Hair

Hair cuts don't come cheap in DC. Mikey has been trying to convince me to cut my hair. Short. Like Julie Andrews short. I don't know if I'm that brave. I've been trying to convince Mikey to keep his hair. I think his little ear curls are cute. He doesn't want to be confused for an Orthodox Jew.

While we were in Georgetown Friday (after our bike ride along the Potomac and C&O Canal) we walked passed a salon and looked at the prices in the window. 80 bucks for a woman's cut (it went up from there with the wash and styling) and for a girl who has spent her life getting the $12 Master Cuts in the mall, I would rather buzz my hair myself.

Then there's Ian's Hair Salon which is on the corner of our block. Saturday morning on our way to Eastern Market we stopped in and asked about prices. Better this time, they quoted "our hair texture" at $35.

I can stand my hair but Mikey simply couldn't, so rather than break the bank on getting a quality stylist, he convinced me to cut it. We went to Target and used yet another gift card on a 12 piece home hair styling kit. I was terrified. I kept telling him, "This is gonna be bad. Just wait until I massacre your hair." But he just kept smiling and saying, "You're artsy fartsy and a perfectionist. I trust you." I wanted to spit back that handling a paint brush on a canvas is far different from using some clippers on someone's scalp, but he wasn't going to fork over the dough for a real cut, and even I'll admit that it was getting a little ragged on the edges.

We got home, wrapped Mikey in a towel and I said a prayer that this event wouldn't terminate our married life as we know it. I was scared. Mikey claimed all was well. "Just you wait." I kept chiming.
All I could think of was the article I read the the New York Times earlier that day titled, "Even to Save Cash, Don't Try This Stuff at Home." I wanted to turn ourselves in right then, hang ourselves up with the newspaper and leave us out to dry. I was sure this would turn out like the woman who bought her own home bikini wax kit. "All she can say is that it seemed like a good idea at the time." Or the woman who, rather than going to get a full head of highlights decided to bleach her own hair and half of it broke off leaving her with significantly less hair than she started with. This was our fate. I was sure of it.

But leave it to Mikey, who was called out on his cheapness at the Wedding Lunch, to just smile and coolly say, "Alright. Here we go."



All I could say after was, "I didn't do a terrible job." Mikey gave me a B. But for a perfectionist, that was a failing grade.