Home Again

There and back again. Damned if Tolkien didn't come up with perhaps the best vacation summary ever.

So, I survived a heck of a road trip, two weeks of sites and highways and blurred loss of time. Come hell or high water... or suicidal animals and brisk crosswinds, everyone who left returned home. We covered an impressive (according to everyone whose mouth drops as we keep listing the places we stopped at) 10 states not including those we drove through without having a scheduled activity. More than 6,000 miles.

Did anyone check to see if the Misty Mountain pass was closed for bad weather?!

And nearly the same number of photographs taken. If I'm being honest, the photos surpassed the miles driven.

Which brings me to one of my current situations, aside from the first quarter of the trip mashing together in one, continuous vague memory of driving and hotel stops: sorting through pictures.

We visited some amazing natural formations and prehistoric remains of animals an ancient peoples, literally taking our breath away at spots. (Ruling out altitude sickness and asthma of course.) So we took a heaping shit ton of pictures. More to the point, my husband did. I'll safely round down my photographic contribution to at or below 1,000 pics. As if that's any less mind-numbing to sort through.

Because sorting through them, trying to whittle down the volume to an easier to share set that highlights our best of the trip? Holy shitballs, people! It's going to take a bit of time. And an IV of caffeine. And maybe a few alcoholic beverages near the end. Perhaps a cheesecake.

Which makes me wonder: would the Lord of the Rings trilogy been easier to read if instead of describing each tree in each forest, there just would have been a snapshot included on occasion?

They walked for months, then shit happened, then they walked more.

Hair Cares

I got my hair cut today.

I know there are people who flip out at the thought of more than just a trim - but I'm so very much not one of them. Short of shaving my hair totally off (something that certainly appeals to me some days), I've tried just about every length. I'm always game to try something different.

Don't get me wrong, I dread going. I feel as out of place as possible in a salon - a place devoted to style and beauty. But a few times a year I suck it up and go in. Because as much as I feel like a giant neon sign points me out as a misfit while I'm there, every haircut feels like a mini-revolution to me. A temporary reinvention.

I've had stylists want my husband's approval before cutting off hair from MY head. I've had stylists who were kind, who were not, who put me down just to sell me products to 'fix' my defects. Now I go to a very sweet woman in a zen-themed place who cannot remember my name if her life depended on it despite being typed on a piece of paper she pulls out for each appointment. But she's always kind and has never made me feel like I'm a sore thumb.

By the time I leave, having dodged the low-grade sales pitches and push for scheduling haircuts for the next 3 years of my life, I feel like any other person who walks out of a salon and plays with their hair (or the lack of it) with a stupid grin on my face. And I know in a day or two that will fade as I'm confronted with the reality that there's no way in hell I can come close to recreating the style she gave me at home. Even then I'll still enjoy the change, my own personal mini rebellion, and scold myself for putting off going for so long.