This is My Hair on a Good Day

This used to be my daughter's favorite book. Probably because it looked like me.

I have a problem with measurement.

Not an ethical problem.  Although you probably shouldn’t get me started on the whole metric versus customary debate.  I just really suck at measuring.

I never made the connection before, but pretty much everything I do horribly has to do with the fact that I have never been very precise at measurement:

Sewing

Cooking

Chemistry

Sports

Hair

Yes, hair.  I am very bad at doing hair.  And, if you think about it, it takes measuring.

Say, for example, your hairdresser says to use a dime-sized drop of mousse.  I try, really, to do what he said.  But that just can’t be enough.  I don’t think he has really looked at a dime lately.  So, I end up putting a half dollar size in my hair instead.  And then, I look like either a bedraggled or electrified cat, depending on which million dollar product I experimented with that day.  And then, it’s time to go to wherever I’m going, so everyone at the event gets to stare at me and wonder if I purposely left the house with two different colored shoes to somehow try to distract everyone from staring at my disastrous coif.

So, after thirty six years of doing my own hair, I have finally come to the realization that I need to do some practice runs before any big event.  Like days before – not minutes.

This weekend there will be just such an event.  The Office Christmas Party.  Not my office.  Are you kidding?  I’m but a poor, lowly teacher.  No, People.  We are talking a fancy schmancy Christmas Party thrown by The Office of Cap’n Firepants.

So, I have been trying out do’s all week.  Have you ever seen those ladies who wear their rollers out in public and wonder why in the world they are willing for the public to view them looking slightly unattractive for eight hours out of the day so they can impress whoever they plan to astonish with their sudden astonishing beauty for two hours that night?  Think of someone doing that for six days. Well, not exactly the rollers, but the unattractive part for sure.

I have been approaching this like a science experiment.  Note that one of the things on my list of detriments is chemistry.

Every day, I try one different product in my hair to see if I can achieve the perfect combination.  According to everything I learned about the Scientific Method, it is important to make only one change at a time, so one can be certain what has effected the results.  The problem is that there is one variable that I can’t control.  The weather.  The wet, humid, foggy, disgusting weather that we are predicted to have for the rest of this week.

Just in case you are unfamiliar with San Antonio weather, allow me to bring you up to speed.   We are in the middle of a drought.  It hasn’t rained for sixty-two years, twenty days, 6 hours and twenty one and a half minutes.  But the week I need to do some important follicle research? It rains every day.

The good thing is that the weather will be just as damp and gloomy on the day of Cap’n Firepants’ Excellent Extravaganza.  So, I have provided myself (and everyone else in my life) with a preview of every possible bad hairdo I could have for that evening.    There will be no sudden intake of breath when I walk into the room with Firepants (no doubt at least 30 minutes late), no exclamations of surprise at the horrific frizzy mop surrounding my face.  After a barely noticeable pause in conversation, someone will whisper loudly to his or her conversational partner, who is relatively new to the firm,  “Oh, that’s just the wife of Cap’n Firepants.  She has some sort of measurement disability for which poor Firepants is always having to compensate.  Don’t ever to go their house for dinner if she’s cooking.  If the recipe calls for 2 teaspoons of pepper, she’ll put in two cups.  And if you try to talk about football with her, she will start ranting something about yards and meters and you’ll wish you never brought it up.”

“Uh, why are her pants legs different lengths?”

“Well, she probably tried to take them up – she’s actually short despite the foot of hair frizzed out above her head – herself while she was kneeling on the floor.  No one really knows why she does the things she does.  It’s amazing, really, that Cap’n Firepants hasn’t left her by now.”

“So, uh, why hasn’t he?”

“Well, he has a bit of a handicap himself – have you ever heard of the Dorfenbergerthalamus?”

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