Got No Time

I was sitting at the Children's desk last week working on the summer reading program. It was a fairly quiet afternoon. Sunny. Warm. All the moms and their little ones were outside playing, not inside at the library. 

One momma and her little chickies came in to pick up a few books. Big sister was flitting around, looking at this, that, and the other while her little brother was picking out books to take home. He was just a teeny little guy, his head barely over the top of the desk - a head full of soft, blond curls just like the ones J used to have when he was younger.

He flung his book up onto the desk and I said, Thank you.

He looked at me and said, You're welcome. I told him how much I liked his manners and what a good job his momma had done teaching him.

He said, Thank you, and kept putting his books up one at a time.

I chuckled as I said, You're welcome, thinking this could go on for a little while at the rate he was putting his books on the desk.

To get us out of that please and thank you loop, I told him how much I liked his curls. And then I asked him if he liked his curls.

He stopped putting books on the desk and, looking at me, said, I like YOUR hair.

What?

This old hair?

Why, you're quite the little charmer, aren't you? I asked him, as I laughed with his momma.

~~~~~~~~~~

I thanked him {again} and told his momma she was going to have to watch out for him.

I love my job.

My good friend, D, got her hair cut last week. She was driving through the parking lot at the library as I was just getting to work one day. I stopped and chatted with her for a few minutes and she told me she was on her way to the hair dresser to get a cut. She wanted my opinion and pulled out her camera to show me a photo of a cut she liked.

It was short.

Really short. Think pixie short.

But oh-so-cute. 

I told her she was going to have to be brave to get it cut that short. But I knew it would look good on her. She thought so to and said she had been psyching herself up to do it. She had even prepared her husband, who said, Well, I held you off as long as I could.

He's so funny.

I told her to stop back and show me when she got it done.

Fast forward an hour or so and D came back to show me her new 'do. It was not quite as short as the photo but still much shorter than what she had before. My friend, L, heard us chatting about D's hair so she joined the conversation.

We talked about hair, and then hair products, and D pulled out some hair straightener goo she had brought for me to try. I said something to her about putting it on my hair and she said, Well, you put it on before you blow it out.

Blow it out? Blow what out? My hair? I do not blow out my hair. It would poof horribly. I know. I used to do it.

Think Bozo the clown.

Plus, I do not have time to blow my hair in the morning. I have too many other things to do in the bathroom to get ready for the day.

I used to be able to jump in for a shower, wash up and shampoo my hair, jump out, tousle my hair dry, brush my teeth and be out of the bathroom in fifteen minutes.

Not anymore. It takes me a half hour to pull myself together. 

I have to wash up, shave, shampoo, condition, and rinse in the shower. When I get out, the work really begins. 

Brush my teeth. Floss my teeth. Rinse with tooth whitening mouthwash. Spit. Rinse with water. Look at my teeth. Check my gums to see if they're receding. Wiggle a few teeth and a couple crowns to make sure they are not loosening up. Look at my teeth again to see if the whitening strips are working. Smile and then grimace because I rinsed with cold water and that hurts my sensitive teeth.

Now it's time to towel dry my hair. Not rub it dry or it will break. Pat and squeeze it dry. Over and over again. Pat, squeeze. Pat, squeeze. Find the three hair products I have to use to keep Bozo away. The first one is a leave in conditioner. A quarter size splop. Pour some of that stuff out, rub my hands together, and start smoothing it through my wet hair. Find the second product, a curl enhancer because my {brunette colored} gray hair IS.NOT.CURLING.

Grrrrrr.

A dime size splop of that stuff, smoothed through my hair, scrunching as I go. Look in the mirror. Make a face because my curls are going every which way. Individually take the errant curls, and I use that word loosely, and put them where I want them which is not where they want to be.

Find the smoothing oil. Another dime size splop to add to the mix. Run oil through my hair, rearrange the curls again, and growl some more. Scrunch. Rearrange curls. Scrunch. Rearrange curls. Scrunch. Rearrange curls. This could go on all.day.long. Decide I have had enough and do not care what I look like. Look in the mirror, checking to make sure my teeth still look okay, and growl at my hair.

Grrrrrr.

Pull out the tweezers to find all those pesky little hairs that keep showing up. Eyebrows, lips, chin - you name it and there is a pesky little hair needing to be plucked. Lean over the sink to get closer to the mirror to see the little pests. Realize I can't focus on anything, grab K's magnifying mirror, and start plucking. The rogue ones have to go. The gray ones have to go. The long ones have to go. Stop myself before I take off all my eyebrows.

Check the upper lip. Just a couple rogue hairs. Phew. That means I won't cry from the pain and make my eyes all red. Check the chin. A few more to pluck out. I now know what the children's rhyme, "Not by the hairs on my chinny-chin-chin," means.

All cleaned up, now I can put on my makeup. I only use a foundation to smooth out my skin tone. There is no time for anything else.

Finally, finally, I am finished.

It's a good thing I don't follow the instructions on the bottle of the shampoo.

Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

Ha. I don't have time for that.

Moseying around the yard last week I found a bunch of red fluttery seeds from our Japanese maple tree. The evening light was just beautiful and the red was jumping out against the green of the grass.

So pretty.