Just Cut My Hair Already!

I am an epic failure at the hair salon. Aside from not enjoying the experience much, I just can't seem to get the hang of the whole thing. It all begins to crumble with that first question, “So, what are we having done today?” You would think that a woman in her late twenties would know what kind of hair cut she'd like by now. And I kind of do, but I just don't seem to have the hairdresser lingo to explain it well:

“Oh, well, I don't want anything off the bottom but maybe something on the face, just to make it look more interesting”.

Make my face look more interesting? Or my hair? Who knows what I meant by that (I ACTUALLY said this yesterday). After a quizzical look, the hairdresser – or stylist, as I'm sure she'd prefer to be called – reinterprets my vague description and repeats it back to me in stylist-speak:

Okay, so you're wanting to freshen up your look then? We'll leave the lengths, you seem to be growing your hair long (correct), but we'll give you some shape around the face, a little more layering and maybe a bit of a side-sweeping fringe. How does that sound?

It sounds great! For now.

Then, the second question, which I dread even more than the first – So, what would you say your hair routine is? I'm sure there are a few appropriate responses for this question, none of which would be true for me and my, shall we say, laidback approach to my hair. Instead, I tell the truth:

Well, I occasionally shampoo and condition it, less so at the moment with all the pool swimming I'm doing. And when I'm not chasing a toddler around, I might run a brush through my hair. That's if I can find my brush...

The poor stylist looks at me, a mix of horror and disgust in her face. Such blatant disregard for my hair health! She then explains to me (it feels more like chiding) that this may be why my hair is so dry, frizzy, oily, broken, unruly, flat, dull... you get the picture. Nevermind, I'm sure she tells herself, this hair can be saved! She capes me up, runs her fingers through my hair one more time, then ushers me over to the basin for a wash. As we approach the basin, my neck pleads with me, “Kate, please, as a loyal member of your body, having held up your heavy head for many years now, DO NOT let me get bent and cricked by that awful sink contraption! I will not cope!” My neck, as it turns out, is a bit of a wimp. I'd like to say the rest of me is more hardy but who am I kidding? While I thoroughly enjoy the scalp massage, lying on that basin for even a short period of time is hell. I squirm around a bit, trying to get more comfortable, certain that my stylist – who already thinks I'm unhygienic and lazy – now probably suspects I have worms.

Okay, the initial questions are over, my neck has (mostly) survived the wash basin, surely it gets better from here, right? Hmmm. As the scissors come out, I know it's only a matter of time before the awkward small talk begins. It's not awkward for everyone; in fact, I can see several other women carrying on perfectly inane conversations with their stylists as they get primped and preened. I just don't seem to have the knack for it. I'm not particularly interested in dissecting the recent weather we've been having. And when she asks me, with the enthusiastic demeanour of a 21-year-old, “So, any exciting plans for the weekend?”, what she wants to hear is...

OH YEAH, I'm totally going to hit that new club in the Valley with my girlfriends. We're going to get SOOOO loose!

Which is funny because in my day, getting loose did NOT mean getting drunk. It meant something quite different altogether.

The truth is something a little more like this...

No, I don't have any exciting plans for the weekend. I'll probably stay at home mostly, looking after my baby. I might do some washing, go for a walk in the park, find one glorious hour of no-baby time to read something trashy like a Who magazine.

Let me just say now that I rather like my simple, stay-at-home-mummy life. But when asked by an uber trendy bright-eyed girl who has no children and probably only moved out of home recently, I suddenly feel a bit on the boring side.

Anyway. Back to the haircut.

By now she's ascertained that I'm not terribly good at small talk so we sit in silence while she works. Thankfully for her, the woman sitting beside me talks enough for the both of us, her story going something like this...

… and he didn't know that I knew but I did know. Because my friend was at the same “work” dinner (her bunny ears, not mine) and saw him with her and she texted me a photo of them together so I knew all these details by the time he got home. He said he didn't have sex with her or anything but after we were fighting awhile he changed his tune and said he did have sex with her but I drove him to it. And that was the end of hubby number two...

And that was the censored version, let me tell you.

A few years ago, I actually took the final Harry Potter novel along to my hair cut and colour. I was up to a most crucial point in the story and couldn't bear to wait until I got home to find out who was going to live or die. It's HARRY POTTER, for heavens sake! I can still remember the look on the stylist's face when I pulled the heavy book out of my bag and began reading it – she seemed a little miffed that this client she was going to be working on for the next hour or two was going to completely ignore her in favour of the boy wizard.

In the end, I got an alright hair cut and the whole experience wasn't too painful. But I'll always be that slightly awkward person who would prefer to dodge the small talk and gossip for a good, long novel.  

The Sisterhood of Women

There have been many realisations for me since having a baby – things like, I'm stronger than I ever knew! And Wow, you really don't need that much sleep to survive! But one of the greatest revelations for me has been the importance, actually, the ABSOLUTE NECESSITY, of female friendships.

The first three months of being a new mummy were, for me at least, pretty damn hard. Not only was I more traumatised from the whole hospital experience than I thought, I was massively sleep deprived, incredibly anxious (about EVERYTHING), felt pretty inept when it came to knowing why my baby was crying, and perhaps more than anything else, I felt terribly guilty that this experience I'd been longing for was so NOT enjoyable at this point. (Spoiler alert: I did come to find it all very enjoyable). Everyone around me was so loving and supportive, especially my beautiful husband and my wonderful mum. But I needed to know that I wasn't the only new mummy feeling like this. And then I joined Transitions, this wonderful course/mothers' group/ support group for women having their first baby, second baby, seventh baby even! From the very first get-together, I felt an enormous weight had been lifted off my shoulders, just through discovering these other women were going through the same experience as I was. As the weeks went by, we became more and more comfortable with each other, discussing and sharing really personal things about ourselves as women, as wives, as mothers, as friends. I remember looking forward to our Thursday morning get-togethers SOOO much, knowing that I had found a safe, supportive space, with two incredibly special facilitators, where I could unload all of the crap I'd been storing up from the week and feel rejuvenated.

Now, many months later, the course is well and truly over and we have sadly had to say good bye to Jane and Suzanne, two beautiful women who facilitated our course each week. But the seven of us, all strangers a year ago, continue to meet weekly in each other's houses for our dose of mummy solidarity. We have become friends, confidantes, supportive peers in a time of our life where we probably need it the most. Our babies, all born within 2 months of each other, are growing together and becoming little people in their own rights. 

 As we approach that marvellous milestone – our baby's first birthday – I would like to say a heartfelt thanks to the beautiful women in my life who have given me love, strength, understanding, the perfect cuppa tea, much-needed hugs and belly-laughs. It is an honour to stand in the sisterhood of women, of mothers, alongside each and every one of you.

2011 – The Year for Challenging my Baby Brain!

It's the beginning of a brand new year, a time for resolving to do things differently, to do things better. In my case, it's a resolution to do SOMETHING. Particularly, something to do with my brain. You see, as a high school Drama and English teacher, I've always used my brain in a fairly intense way, relying on it for its ability to juggle many things at once (marking, lesson planning, meetings, etc..), its talent for memorising things (a game of Memory, anyone?), its ability to generally help me operate in the world in an articulate way.

And then I had a baby.

Now, I've never been one to subscribe to the baby-brain theory (or placenta-brain, or pregnancy-brain) that says once you've brought a life into the world, you're intelligence faculties simply give up the ghost. But after becoming a mummy for the first time 10 months ago, and being on leave since a few months before that, I now know baby-brain is the real deal - in my case anyway. Let's explore pre-baby and post-baby life in the form of a helpful table:

Pre-baby

Post-baby

Excellent photographic memory. I could quote a passage from a novel to you, then tell you which side of the book it was on (ie. left or right) and approximately how far down the page it was located. Excellent vocabulary. Spelling fanatic. (I get cooler by the minute, huh?) Tell me a birthday or a phone number once and I'll never forget it.

My mind is a thick, soupy brine that has images, words, ideas, and thoughts all mixed up; sometimes I'm not sure if I'm remembering something that happened, or if I dreamt it, or if it was in a movie I saw. Vocabu... huh? I'm thinking of a word for that thing you do when you don't remember anything anymore. Starts with an F. Oh, bugger it. I can't remember. Okay, what's the number for the Thai take-away place we've been ordering from for 5 years? Let's look it up online. 3333 3333. Repeat in head till I get to the phone. 3333 3333. Quick, it's on the way out! Pick up phone, dial 3333 33... oh dammit! Too late!

But you know what? It's not all bad. Actually, this new state of forgetfulness lends a fairly dreamy quality to my life, a dreaminess that helps me forget that I didn't get more than 2 hours sleep in a row last night, or that I was annoyed with someone for some reason that probably didn't really matter anyway. And all the mental space I have now (cue tumbleweed blowing across desert plain), and the energy that used to be utilised in the left-hemisphere of my brain has found its way into other parts of my brain more needed in mummying. Like reflexes. The other day, while making a cake, dearest daughter was playing with the plastic ware on the floor beside me. Over-exuberant in her playing, she began to topple over and without even thinking, I shot my right leg out and caught her. Or multi-tasking. I can be cooking dinner (there's a cooking theme emerging, isn't there?), watching darling daughter play nearby, answer the phone, carry on a conversation with my husband, put on a load of washing AND check my email, all simultaneously.

Perhaps most importantly, I find myself open as a mummy - emotionally, physically, intuitively - able to nurture my daughter and surrender to this phase of my life where incredibly complex, intellectual thought processes don't have much currency.

But it's not over for the old grey matter upstairs just yet. And this blog is all about giving it the occasional workout. It may not be literary, it might not even make complete sense at times. But it's exactly where I'm at as a new mum.