Dilemma

Want to know about a dilemma I go through at least 3x a year?


My hair.



Short or long? Long or short? What to do, what to do?

I love my hair long. Well, I love how it looks in pictures. When I took the hour to blow dry and straighten, it was gorgeous.

When my curls cooperated, it was gorgeous.

The other days are just not photographed, I guess. Obviously my hair was a mess or up in a bun on those days, which defeats the point of long hair if it's always pulled up.

Short is amazing too. So easy to style, so light on my head. Of course, humidity makes straight styles impossible, and when layers are too short, like the back of my head, curls don't really happen. And bad hair days? There's no hair to pull into a bun and forget about, I have to style, style, style.

Right now my hair is just short of this.

Minus the chunky bangs. And with a whole bunch of layers added in. I'm trying to decide whether to trim it back up to shorty short, or try to grow it out.

Another section of my dilemma is bangs. Normally, I don't agonize over bangs too much. Then I got them butchered in San Diego last Christmas.

Now I'm terrified of getting a bad haircut again.


I realize this is a relatively undramatic dilemma, but it's a ridiculous one I;ve way too many times in my life. If you're a girlfriend, I've probably asked your opinion once or a hundred times. And I'm probably going to ask again tomorrow. Grow it out or chop it off? I can never decide.

Happenings.

1. I may have gotten absolutely nothing accomplished this week because the temperature has been hovering around 90* and the humidity is like living in a swamp and I'm dying.



2. I grew up without air conditioning. When we moved into our first house in California and it had air conditioning, I may have joked with Jeff about becoming high maintenance and refusing to live in any house without air conditioning ever again...

And then we moved to Japan.

No a/c in housing.



3. Life laughed at me. I may have cursed back a lot this week.



4. I cannot determine if the heat or my lack of a green thumb is killing some of my plants.

Flowers that looked like this...



...do not anymore.



5. This is my new favorite picture.



It has nothing to do with the heat or my questionable thumb. But it is a change, because my husband is actually smiling. He never smiles. He silently curses my camera any time I pull it out. This was date night and he's grumbling behind his smile, I promise.



6. I still love my short hair. Its never-ending battle to curl weirdly is tiring with all this humidity, but we're getting along for now.





7. I've been working at 0600 every day. That means I leave the house at 0545, which means I'm up before 0500.

In case you've never met me in the morning, I am no morning person. My own husband refuses to talk to me until I talk to him. I may have bitten his head off for that offense a few times in our first year of marriage. He's learned.

Anyways, when we used to live and work in California, we'd be out the house in our one car at 0600. I'd drop him off at work then commute the hour to my school and work. It was dark until I hit campus usually. And a lot of days we wouldn't get home until it was dark.

Now, I get views like this first thing in the morning.



I guess in the East the sun really does rise earlier. I don't mind it one bit.

I also get off work early enough to get a full afternoon of sunshine to play with. Yesterday I went to the beach after work. Happiness.



8. I keep finding excuses to sit on the couch in front of the fan and continue to avoid doing anything productive. Like stopping to write this basically useless blog post. Hm. I should probably turn off the TV and computer. Or I could continue watching the Daily Show...

Chopped

I got this crazy idea in my head that I could cut my own hair. It looks so easy when the stylists do it, right?



I had unruly bangs and layers in desperate need of a trim and was feeling the need to chop my hair shorter. I thought about getting an a-line at some salon, but finding a salon and trusting someone that may not speak my language very well not to screw up my hair scared me. A lot. Last time I had my hair cut, the lady butchered my bangs and I think a language barrier had a lot to do with that. So this crazy idea started, and I pulled out the scissors.

After a HUGE mess in the bathroom (hair does not sweep off of textured tile very well) and a lot more time than I've ever spent in a stylist's chair, I got this:



Certainly not perfect, but I have to say it looks pretty good for doing it myself. It took some contortionist moves and some tricky mirror play to be able to trim the back of my head myself. And I took a big gulp before attempting layers, fully expecting to do something horrendous and have to run to the salon tonight to get it fixed. But I managed to get my ends fairly even, do some layering that looks close to how it looks when I walk out of a salon, and trim my bangs without butchering them even more. Yay!



It may not be perfect, but for $0, I'll take it. It's still long enough to pull up and out of the way, but all the unhealthy ends are gone. I can't stop touching it because it is SO soft with all that damage chopped.



Not bad for a couple hours and some flexible arms, huh?