4 posts tagged “hair”
One of the little-known perils of having long hair: It may try to strangle you while you sleep. Yes, folks, in the last few weeks, I've started waking up in the middle of the night with my hair hopelessly tangled around my neck. Not the most soothing feeling!
Last night, tired of waking up feeling suffocated, I decided it was time to do something about this problem. Although I'm not very good at braiding, I loosely plaited my hair into two (surprisingly long) pigtails, à la Melissa Gilbert on Little House on the Prairie. Today, I am happy to report that sleeping in braids is quite comfortable—much more so than wearing a sweaty hair-scarf to bed! (Although I'm not sure how Mr. G feels about my new, Laura Ingalls look ...)
In related news, this month marks two years since I started letting my hair grow out to donate (with regular trims to ward off split ends, of course). I still can't decide when to make the Big Cut, though. The practical part of me wants to chop it off now and go back to my cute, shorter hair, but the competitive part of me wants to see just how long I can stand to let it grow. Another year? Two years? Stay tuned!
Last night I dreamed I cut my hair. I didn't put it in a ponytail first. I didn't measure it. I didn't even use a mirror. I just hacked it all off, gathered it into a bundle, and hoped it would be long enough to donate.
I have no idea why I was so impatient in this dream, for I've become rather fond of my long hair since my last update. I still wear a ponytail several times a week, but lately (as I've gotten used to a feeling I can only describe as wearing a scarf in the summertime) I actually prefer to leave it down.
Overall, having hair this long for the first time since the sixth grade has been a surprisingly pleasant experience: I'd forgotten how good it feels when it brushes against my bare arms, and I love it when Mr. Guycita runs his fingers through it (not that he does this often enough for my tastes!). So each time I try to estimate when my hair will be ready for the Big Cut, I am increasingly loath to give up the new inches of growth.
Don't get me wrong—I still plan on donating it. It just might take me a little longer to decide that I'm ready to part with it.
Earlier this week, I dreamed that I cut off my hair before reaching my goal. In the dream, I was horrified that I'd wasted all that time growing it out for nothing. When I woke up, I was so relieved that I wasn't going to have to tell everyone what I'd done.
I suppose it's not surprising that I would start to dream about cutting off my hair. In the past few weeks, with the oppressive summer heat in full force, I've found it nearly unbearable to wear my hair down. In fact, most mornings when I am getting ready, I automatically default to a ponytail, just so that I don't sweat off my makeup before leaving the house.
But in the last week or so, my hair has gotten long enough to still make my neck hot, even when it's in a ponytail. So this morning, I finally decided to experiment with a new 'do, one that would hopefully keep my hair off my neck.
Although clips won't usually hold my hair, I found one made by Goody that claims it's made especially for "thick hair" (and if anyone has thick hair, I do). I was skeptical, but my tiny grain of faith was rewarded: The clip works, even without using a mirror (see photo at right)!
Now I feel like I will at least have options (ponytail versus clip) when I fix my hair in the morning. By my estimate, I still have 6 to 8 months to go until the Big Cut—unless I give up before then and decide that I'm okay with a Becky Conner hairstyle.
My late grandmother believed that "if a woman has long hair, it is a glory to her." To cut that hair was, therefore, nothing short of a sin. If that's true, I've been sinning every 4 to 6 weeks for as long as I can remember. In fact, I've always been rather schizophrenic about the length of my hair, growing it out and chopping it off in a vicious cycle that has exasperated my mother, my hairdressers, and Mr. Guycita alike. Sometime after Mr. Guycita's mom was diagnosed with breast cancer, however, I began to realize how lucky I am to have the luxury of discarding my healthy hair at will. That's why I am currently in the midst of a marathon growing session (15 months and counting). My goal is to grow my hair long enough to comfortably donate an 8-inch-or-longer chunk of it to the Beautiful Lengths campaign. My severed ponytail will then be used to make a wig for a woman who's lost her own hair to chemotherapy. I like to think that Grandma would have approved—in spite of her beliefs.
