O Sae, Can You See?

I’ve been mulling a new hair cut for some time. Not just a trim up or a reshaping mind you, but an all-out, change-the-look Hair 'Do. I grew out my Fat Lady Chop Off after Howard and I got back together, taking 2 years to snip out the layers. I managed, barely, to get my hair down to my shoulders for my wedding, and I liked the look so much that I decided to get it keep on growing.

About a month ago, I realized that my hair is too long. It has no shape, it doesn’t look professional, and really, it's unflattering. My stylist had been recommending a new cut for the last 2 or 3 visits. You’re thin now,” she remarked. “You’d look really cute in short hair. And it would make you look even taller and thinner than you are.” Did she say thinner? Count me in and cut me off!

This Saturday was the day. I was due to get a color too, and clearly my stylist had forgotten about the cut. She hadn’t scheduled enough time to do both. I watched her face turn arsenic-poisoned white, and was about to recommend a reschedule when she said. “I can do it. Let’s go.”

We quickly relocated to her cutting chair, talked it over to remind each other of what I wanted: blunt-cut bob, short enough to keep off my face. OK, got it. Scissors went to scalp, and away we went.

When she finished a few minutes later, asking the requisite, ‘What do you think?’ I frowned. I looked like Peppermint Patty, all square-headed and choppy. My stylist frowned with me, “Well, this is what you asked for. I did exactly what you wanted.” Maybe, but couldn’t she see that I looked like a Block Head? I couldn’t bear to hear the defensiveness in her tone, and I knew she was running behind already, so I told her to leave it be. Maybe my hair was in shock. Let it go, and let’s get coloring. At least the gray could get covered.

Well, color-me-brown, but the hair remained Bowl Cut With Legs. My face looked fat and awful, and my hair just hung there, lifeless.I pulled it back into a ponytail to get it off of my face, but it just slipped right out of the holder and splattered all over my cheeks and neck. It was a disaster. By the time Howard and I left the parking lot, I was practically hyperventilating.

Now, perhaps the stronger women in the crowd would have demanded a re-cut, but that is not me, and anyway, I was unconvinced that my stylist could fix it. Howard did his best to comfort me, but I knew that it was hopeless. I looked like one of the Monkees. And not the cute one, either.

I made it home, somehow, but then when I went upstairs to see if I could pin it back, the horror of the right angles hit me again. It was horrid. My bangs lay against my forehead, lifeless, and the sides flopped like beagle ears at my jaw line.

I began to cry, and then to rage. How could she have done this? Why wasn't I more specific? How am I ever going to make this work? Howard listened to my lament as long as he could, and then he pulled his phone out. “Let’s go fix it. Today. We’ll find a salon, explain that it’s an emergency, and see what can be done.” I waffled. My god, what if it got worse? I'd have to put my head and my ego into the hands of a complete stranger. Besides, what salon could take a hair emergency at 3pm on a Saturday?

Well, as it turns out, Zazu Salon & Spa could do it. Remember that place where Howard went to get waxed after I tried to kill him with the at-home fur remover? That' the one. They had a stylist who could see me at 4:15, and who understood that this was my 2^nd cut of the day and a Follicular 9-11.

Once at Zazu, I was led in by my stylist’s ‘assistant’ a Marina or Martina, some barely 20 girl with gleaming white teeth and lint-free black clothes. She sat me down, offered me something to drink and told me that Sae would be with me in a moment. Sae, pronounced ‘say’ or ‘sigh’, whichever I preferred.

Okay, then. I wasn't very keen on trusting this Disaster Recovery to a woman who couldn't decide how to pronounce her name. But I was here already, and I couldn’t live with my Basset Hound Head another minute. I slunk down in the chair and waited, avoiding the mirror.

A moment later, she appeared: a pretty, bubbly Japanese woman half my age sporting a sassy ‘do with highlights that cost more than my net pay. “Hello, I Say,” she said, and then I realized she was introducing herself. “Let me see.” She examined my hair, listening and nodding in time to my breakneck speech. She nodded. “I understand. Look.”

She lifted my hair and puffed it up around my chin. “This is too choppy. Makes your face look square. I'll round it out, give edging. It’ll be very nice, super-cute. You ready?”

I could not respond. She was warm and that smile tempted me to hope, but it was too much to ask just yet. Sae went on, smiling. The turquoise beads around her neck danced and jostled as she talked, her hands dancing around her animated face.

“This happened to me too, once. Very bad. But it grew out. It was OK. And I can fix you. You’ll see.”

My paralysis continued. I couldn’t move or speak. She signed and put her hand on my shoulder. “Look, it's ok: you’re not ready. Let’s just do a consultation today. Let me do a little bit of work around your face-no length off. Just a little to smooth it out. I won’t charge you, and you’ll feel much better. Then you can call me in a day or two, when you’re ready. I'll be here, and we’ll fix it. OK?”

Well, I don’t know if she’s the Greatest Salesman in the World or what, but that clinched it for me. “No,” I told her. “It’s all right. Go ahead.”

At first, I couldn’t bear to watch. Later, I couldn’t bear not to. The Hell On My Head became a halo. Sae talked and laughed and told stories while she snipped. She chatted with her assistant, shouted over her hairdryer and complimented Howard over and over again. “I can’t believe he’s here!” she kept saying. When I told her that he had made the appointment for me, I thought she would kiss him.

When it was over, neither Howard nor I could stop smiling. Sae gave me her card with her schedule on it. “Call me in 2 weeks. You’ll need a bang trim. No charge. Schedule 15 minutes and I’ll fix your bangs. Don’t forget. See you then." She gave a firm handshake to both of us and bounced off.

When we left, Howard, spoke up. “I think you should stick with her. Whatever reservations I had about short hair, they’re gone. You look great. She was awesome, and she wants to build a relationship with you. I think you should let her.”

And so I will.

I have my new bob, and it’s exactly what I wanted: chin length, out of my face, neat, trim, and flattering. Sae mentioned that she wants to soften my hair color too. “More brown, make you look pretty,” she said. And you know what? I believe her.

Saturday morning, I had the worst hair cut of my life, and from someone who I’d trusted to scissor me for 3 years. I was physically sick from the results and certain that I had no choice but to hide behind headbands and wait until it became un-wretched. And then, within hours, the mop on my head became a Picture Perfect coif, done by an angel wearing a black tank top, designer Capri pants and slip-on spiked heels. By dinnertime, the memory of the Block Head was so far gone it was as if it had happened to someone else.

It never would have occurred to me before Saturday that I should change stylists. My old stylist was fine. Far from perfect, but good enough for what I needed. We didn’t need to be friends. I had friends, and I certainly wouldn’t let any of them cut my hair. Sometimes a relationship is bound up by its parameters, and that’s ok.

I’m not saying that Sae and I will ever be buddies. In fact, I doubt we will. But she dropped everything to help me, a total stranger, at the end of what had to be a very long day for her. She listened, she told me exactly what she would do, and she offered to walk away if that’s what I needed. And then she fixed it all. I can't imagine what else she could have done, and what she did was nothing short of miraculous. I went from looking like Raggedy Ann to a sleekly coiffed professional in less than an hour. I couldn’t think of a reason to switch stylists before Saturday. And now I cannot believe that I ever went back to Stylist #1.

Sometimes things happen for a reason, even if that reason is completely hidden for a while. Sometimes it's time for a relationship to end--no blame on either side; it's just just time for both parties to move on.

And sometimes we get to find out why we're with someone, and why that someone is the very best person for us, no matter the circumstances. If it weren't for Howard, I'd still be curled up in a corner of my room, weeping and wailing over my bad luck. Instead, I'm bouncing around in my new 'do and thanking all the heavens for my perfect, made-for-me Man.

A the S(ometimes Why)

Sweetness and Blight

So first the important news: Writing cures PMS.

I spent last month plotting out my daily mood and weight, hoping that the ‘cycle of my cycle’ might yield some clues as to why I’m out of sorts for 12 days of PMS followed by 7 days of period. For months now, I’ve had 3 bad weeks out of 4, and I was starting to wonder if I had Something Serious going on.

As it turns out, I have nothing to report. I had a bottom at the beginning, but after I got past the early days, I leveled off around the 7 or 8 mark and never went down. I had an angry day, but it was a mere shadow of what normally happens. And the PMS I did experience was, on reflection, just an echo of What Usually Is. So clearly, journaling cures The Angries. And the Sleepies and the Saddies and even some of the Bloating. I gained this cycle, but it was just shy of 2 pounds instead of my usual 3.

So the Quantitative Method apparently folded into the Hawthorne Effect where, in studying myself to see what I could improve, I improved.

But the science is not all wasted, because I discovered something important. For example, I now ‘bottom out’, weight-wise, on Wednesday. I think it’s because I’m doing yoga on Sundays and Tuesdays. It could also be because I weigh in on Saturdays and I’m so freaked out that I’m still in the 154 range that I am super-strict all weekend. This spills into the week until Wednesday when the results start to show and my body starts demanding food. Three weeks in a row, I was Perfectly Pure until Wednesday, and then I caved. Last week, I managed to get through Wednesday only to see Thursday take its place. By the time I got it under control, it was too late to weigh in at Weight Watchers. I actually did something I thought I would never do: I stayed away from the meeting, too embarrassed to weigh in with yet another gain.

I also discovered that I crashed whenever I indulged in sweet snacks. I would let a few jelly beans pass my lips and then I’d be nearly comatose all afternoon. Not only would I be jittery and near unconscious, but I was powerfully hungry immediately after the ‘treat’ and for hours afterward. It was as if the sugar triggered Famished Fatty and set her loose into Candyland. And then, once I'm stuffed to the gills, I'm so shot from the sugar that I cease to function.

Friday night, I had some fat free Reddi-Whip (that does have sugar in it), and 10 minutes later, I couldn’t keep my eyes open. This was no I’m Busy and Therefore Tired exhaustion, either. This was anchors-on-the-eyeballs, organs drooping, wring-me-out/stick-a-fork-in-me wiped out. Even Howard noticed that I couldn’t function properly. I'd been fine all day, and so my accusing finger pointed to the aerosol can in the refrigerator. It couldn't have been the jello. Must have been the white foamy stuff. With great remorse and hoping I was wrong, I marched to the refrigerator, pulled out the rest of the Canned Sweetness and tossed it into the trash.

I have heard for years that sugar is a drug, or that it can behave like one in the body. The human body cannot properly digest refined sugar. It taxes the pancreas, runs roughshod over the adrenal glands and plays havoc with your brain. Speaking personally, sugar is like crack for me, I can never have a little. If I taste it at all, my body lunges forward as if I’ve never stopped eating it. No, that’s not right. It races me to the candy counter, demanding that I catch it up from all the candy it’s lost since my last binge.

I don’t know that I’ll ever be able to prove empirically that I’m addicted to sugar. But I don’t have to. I know what it does to me; it crushes me under its boot and then it goes after my husband. If it’s feeling particularly ornery, it goes after my son. No, not ‘it’. I. Me. I turn into a shrieking nerve cell dancing in a vat of boiling oil.

No matter what the cause, I am tired of it. No amount of sweetness is worth this agony. Whatever pleasure I derived from desserts and ding-dongs, it’s gone now. All that’s left is the grating, incessant need to feed a habit that is long past pleasurable.

So, effective last Saturday, I am sugar-free. It’s going to take some time to get me to 100%, since sugar is a little godlike, in that it’s everywhere. There’s even sugar in WW yogurt --or artificial sweeteners, anyway. In some ways, Splenda and NutraSweet are worse than sugar. They are sweeter, and they make the cravings stronger. So I switched away from my beloved WW yogurt to plain yogurt with fresh fruit.

It is taking some getting used to, and it involves a lot of conversations with myself about how I'll be happier and healthier in the long-term. Howard is a trooper about it, even blending up a mix of strawberries, raspberries and mangoes to ladle over the yogurt. It's nice, but it's no WW, and it's going to be an adjustment.

I’ve also plucked out all the ‘oh they’re fat free, so they’re ok’ snacks, such as jelly beans and Twizzlers. I've even eliminated the lone Jolly Rancher I sometimes allowed myself in the afternoons if I got dry-mouthed. It’s all gone. I am sugar-laden no more.

The weekend went pretty well, but I definitely had some tough moments on Monday at work. I’m struggling through it by reminding myself that I don’t eat sugar anymore-that it’s not one of the foods I eat. I’m trying to find a positive spin, some way of affirming this. I don’t want to say, “I can’t eat sugar,” or even “I don’t.” I want it to be something ‘yes!’. I have to think about that one. It’ll be hard, but that’s good. It’ll give me something to obsess about while I march through detox.

I’m on Day 5 now, and it’s picking at me. I am sitting at my desk, wishing that I lived on an organic farm with only lean protein and low-index carbs to ‘tempt’ my afternoon appetite. But I can already tell that I’m better. I’m not as hungry when I get home, I fall asleep more easily, and my mood is more consistent through the day.

It’s going to be hard, but it’s going to be worth it. The times I’ve been sugar-free have been better than anything teeth-rotting that I’ve put into my mouth, including peanut butter pie—and that is saying something. My skin clears, the puffiness recedes from my face, and my energy level zips up into the troposphere. Yanking the white powder out of my life does more for me than does exercise, organic fruit and days full of sunshine.

I don’t know why I’ve resisted the obvious for so long. I suspect it is denial. I am so powerfully addicted to sugar that my body has worked for years to convince me that I am not. Oh, you can have a little. Oh, you’re thin, you can afford a tiny indulgence. Go on, take it. It’s so good. You’d be so popular if the octopus came back.

Well, I don’t care why I waited 43 years to get a firm grasp of the obvious. I can’t fix those times ‘back there’. I can only move ahead, clean and clear and every day, farther and farther from my addiction.

A the F(ive Days Clean)