Monday, November 27, 2006

Stupid Stunt of the Week -- Daughters Cut My Hair

A week ago I pulled the stupid stunt of the week. I let my daughters cut my hair.

There is an explanation. See, I told myself that until I reached my next five pounds of weight loss, I couldn’t have my hair cut. And my weight loss has hit a plateau and remained there for the past three weeks. Plus, my hair was really starting to bug me. It was getting much too long for my taste and looked limp and straggly.

Last Monday morning I came up with a solution – I’ll just trim my own hair. Just take an inch off the back. But wait, I thought, cutting the back of your own hair is the hardest kind of hair cutting to do. I know, I’ll have Loula Belle trim it.

When I shared my plan with Loula, she lit up. Wow, I could see her thinking, my mom is actually going to let me cut her hair. Cool. As I gathered our hair cutting supplies, (I cut my husband’s hair, my son’s and occasionally trim the girls’s hair too) I started to get excited. "Hey," I said, "next time I play the ‘bean game’ I’ll be able to say, ‘I let my 10-year-old daughter cut my hair. I bet no one else could say that about themselves.’" That should’ve been a clue that what I was attempting was foolhardy.

I sat down with the cutting cape on, and Lou Belle began cutting. One snip. Two snips. That’s when Beans, my seven-year-old said, "Oooh. Those don’t match." Caught up in the moment, I just laughed and thought it funny. A few more snips, and Beans couldn’t stop giggling. I figured now would probably be a good time to look at myself in the hand-mirror.

Whoa! My hair was definitely shorter, but more than the inch I’d told Loula Belle to trim off the back. The hair on my right side was cut short to just below my earlobe. Yikes! I figured that since cutting my hair had brought Lou such joy, I ought to let Beans have a few whacks too.

Very cautiously, Beans took a couple tentative snips. Her method was much more conservative than Lou’s had been. After another snip or two, I asked her if I should just go "fix it" myself in my bathroom. She thought that sounded like a good idea.

So, there I am in my bathroom looking in the mirror. My hair is cut at all sorts of lengths at the bottom. There are even a few stray hairs that escaped the scissors entirely. Seeing that the shortest length was to just below my earlobe, I knew I was in for some serious "fixing."

Whack, whack here. . . snip, snip there . . . here a whack, there a snip . . . everywhere a snip, snip and I was done. (In my teenage years I was famous in my family for cutting my own hair short, and the old skills seemed to come back fairly easily.) I can’t say that the finish product looks great, but at least it looks passable. Think 1920s era bob. That’s pretty much what I’ve got now.

And in keeping with my weight loss goals, I’m going to give myself three weeks of dieting before I have it professionally trimmed. Or (you’ve guessed it) I’m actually giving it three weeks of growing out before I have to face my hair stylist and tell her that I actually let my ten-year-old daughter cut my hair. Ugh!

Wednesday, November 08, 2006

Mood Lifter -- A Chuckle at My Expense

In relating this Monday’s visit by the fire dept. I failed to mention that it made my day. Literally.

Previously on Monday my washing machine had broken – right in the middle of a load of laundry. When I called the repair shop, their guy couldn’t come out until Wednesday. Meanwhile I only do laundry once a week – on Mondays. And it had to get done. We were all almost out of clean underwear and socks. And I was left to siphon all the dirty soapy water out of the machine. Yuck! (I ended up doing a load of laundry at my neighbor’s house, my friend’s house, and my mother’s house. So it got done, but not without a whole lot of run-around.)

Plus on top of having a broken washing machine, Monday was also a weigh in day at Weight Watchers. Knowing that my weight loss had stalled, I was grumpy all morning – even before weighing in and finding that, yes, I’d gained. Grrr.

Mondays are also when I play catch-up on all the housekeeping that has fallen behind. And it was a perfect example of me playing the Grumpy Cleaning Lady. I was snippy, cross, even short with my kids. Double grrr!

But when the first police cruiser pulled into our driveway, and I realized that we were going to have the whole fire department arrive at our house, my bad mood evaporated. I couldn’t stop grinning.

Later that evening my husband was talking with Bug, my son. He said, "I’m sure glad that Mom’s not in a bad mood anymore. That fire fiasco really helped."

"But what if it had made her madder?" asked Bug.

"Nah," said Hubby. "Your mother always cheers up whenever she gets attention."
Too true.

Be it blunders on the organ at church or having our hot dog roast mistaken for a house fire, I always enjoy having a good chuckle at my own expense!

Monday, November 06, 2006

Local Fire Dept. Comes to Our Hot Dog Roast

It’s not every day that the local fire department comes to your hot dog roast, but it happened to us tonight.

I called our city this morning to get a burn permit for the pile of garden refuse we planned to burn. After Hubby got home we hauled the cornstalks we’d been using as porch decorations out back and added them to the large pile of garden litter. Then while Hubby and Bug went to a band meeting at the school, the girls and I started the fire. (We waited until after work so that we could roast some hot dogs for dinner.)

Whooee! You should have seen the smoke. It billowed above the fire and drifted over the house. The fire had been burning for about half an hour when I heard sirens wailing. They seemed to be heading toward the highway to our west. I wondered if there had been an accident or if there were some sort of fire. I surveyed the horizon but couldn’t see any smoke except for what was coming from our fire.

Hubby and Bug returned from the band meeting, and by that time our fire was mostly embers and some smoke. Hubby came back to see how things were burning and rearranged a couple logs that we intended to roast the hot dogs over. The sirens were still wailing, but were still fairly close by. Hubby and I looked toward the intersection near our house and saw a local police cruiser with its lights on stop and turn back around the way it had come. "That’s funny," said Hubby, "for a minute there, I thought he was going to turn our way."

Well, in just a couple more minutes, the police cruiser was back again, and he did turn down our road. He drove past our driveway, turned around, and pulled up by our garage. I had Loula Belle run in and fetch Hubby to come out to talk with the officer.

Apparently someone had seen our smoke and called 9-1-1. I guess the smoke had drifted clear down to the highway and looked as if it was coming from a computer business along main street. That’s why the sirens headed that direction but then headed back. There was no fire on main street. The only fire was in our backyard!

Fortunately, we did have our burn permit number and weren’t in any serious trouble. At one point we had two large fire trucks, two smaller fire trucks, and two police vehicles in front of our house. I also saw another large engine and two smaller emergency vehicles head back toward the fire station without coming our way. All told, I’d guess that there were probably ten or so vehicles out looking for our fire.

As a side note, our bishop had been out in his pasture working with his horse when he saw smoke and flashing lights down our direction. He hopped in his pick up and came down to see what was going on. I guess Lou Belle and Bug talked with him and assured him that we were just have our family home evening activity – roasting hot dogs.

One thing is for sure -- tonight’s family home evening sure was exciting!