What NOT to Do when You're Pre-Menopausal and on a Particularly Bad Run of Hormonally-Induced Attitude

Okay, so...been feeling down, negative, crappy lately. (Variety of reasons; not gonna bore ya, yadda yadda yadda.) Not finding the Road Out of It. Really frustrated. Skip to Saturday. Have a hair appointment. Find myself ready to leave about 2o minutes early. 'No problem,' I think. 'I'll look at the hairstyle books and maybe find something new. Maybe that's what I need!' Get there and the place is all but empty; I'm the last appointment of a shortened holiday weekend schedule. I confide in my stylist that I've been in a funk lately--possibly hormone-induced--and that I might be, might be looking to do something a little different. I've been feeling down, crabby, etc.

"I know how you feel!" she cries out. "I have been exactly the same way! I'm ready to jump out of my skin lately." We look at a book of hairstyles together while she readies her station and gets out a cape for me. I find something kind of choppy and cute, but I think it's too short. My stylist says we won't go that short, but we will do something like it.

It's over before I know it.

She whips me around and I look in the mirror. I try to be brave because she is excited and keeps talking about all the cool techniques she got to use. Something called "slithering" is all I remember. Because all I can think about is the scene in Little Women (the book, not the movie, of course) where Jo takes off her bonnet and Marmee says "Oh Jo! Your hair. Your one beauty!" At least half of the hair from my head is now on the floor. I think of the word "crestfallen"--literally. I think, 'Why didn't I at least wait until school was out so that I could fool around with it all day for a week if necessary to figure out what the hell to do with it?' I think, 'Why did I come here in a mood like this? I know better.' I think, 'What do I tell her? That she needs to fix it somehow? There's nothing left to fix, unless she shaves me bald.' My stylist says, "It looks really cool. You're going to love it!" I say, "It's so different right now. I have to get used to it." And I get out of the chair and try to forget about it. Hah. As if.

Yesterday I tried to fix it like the book's picture. We had 87 degrees and high humidity, and everyone's hair looked like crap. Today, I decided to do what most people do with a new hairstyle: fix it like my old hairstyle. It looked horrid. Finally, my husband couldn't take it any longer. He got out his scissors and said, "Tell me what to do." We stood in front of the bathroom mirror, and in between me pointing and him recombing, he recut my hair for me. I'm not sure what it needed, but I was damn sure what it didn't need. And so we cut those parts off.

Tonight, I'll be rewashing and restyling my hair as many times as necessary until I get to something I can live with. Because I have to face the world's harshest critics at 7:45 AM tomorrow: high school girls. It's not that I care what they think. I don't. I only care what I think. I just don't care to hear about what they think, or hear about what they are trying to pretend that they think. See? And then, for the rest of the summer, I won't be getting any more haircuts. I won't need any. I'll be growing out the one I just got.