Black(Brunette) Friday...The Saga Continues

Years ago, when I was in college, I used to walk into hair salons and say, "Do whatever you think will look good."

This was not one of my better ideas. I might as well have said, "Make me look like a freak." Some of my more memorable looks included a punk rocker (minus the safety pin through the nose), the bride of Frankenstein, and Peter Pan (which may have worked for Mary Martin and Kathy Rigby, but on me only brought back traumatic memories of childhood haircuts by my mom.).

Have gotten older and wiser (?), I now try to be as specific as possible with my descriptions. Unfortunately, this does not always work out so well for me either.

Six months ago, the guy who bore the awesome responsibility for keeping me blond for the past five years moved, so I needed to find someone new. After much surfing the net, pestering everyone I knew and wallowing in angst, I took the plunge.

First, the root touch-up was too dark (oh, goody, let's make the gray even easier to spot), then, I became Jean Harlow's twin (harder to spot the gray, but coupled with my skin tone, I was getting mistaken for an albino). When I asked for some contrast, I became a honey blond (translation:an orange). Finally though, I was an acceptable shade of blond with only a few remnants of orange. Until last Friday.

In a moment of pure insanity, I asked for the removal of all "orange" color and a more "natural" multi-dimensional look. What I got was brunette with some blond hightlights that bordered on greenish. Natural perhaps for someone in a carnival sideshow, but not really what I had in mind.

After living with the results for the next twelve hours, I decided to cut my losses and call a new place to see if they could make me look human again (actually, it was Tim that was living with the results, and for some reason, he did not appreciate being married to a suicidal nutcase...go figure). I got an appointment for Monday evening, took a lot of deep breaths (along with contemplating buying a very large hat), and kept chanting,"this is not the end of the world(although I didn't really believe it) over and over. (Tim, meanwhile, started looking for cheap rates at local hotels.) I almost convinced myself too, until the phone rang Monday morning.

The perky receptionist at the salon was just calling to confirm that my appointment that night was for a "consultation" not color (apparently, she did not understand the severity of the situation and the thin thread my sanity was hanging by). After reducing her to a stammering mess (that will teach her for being so chipper when the world is coming to an end), I accepted an appointment for the following morning with a different colorist.

Tuesday morning, the phone rang again. Uh oh. Seems the new guy was sick, but they would be happy to palm me off on a third person, who apparently wasn't even important enough to have a name. Was this a joke, or was it the cosmos way of telling me I should stop fighting mother nature and become a brunette again? Never!

In desperation, I called the person who had done this horrible thing to me (something I swore never to do), and made an appointment for that afternoon.

This time, however, I was going in prepared. I pulled out a few photos from the past several months to show her what I did and did not want.

"Oh, sure," she nodded and smiled, "I can do that." Which is all asked for in the first place.

P.S. I am blond again (whew) with some darker "lowlights" that I am now willing to embrace, and Tim has cancelled his reservation at a nearby hotel.

Allow Me To Introduce My Wife

Five years ago, I became blond (courtesy of a makeover). Before that, I was a brunette with lots of reddish highlights (courtesy of CVS and Miss Clairol). Before that, I was gray (courtesy of Mother Nature). And before that, I was a minor (courtesy of my mother--I just had to inherit the premature gray instead of the thin thighs. I really won that spin of the genetic wheel).

At first, this sudden change caused great confusion (I also lost over two feet in length as part of the same makeover). Tim let me walk right past him before doing a double-take the first time he saw me (good to know that after fifteen years, I could still surprise him).

The best reaction though, came from an employee at one of our favorite restaurants.

Approaching the table where we were holding hands, he greeted us, then pretty much turned his back on me to inquire frostily of Tim, "How's your wife ?"

Perplexed, Tim nodded his head toward me and said, "This is Ann."

"Nice to meet you, Ann," Ron clipped out over his shoulder, apparently believing Tim was clever enough to find a girlfriend with the same name as his wife. "So, where's your wife ,Ann, tonight?"

If possible, Ron's tone had grown even chillier and a bit more belligerent. Rarely at a loss for words (okay, never), Tim simply stared at him, jaws agape.

Barely able to contain my amusement, and afraid the situation might become physical, I interrupted. "Ron, it's me, Ann."

"Yes. I know. Nice to meet you." Head down, eyes locked firmly on Tim (clearly, someone had aced Intimidation 101), he still wouldn't look at me.

"My wife , Ann," Tim rallied, choking back the laughter, as he nudged Ron to look in my direction.

Aha! You could almost see the light bulb switching on over his head.

Thoroughly embarrassed now, Ron apologized profusely. He even sent over a bottle of champagne although I assured him I was pleased rather than offended by his reaction (It's good to know who your friends are, although now Tim knows where not to go if he ever does decide to have an affair).

Anyway, after five years of being blond and reintroducing myself to people all over again, you can imagine my shock when, last Friday, I went to the hair salon for a touch up (you know, to keep that "natural" look), and came out as a brunette (The only thing worse would have been coming out with a recreation of my big '80's perm. Then, I would have had to find a store that sold tops with huge shoulder pads instead of just a hat.).

To be continued.....

Waiter Approved

This week, I visited my parents in Florida where we spent our days swimming, sunning and, of course, eating. The first two we somehow managed on our own. The third activity apparently needed guidance and approval...at least according to our waiters.

The first night, we went to a restaurant specializing in fish. Our waiter, an elderly German gentleman (and by elderly, I mean 110), eventually toddled over to give orders, I mean take our orders.

My dad and I opted for a fish which the menu suggested be served broiled. "Good choice," our waiter's head bobbled vigorously like one of those dolls glued on the dashboard of a runaway car as he scribbled busily in his pad. "But you want it pan seared; it is better that way."

"Also, you want the steamed vegetables with that," he directed without so much as glancing up at us. "Now, what kind of salad do you want?"

"Um, Caesar?" I ventured hesitantly, afraid that if I made a second wrong choice, I might be rapped on the knuckles with his pen, or worse, subjected to another head wagging, and I didn't want to be responsible for his chiropractic bill.

Thankfully, I got only a brief nod of approval before he moved on to my mom. Whew!

Not one to be easily intimidated, she opted for a steak (it's a bad habit of hers and we are staging an intervention over Christmas). Ah, but our waiter was prepared for this ruse. "How do you want it done?" he queried slyly.

"Rare," came the ready reply, teamed with direct eye contact (my mom is not from New York for nothing.

Bzzzzzz. Thank you for playing. "Medium rare," he corrected, dismissing her feeble attempt to maintain control of her diet. Apparently, being German trumps being a New Yorker. "And for a side? Also steamed vegetables?"

"I'll have a side of pasta," she threw him a curve ball. "And the house salad with thousand island dressing." I held my breath and watched him from under my lashes, but her choice of salad must have mollified him because he let the whole pasta issue go without comment.

The next day at lunch, we once again needed to seek the approval of the wait staff. My mom and dad got it immediately with their sandwiches, but mine was a bit harder to come by. I had opted for a chopped salad where I got to select the ingredients from a whole case of prepared choices. Fortunately, each choice was greeted with a hearty, "Good one," by the waiter/chef. Until I got to the dressing. As he listed the choices, I hesitated a moment, contemplating which of my two favorites I felt like, the balsamic vinaigrette or the raspberry vinaigrette.

I had barely pronounced the B-sound when the waiter jumped in, finishing the thought for me.

"Balsamic is, of course, the only one you would want with this kind of salad," he decreed, already scooping up a dripping ladleful. "Good choice." Okaaaa y. And for my beverage? How about dessert? Maybe you can advise me on which table to sit at so that the salad will be presented in the best light?

Dinner that night, lunch the next day and dinner my last night there proved to be more of the same. We got mildly chastised for all ordering chicken (albeit three different kinds) at the Italian place for dinner. We got beamed at and all but patted on the heads like good little boys and girls for ordering fish and chips and shrimp cocktail. Ordering a warm salad with beets and Gorgonzola cheese brought our server to a happy place, but trying to refuse the ice cream sundae that came with the meal at Friendly's was a real downer for our server there.

My father, who hasn't eaten sweets in about fifty years, finally caved and ordered a strawberry ice cream (which he palmed off on me) just to avoid the tears which were threatening to overflow from our waitresses eyes. I have never seen anyone work harder to push a topping either. "Nuts? Sauce(she then proceeded to list all eighty-seven choices)? Fresh strawberries? Whipped cream? Crumbled cookies? Anything? Everything? " How about nothing?

Dejected, but not totally defeated, she slumped away only to return with our sundaes: one plain strawberry ice cream, the other loaded to the gills with all the toppings we had refused. "See," her baleful glance said as she put my mom's down with a flourish, "all this could have been yours, had you chosen wisely."

I'm thinking that when we go back for Christmas, we may have to eat in more. I just can't take the pressure associated with ordering a meal down there. I don't want to be responsible for that much unhappiness during the holiday season.

Computers--Now You See Things, Now You Don't

Although my sister would say I am completely helpless when it comes to computers, that is not true.

I can do e-mails, shop, surf the net, shop, generate word documents, shop, download, upload, set up files, shop, create shortcuts and I even know what a cookie is and how to delete it. Oh, and have I mentioned that I can shop? All this and more. When my computer lets me do it, that is.

Sometimes, it turns on me. Like when I first decided to blog. Every time I tried to get onto blogger.com on my PC, all I got was a page with streaks of color. All the other websites were fine. I just couldn't get onto blogger no matter how hard I tried. Even a call to my sister, grand high exalted queen of computers, didn't help. I just couldn't get on the site.

Puzzled and frustrated, I gave it a whirl on my laptop--and got right on. Hmm. Interesting.

A month later, it got even more interesting. I could get on blogger, but I couldn't access the Sirius website.

Two weeks later, I could get onto Sirius, but not Gifts.com. Now it was getting personal. It was impacting on my shopping. Was I typing things in correctly? Had I somehow opened some sort of weird virus? Could I blame any of this on Tim?

Than, total disaster struck. No Word. Every time I tried to open a word document, I got either a blank gray screen or a series of dialogue boxes saying I needed to install the disk, it was searching the net for the correct program, it was screwing with my mind, etc.

Wait. When had I uninstalled Word? Had I been sleepwalking lately, or somehow hit some sort of secret delete key I didn't know about while searching for a YouTube video? More importantly, could I, in any way, blame this on Tim? So many questions.

And to make matters even more puzzling, Word was listed when I checked under programs and I could generate a word document.

Before I could figure out this cute little twist, my laptop decided to join my PC and make sure I had a nervous breakdown.

It stopped going online. No signal except for maybe a half hour between ten and eleven pm. That's it. Period. "Cable Unplugged", it told me. Ha!

I checked and there was no cable unplugged. I even unplugged and replugged. Maybe there was an elf living in the basement who was getting his jollies unplugging the cable? Perhaps it was the ghost from next door who had gotten bored and wandered over, looking for something new to do with her time? Could I, in any way, blame Tim for this?

Before I could answer any of these questions, the latest string of computer frolics occurred.

Word miraculously returned to my PC, but my address bar disappeared. I can only go to a site by not typing www, but only the site name in the topmost google box. I don't go to google, but directly to the site.

I can also get online with my laptop most anytime I want, but once I go to a site, I cannot get home by clicking on the little house icon because it is gone. Vanished into cyberspace.

Once again, I am left with many questions, the main one, of course, being, "Can I blame Tim"?

The Great Disaster of '98

Last week, Tim was away on business for two days which gave me the perfect opportunity to decorate for Christmas---alone.

It's better that way. Really. There is no cursing at tangled lights (well, okay, some cursing), grumbling about the Christmas music marathon, disparaging remarks about my Jingle Bell Rock Dancing Santa, arguing over who is in worse shape and should not be moving the armchair to accommodate the tree, or, most importantly, destruction of my Christmas village.

Years ago, I started painting ceramic buildings for my under-the-tree-village. Eventually, I ended up with a tiny metropolis of close to forty. Then, in the spring of '98, I found a class that taught how to make platforms from heavy duty construction styrofoam and water using wax and spray paint.

Naturally, I dragged Tim along, luring him with promises of tools and fire (what could be more manly than buying supplies at Home Depot and Radio Shack?), and other guys (which there were...even if they were eighty). Oh, and the promise that he would never, ever have to actually do any of this once the class was over.

And so, with visions of styrofoam plum trees dancing in my head, our basement became Santa's workshop. I spend hours planning the village. There was the downtown with it's shops, theater, hotel and government buildings. The two-lane highway leading from town where you could buy a used car or stop at Flo's Diner, the residential area with single-family homes ranging from craftsman style to Tudor and the nearby school, to the wooded area on the outskirts of town where the mill sat at the edge of a lake which flowed down to a camping area near town as a river.

I cut, and painted and glued. I spent hours with a soldering iron cutting miniature cobblestones and bricks and marking off parking spaces and grand staircases. I was obsessed (Tim was also obsessed---with avoiding all of this).

Finally, it was time to move it all upstairs for the grand unveiling. The tree was up, dancing Santa was happily doing his Elvis impersonation, and the house was decorated within an inch of it's life.

Tim started grabbing sections of the village (with the delicate, fragile, handmade, very breakable --can you see where this is going?--houses on top) and carrying them up the stairs (the cold, hard, sharp, steep and unforgiving stairs) against my objections.

Perhaps it was Santa's eighty-second chorus of "Rockin Around the Christmas Tree" that fried his last nerve and prompted this foolish decision, or maybe he had become disoriented by the pine scented candles and sprays and oils which filled every nook and cranny of the house, but either way, it was not one of his better ideas.

Halfway up those cold, hard, sharp, steep and unforgiving stairs with the second to last section, there was a loud crack and an even louder expletive. Then, "Don't come down here."

Right. Like anything less than a herd of wild elephants could have stopped me from rushing down those stairs.

And there it was, I mean, there they were...fragments and shards of the hotel (the only hotel in town. Where were all the people supposed to stay now?), and the hospital (hopefully nobody in town would get sick or hurt over the Christmas season), as well as a few small mom and pop businesses that were gone for good (breaking the hearts of many a villager).

The disaster even claimed the lives of several inhabitants of the small, close-knit community and maimed others (one poor man had half his face blown off while feeding the birds, and another young boy lost part of one hand, making for an eternally lopsided snow-angel). It was tragic.

As I sat on the bottom step, mourning the loss of so many good people and the senseless destruction of property, a hand appeared next to me, holding a peace offering -- a glass of wine, and a dustpan. He tried being hopeful. "Look. We can glue on this guys leg." But in the end, there was little that could be done except make a trip or two out to the garbage, and rearrange the village.

And that is why we reached the very mutual decision that I, and I alone, should decorate for Christmas.