store is open until 8:00″ I say, sealing my Doom.  “We’ll lets go!!”, says hal.  She’s a real party girl, I tell ya!  We bought a pint of 1800.  this was the “reasoning”:  (which I put in quotes, because, as you will see, it really was not reasonable at ALL…) All of the mixers were giving me heart burn, and making me feel all bloated.  So we figured if we stopped drinking mixed drinks and went to straight shots, then all would be just fine.  *shaking head* 

SO….shots of 1800….Cashew chicken..YUM!!  We had a fabulous dinner, which we amazingly prepared without incident.  (the only mistake I can think of, is we forgot the cashews until the last minute…no biggie!)  We are off to go to the Dublin Pub.  Here we have lived a lifetimes worth of drinking and dancing already.  When I was in college, I went no less than twice a week…sometimes three times.  And then after I stopped going to college, I still would go there and hang out with my friends.  It was my Cheers. We walked in and the doorman knew us, let us in for free, the bartender, knew us and had our drinks ready, the band knew us, and stopped what they were doing to say “hello!”.  It was a beautiful thing.  It was our living room.  Our safe place.  Er…kind of.  *ahem*

Anyway, it’s been years since that time, and the doorman doesn’t know us any more, the bartender didn’t know what we wanted until we ordered, and the band is only mildly interested in our lives.  We have all moved on.  But still…it’s nice to go home once in a while. We danced the night away, too!  I had SO much fun.  The only thing wrong with the evening is that I was so f***ing drunk by the time we got there, I can’t remember certain parts of the night! ARGH!!!  We drank McTarnahan’s.  We danced.  We cajoled very young men to get up and dance with the very young girls on the dance floor.  We took our spots on the dance floor as if no time had passed, and we took Dance your Pants Off to new levels.  (My calves told the story the next day, and the day after, and even this morning!)  My God!  How we danced! 

And the next morning…oh how we hurt!!!  Oh……my ……..god.       I had to be up for a nail appointment at 9:30am.  I got home around 3am.  Geordie was the Knight in a Shining Honda that evening.  Greg took care of me.  What a man.  He gave me a huge glass of water, a vitamin, and some rolaids.  He knows what it’s like.  Of course, ironically, the next morning, HE was the voice of responsibility. Oh, the IRONY!!!  I said, “Maybe I should call and cancel my appointments…i feel awfuuuuullll!”. He said, “You knew you had those appointments when you decided to go out!  You better get up and take a shower!”.  Groaning the whole way, I did it.  I took the shower, Did not one, but TWO separate nail appointments, one with a first-time client.  Luckily, she’s blind and couldn’t see that I was sweating profusly and my hands were shaking uncontrolably.  Oh lordy.  Made it through the next appointment.  Stopped at Taco bell on the way home….if there’s a cure for a hangover the size of Raleigh Hills, then it’s at The Border.  Took food home where Greg was waiting to see how I was feeling.  ‘Bout the same.  After I eat this, I’m going to go lay down, I say.  Okie Dokie, he says.  he and I ended up sleeping for about two and a half hours, while our dear son watched the Sponge Bob marathon.  Thank god for DVD’s.

I can say, with certainty, that I will never NEVER do that to my body intentionally, again.  It took me a full three days to recover.  I’m OLD, I tell you!  Back in our youthful days of being 21 and footloose, we could have done that same thing three nights in a row, and then I would have gotten up to open the store at 5:30 in the morning, had a few shots of espresso, and been FINE.  Not today, my friends.  Not today. 

The lesson to be learned here, if there is a lesson, is probably that you can go home, but you shouldn’t order the Cuervo 1800.  Or maybe, you can Dance If You Want to, but leave the marathon drinking  to the college students.   Or in the immortal words of Chef, “There’s a time and a place for everything, children, and it’s called COLLEGE!”  

HOTTER THAN HOLY HELL!!

Which is why I spent the whole day indoors where it was nice and air-conditioned!  This morning we had one of those in-home demonstrations.  On the phone, they told us it was for an Air Purifier.  Which is was, partly, but mostly it was for a vacume cleaner.  One that my mom already has one of, so we can borrow anytime we want. DOH!  The gal who did the demo was not very old, maybe 21 or so, and was a musician/composer.  She was very nice, and I kept apologizing to her for coming all the way out to our house and giving us the big presentation when we knew we weren’t going to buy anything (especially not for the $2200.00 she was asking).  She was really nice about the whole thing. She understood that nobody really knew what they were getting into when they agreed to the demo.  It was nice to have someone honest about the whole thing for a change!  I mean, really, we just did it to get some free stuff.  Cause we don’t have money to buy stuff! (duh!  if they really wanted to sell those things, they’d be targeting a different population, right?)

A Minor Career crisis is handily averted…..

…when I left work Saturday, I had spoken with a woman, who had her hair cut at our salon, on the phone about the hair cut she had gotten. She didn’t like it and wanted to come back in and get it changed a little.  I said no prob, come on in. After I hung up, I got all paranoid about whether it had been one of MY clients and whether I had screwed up the cut.  THEN I got a re-do sheet for one of my OTHER clients, who came back in because “one side was 2 inches linger than the other side”.  TWO INCHES!!!!!????  HOly shit!  I mean, I’ve been a little off, but I remembered that lady and I didn’t think we had taken more than about a half an inch of of ANY of her hair.  DAMN.  Did I do that?  Could it be true?  I was racking my brain trying to think about it.  A couple of things could have happened that aren’t necessarily _my_ fault. But still…it’s on my record.  And that is a big mistake. 

So there I was freaking out about how I thought that I was doing so great at this hair thing and now I find out that I SUCK and what the hell am I going to do NOW??? I still owe money for the goddamned student loan…etc.  And when I came into work today, one of the gals that I work with had put a small, dicreet note in my station saying that it had NOT been one of my clients that came in for the re-do.  *WHEW*!!!I was very relieved.  I mean there is still the whole 2 inch thing, but, what are you going to do?  I guess, since that is the only lady to come back in the two years that I’ve been working for the company, then I’m doing okay.  And how thoughtful for my co-worker to think of letting me know, quietly, that it wasn’t my error!  She rules!  I think she understood my fears about it. That means a lot.  Make me feel more normal, anyway! 

HELP!  You bastards!  I need help!

Thank you, Hunter S. Thompson.  But I really do need help, and not in the form of some crazed antidote made from the adrenal gland of a small child, either! (I already had coffee this morning) 

I’m bored, and consequently, I’m BORING. This totally sucks. I’m not used  to being the boring one. I’m used to being the one with the crazy ideas. The one who doesn’t care how late it is. The one who doesn’t have anything to lose.  Aaaaiieeeee…..   Don’t get me wrong…I love being a mom, and really, I think that I could do better at thinking up creative things to do with my son.  I thought that all this unleashed creativity would flood out when he started getting old enough to DO stuff and the two of us would be an unstoppable flurry of creative activity.  Mostly, though, I spend my mornings doing dishes and laundry, trying to get him to pee in the toilet, while monitering how many computer games he’s played.  I get dressed, I go to work.  I come home for “night-night”.  We read and/or bathe.  He asks a dozen questions trying to delay the inevidable (kind of cute, actually…”Mommy, I need to tell you somethin’.”,  “What is it sweetie?”, “I need to tell you about the cars.”, “what about them?”, “They are in a box.  Okay, you can go now!  Night-night!”  blows me a kiss.  Awwwwww!)

*sigh*  I feel close to something big, but I can’t tell what it is.  It’s like a dream that you can only remember vague impressions about after you wake up.  There are so many things I want to try. I got my license to do hair in the hopes that it would be a vehicle to something else. But now that something else is on the back-burner until I can A. Pay off student loan from beauty school and B. Think up a different “something else” because the old one isn’t that appealing anymore.  (I wanted to go back to college, get my bachelor in Art History, I only have like, 45 credtis left to go, and then get my masters in education so I could teach.)  Now that I have a child that I’m planning on HOMEschooling, going off to spend my day with other kids who are trapped at school doesn’t sound so great.  Yesterday I started thinking about becoming a Beauty school instructor.  But dammit!  I just got my new health insurance through my work, and I would have to give it up to do something new.  SUCK!  How boring is that??? Gawd, I feel like an old lady, sometimes.   

One of these days, it will come to me, like a lightening strike on a sultry summer day….*crackle*  BOOM!!!!!

A fair representation of myself is in order.  It’s kind of cheating to pick out the very best stuff and only show that, eh?  Hmmm….

I got this crappy little digital camera for free for letting some business have my address (I’m sure) and now it’s just making me wish I had about $300 to spend on a DECENT digital camera, because even photoshop, in all it’s glory, cannot really “fix” the pictures that it takes.  It’s that bad.  Oh well….it was free, right?  I’ll keep it in the glove compartment in case we need to take pictures of an accident or something. 

This is what _I_ do at 3am…how about you?

I worked today.  It was a good day at work…started slow and then picked up towards the end of my shift.  I like it when it’s like that because it allows us time to kind of go slower in the morning, but then the end of the shift goes by fast.  And I did a perm the last two hours I was there.  That makes the time pass pretty quickly, too.   One of the ladies whose hair I do pretty regularly got her LONG hair cut really, really short today!  (!!!!) It was cool!  I love doing big changes like that!

She also wants me to color her hair.  We’re going to make an appointment to do it outside of my work, because they don’t let us do color there…only perms and cuts.  I miss doing color!  This lady has amazing red-red hair, very thick, and she wants some blonde highlights in it.  She is going to look so beautiful!  Sometimes I start thinking that I’ve chosen a career that is so superficial, there really is no real value in what I do.  But then I have customers like this lady, who really like not just the service, but also the company, and the conversation, and simply, the human contact.  So few services are performed hands on any more.  The Beauty industry serves more than just to provide superficial glam, and up to date style-lish do’s. I like to think we also provide some benefits like human touch, gentle contact, and caring that you rarely get in our fast paced world of internet and computers, and order on line. 

This is what I like to tell myself, anyway!

Well, I made my first trip to the Country Fair.  I had a fabulous time, too.  Not only was the fair a rare and very brazen look at a lifestyle that I crave about 80% of the time, but the company was terrific!  I Loved roaming through the crowd, trying to keep track of everyone, but not really _worrying_ about getting lost. Sharing wonderful food. Buying frivolous things.  listening to great music.  Watching all the people, who, when at the fair, are really at their best.  Everyone is all dressed up, sparkling and dancing down pathways that are shaded in cool trees, soft paths to step on, and amazing crafts to oggle.  Heaven!!  One of the best booths there was the Utilikilts booth.  Cunning, and useful.  They really know their market.  I also liked Renaissance Rags.  When I’m independantly wealthy, these are the people who I will hire to make my clothes.  Beautful fabric, to the eye and to the touch.  Fabulous designs made for real life women, not the ones in magazines.  Love at first sight!

Next year, I may be working there doing hair-tricks.  How cool would that be?