One of my favorite topics: Hair

One of my favorite topics to talk about with anyone is what they're planning to do with their hair, style-wise. My husband says that my sister and I are all about "hair and shoes" and, indeed, when the two of us are together, those two items usually come up in conversation within the first ten minutes. He suggests that talking about shoes made out of hair or a hair-style shaped like a shoe would be our ultimate bliss, but I fear that it would probably be too much of a good thing and we'd both implode as a result.

Right now I'm "growing my hair out." That is the official "girl phrase" used to describe the act of only letting your hairdresser cut off the minimum amount each time you sit in the beauty salon chair. Currently, it almost touches my shoulders, which is actually pretty long for me. If I tip my head way back, I can grab about an inch of my hair with my hand behind my back. I know that tipping your head way back is cheating when it comes to judging hair length, but every girl who has grown her hair out knows that you have to cheat a little bit to encourage yourself along down the long and arduous path of growing your hair into a longer style. Draping a towel on your head like hair and flipping it around is another good way to cheat and make yourself feel like you have really long hair. Not that I've actually done this. I'm just saying I've heard about such things. You know, from friends. Crazy friends.

There are many moments during the course of growing your hair out that you consider chopping it all off. Sometimes it gets in your mouth when you bend over to pick something up. Annoying! Sometimes you see a girl with a super-cute short haircut and you think, "Ooooh! I want that!" Or sometimes you just feel an overwhelming sense of futility about the whole thing -- "My hair will NEVER get long! What's the point of torturing myself?" But then you'll see someone with lovely, long hair and, even if your hair has never been long or lovely or long and lovely, you'll think, "I will also look that beautiful one day when my hair is long and lovely and swooshy!" And so you persist.

In high school, we used to actually wash our hair with some sort of horrible-smelling horse shampoo to make it grow faster. These days I know more people who are taking pre-natal vitamins (never mind the nausea!) for the same results. I am fortunate to have a very good hairdresser (Nikki at the Tip Top Salon) who just somehow arranges things in a magical way to enable me to have a good-looking haircut all the way through this challenging process.

Today I wore my hair in a ponytail all day and was so excited that it was long enough to do that. Next . . . braids. I can hardly handle the anticipation!