Still Futzing with the Template

Can you tell? Probably not, unless you're refreshing frequently. Or were hovering over ByJane about 6:30 this morning. But that would be 9:30 East coast time, so maybe you were. Or maybe I'm delusional.

Yes, I got out of bed in what is to me the wee small hours to futz with my template. I cannot help myself. It makes me feel like I'm achieving things. It gives me a purpose in life, a something to do NOW, IMMEDIATELY. Because I know that the reason my stats are so puny is that my blog is more than relatively unattractive. It has nothing to do with what or when I post, I'm sure of that, because my words--they're always pearls, right? So I'm convinced that there is a blog design that will suddenly--hail all and eureka!--cause the heavens to part and the multitudes to reign (or is that rain?) down on ByJane. Complete with winning comments.

Yeah.

Right.

Oh yes, you wanted to see my hair. Okay:Here I am shorn.

And off I go, to futz again.

Of Hair and Other Such Man-Made Disasters...

This is not the first time I have written of such subjects. See here and here, if you will. My quest for a decent haircut NOW THAT I LIVE IN ELK GROVE has taken me on another journey. This time I went to a stylist recommended by two friends of mine. I like their haircuts. They touted this stylist as one who is au courant, not to mention up to the minute on the latest hair tricks and styling whatnots. They also said her salon was a bit...well, I didn't really hear what they said. I was so taken with an au courant stylist within a five mile radius. Not to mention one who charges $35 a cut.

The salon: took me a while to find it. Kept driving by it because it is in the back of some huge government building where they pass out visas to barely legal aliens, or some such thing. When I finally found it--and it was in the back, down a long lonely corridor--I passed two women on their way out. They had perms. Those kind of perms that makes one's hair frizz and kink and resemble rusty brillo pads. But I persevered, because I trust my friends and they both swore by this stylist.

And they were right. She is absolutely au courant, having just taken a class in texturing from some Hollywood bigwig. She textured the absolute shit out of my hair. I thought texturing was the new word for layering. But I think they use the word texture because whatever they're doing to your hair gives it a really weird texture. In the normal course of events, I have really thick hair. It's very shiny, healthy, and is a point of pride being my crowning glory and all that. Here's what it looked like in high school--okay, the face is different, but the hair, really the hair is pretty much the same, with the added bonus of a streak of silver.
I no longer have this hair. I, who used to be the envy of all thin-haired girls, now seem to have thin hair myself. I have been textured into near baldness. My ponytail droops, a hundred hairs shy of its former self. And now way could I wear my hair down; there are no more thick waves to flip up at the ends. Well, there is on one side, but the other, near baldness. My glorious silver streak has been textured into salt and pepper. When I get up in the morning and see myself as I brush my teeth, I'm scared. I look like a hag. Frizzy and frizzled and thinning and--oh woe. Oh woe. I've already cut the back myself. Grabbed two handfuls of hair and chopped of an inch or so. It is marginally better. By a very slim margin.

When I spent that six weeks in the hospital after having a cerebral aneurysm, my hair showed the consequence of all the drugs and disaster. This time, I didn't have to spend six weeks in the hospital to get a similar look. And I only paid $35.

Yet again and still forever, I am twisting my hair up, shoving a clip in it and thinking--oh, well, who was I wanting to impress?

I Am A Slut For A Party

Just invite me, and I'll go unimaginable distances. Like last weekend when I drove 368 miles to LA Daddy's birthday party. It was so worth it. If you go to his site, you'll see the photos he took. I didn't take any photos because--because I just didn't. Even though I took my camera to LA. And I had my cell phone camera with me. But, well, I'm just not one of those people that wants to memorialize every event. Sometimes one just has to let one's memory do the job.

If you go to that site, you'll see the back of my head in the next-to-the-last photo. Isn't my haircut great? I spent several days before my trip polishing up that old investigative reporter's elbow so I could find the wonder woman who has cut my hair in LA. Christina Cesna ("as in the plane") and she's at Fabric in BH. And I love her. Because she makes me a reasonable facsimile of presentable.

At the party, I talked to...here's the obligatory listing of fellow bloggers:
Whit, who is first this time because he was forgotten last time, even though he let me slip and slide down the hill and I broke my crown and didn't get home in one piece;
Kevin & his trusty mate, Will, who is a gentleman, even if he's in love with Kevin, who did end up ass over heels on the way to the hot tub when all and sundry were going for that final final drip through;
the lovely Kim who was svelte in a garment cunningly decorated for her by her oldest son, who surely will be on some Bravo reality show so remarkable was his ability to get the chocolate splotches just so;
Neilochka, known throughout the blogosphere as the consort of the lovely Sophia;
not to forget--ha!--Liz who really is goddessy everyday; and the kettlerattler
and the faithful mates, Trish and Karen and Will, and...and...and...
my publicist and my lawyer and my greengrocer, without whom none of this would have been worth the price of a bag of Boston Bibb not to mention those three stalks of celery that have been dogging my steps, stalking me you might say....and...and...and...--!

The Woes of Being a Woman...

...or, Have I Whined About My Hair Lately?

Seems to me that I did an entire blog post on my hair stylist/cutter/whatever they're calling themselves these days. But on checking back, I may have only done half a rant and then ran out of steam. Lucky you.

I will try to keep this terse and pithy.

Finding someone to cut one's hair is, as most women (and men too, if they're honest) will tell you a trauma fraught with wild hopes, much head nodding, followed by some head shaking, followed, at times, by the pitiful thought that It'll grow. Such has been my state over the last two years when I've lived away from LA, mecca of hair people who know what they're doing. I have traipsed from pillar to post, and now from long to short, trying to find a decent hair cutter. I have been to the Alpha and the Omega of Sacramento County hairdressers. The Alpha is not much, if any, better than the Omega. The Alpha, on the other hand, charges by the follicle.

Today I made my third trip to the Omega, SuperCuts. I had the same person as last time. We had a similar conversation, which has devolved to that same pitiful thought.

I would post a photo, but I'm too embarrassed. Let's put it this way: I look like a gym teacher. A transgendered gym teacher. Which, come to think of it, may be because my Omega hair cutter is a person of indeterminate gender.

Not that there's anything wrong with that....

Heigh Ho, Heigh Ho....

...'tis off to BlogHer I go. And if that little ditty doesn't stick in your brain, here's another one. "Leavin' on a jet plane/don't know when I'll be back again...." Except I do, Sunday night.

Of course this trip has been in the works since the winter. But yesterday I decided that I absolutely had to get my hair cut. I went to Chris, at Something or other Spa and Salon. I picked him because he was incredibly freaky, and freaky is familiar to me, coming from West Hollywood. Chris would have fit in very well at one of the leather bars there. How he manages in Elk Grove, I'm not sure. I told him I wanted something 'edgy.' He wanted me to define edgy. "You know, edgy. How do you define it." We discussed etymology and I guess we were each satisfied, because he picked up his scissors and began.

I don't have a photo of what I looked like at the end. I have, as well, managed to repress the few glimpses I got in the mirror. Suffice to say, I had a bundle of hair in the back, some awkward tendrils at the nape, and a long curving payess jutting out from the front of each ear. The whole mass was such a gooey glop of product, product and then more product that I had to get in the shower when I got home.

D arrived today to stay with Molly and said, "oh, you decided to cut your hair." He was trying his best to be diplomatic, and really he was, but one of his strong suits as far as I'm concerned is that I trust his judgment about how I look. So I asked him, and he answered: "Well, it's kind of wild." I was thinking I could get away with a mop-of-curls, je ne sais quoi look, but maybe I was a bit overly optimistic. "Do I need to get it cut again?" "Yes," he said, and D isn't a man who is affirmative that often (mostly he likes to hedge). So I hied myself to SuperCuts, where Verushka applied her magic scissors to my head.

Is it better? That's debatable. But it is what it is, isn't it. And that, ladies and gentlemen, girls and boys, is my Zen for the day.

I'm taking my laptop, of course, but last year the wireless connection at the hotel died from time to time, due to hundreds of women tap-tap-tapping away. This hotel in Chicago is much fancier, not to mention expensive, but what that will mean connection-wise, I'm not sure. So you may get full-blown posts or I may be updating on my Treo.