Don't Know HOW He Puts Up With Me

We're in the bat-mitzvah home stretch now, folks. It's all planning, all the time. ALL THE TIME. No, I don't think you understand. ALLLLLLL THEEEEEEEE TIIIIIIIIIIME.

And so, last weekend, I went for a haircut. Because The Plans said that I should do that a couple of weeks in advance of the date, in case something went Horribly Wrong and I wound up with Bad Hair. (Apparently, party planning causes excessive capitalization. Who knew?) This is an actual concern, because I tend to frequent The Cheapest Hair Places in Town. Plus, I just don't know what I want my hair to look like, aside from Not Bad. So sometimes? It winds up Bad.

Anyway. I sat down in the chair, and the woman cutting my hair--Armenian, I think, and it's relevant only in that she had a heavy accent, and a not-especially colloquial way of speaking--started out great, commenting on how the way my gray hair is coming in makes it look like I've had my hair highlighted. This is exactly how my mother went gray, so I was pleased with the compliment, and chatted a bit with her.

In other words, she was on my good side. Then.

So then we start talking about what I want to do with my hair, and I describe the basic idea, and then I say, "...and lots of layers, because it needs to have some shape when it air dries, since I don't really do anything with it after I wash it."

"Nothing?" she said, skeptical.

"Nothing. I wash it, I brush it, I let it air dry."

"No hair dryer?"

"No hair dryer."

"Not even a little bit of mousse?"

"Not even a little bit of mousse."

She was silent, then set to work. After a minute or two, she said, "And your husband doesn't mind this?"

"Doesn't mind what?"

"That you don't take care of yourself."

Um.

Um.

Um.

She took my silence as a yes answer, and continued. "You're lucky that your husband doesn't care HOW you look. My husband cares that I take care of myself. He wants me to look nice all the time."

And she breathed a long-suffering sigh.

But she wasn't done yet. Oh, no. A few minutes later--as she fluffed up my hair with the mousse she'd INSISTED on using, just to show me how wonderful it is to take care of yourself, I suppose--she once again started in.

"It must be nice that your husband just likes you for you and doesn't care that you don't take care of yourself. He's a good man, your husband, yes?"

Oh, yes. A saint. A frickin' saint.