The Endings Are Not Always Happy

I have had excellent luck so far with my adventures in hair-cuttery. Rather than make an appointment that I might not be able to keep due to children, random illness, acts of god, etc, I have been wandering forth when I have an hour on a weekend during naptime, leaving SA at home to make beer or think about making beer or read books by people who think about making beer oh! and! mind the sleeping children.

Random haircut 1: back last July when I had acres of hair and buckets of sweat. I walked uptown and the only place that had a free stylist was at the Most Depressing Mall, which was actually OK because it was air conditioned. She took off swathes of hair and told me I had a dry scalp and she didn’t know about post-partum hair loss. As in, she kept exclaiming at how much hair was coming out of my head, even though I told her several times I had a three-month-old at home. She was a bonehead. But I liked the cut.

Random haircut 2: January. Uptown Mizzle, right on Salon Row. Janet was the only person in her establishment on a Sunday afternoon so I paid her a bunch of money to take off even more acres of hair and give me a funny new ‘do that I loved. Short at the back, long at the front, looked just like my hair was up in a clip except NO MORE CLIPS and a good 10 minute savings on my ablutions.

Random haircut 3: March. So soon after the last one because short hair looks bad when it grows just a little. This is why I have worn it long for the past 20 years. Went to the walk-in place at Metrotown, said to the woman, I want a trim and the same style as I have now and she did it. Amazing. Love.

For random haircut 4, this past Saturday afternoon, sure I could have gone back to Janet. Or to Metrotown. I did, after all, want the same style again, just shorter, again, because my hair grows faster than Prefontaine runs. However, in the interest of pushing my damn luck, I wandered up to Salon Row, Uptown The Mizzle and looked for a NEW (as in, new to me) empty salon to grace with my presence. Weren’t none. I headed to Lougheed Mall, which is closer to us and more sparsely attended than Metrotown. Within, I passed a “Chatters” which had too much neon on its signage and then I saw a “Magicuts” which had no lineup so I went in.

Magicuts is one of those places where you put your name down on a list and they call you in order, very much exactly like the place at Metrotown so I was feeling positive about the experience. When you write down your name, you can specify which stylist you want. Everyone above me on the list specified “Celeste” but I don’t know her from Adam so I left that spot blank.

Not-Celeste cut very quickly. Complimented me on my lovely curl. I asked for the same style, but shorter and she made it shorter. And when she was done, it felt like the same style as when I had come in. The thing I like best about my hair style, the one I got back in January, is that it might get flat when I sleep but then I just ruffle it and it gets all adorable again. Or it might get flattened by a hat. I ruffle. Adorable. I paid Not-Celeste and left Magicuts and ruffled my hair because that is what I do, these days, I ruffle. It didn’t feel adorable. I found a shop window to look at myself in. Not so adorable. I ruffled some more. Closer. I went about my business, which included buying some cute new sneakers.

But now it is two days later and the more I ruffle the more I realize. This is a bad hair cut. (And sure, you should go back and say “fix it” but that is not going to happen.)

Not-Celeste did not follow the path of the previous stylists. She cut her own path. It is a bad path. My hair looks like I cut it myself. It looks like a mushroom that ends, most unattractively, at my chin.

Luckily, it grows fast. And I have learned my lesson. Next month I will make an appointment either somewhere GOOD (yes, I hear you yelling at me, Shelley) or somewhere I have been before. Or at the very least, ask for Celeste.

And here, in closing, is a photo of my new shoes instead of my new hair. Trust me, it’s better this way.