Making the Cut

Is anyone else obsessed with haircuts?

I know that you're supposed to cut your hair relatively often (every six to eight weeks) to keep it healthy. I get mine cut more like every three weeks. What is wrong with me??

I'll definitely admit that, like everyone, I have some strange little quirks, and this is one of them. (Another is my complete repulsion by dry skin. I put on lotion probably every 15 minutes. The feeling of my dry hands or feet is like nails on a chalkboard to me! If L. has dry hands I can't even hold them. When I bus tables at my hostess job at Applebee's, I have to put lotion on every time I take the cloth out of the hot water because it dries my skin out like crazy.) I've gotten four haircuts this summer (so four haircuts in two and a half months). And in each of those haircuts, I've gotten one-to-two inches snipped off. But my hair always grows back to the same length. In, like, a week! Hyperbole aside, it's out of control. And this little habit of mine is racking up the costs.

For the first week or so after I get it cut, I'm happy as a clam. It feels lighter, healthier, shinier, and it's more manageable. When I let it air dry, it does so nicely. My bangs take their rightful shape (I've been sporting side bangs since way before they were trendy, starting c. 2003.) Then suddenly, around two weeks in, things begin going awry. Layers that used to curl in so nicely now rebelliously flip outwards and become curly (?), even when I have sleek, straight hair. Highlights seem to come out of nowhere (I got blonde highlights last summer, hated them, and dyed my hair chestnut again to cover them. It's been a year and all my stylists say that I should mostly have regrown my natural hair color by now, but mysteriously I seem to have begun growing blonde hair directly from the root). By three weeks in, I'm obsessing. I go back and forth on deciding if the expense is worth it. I browse websites of my favorite salons and compare prices for services. Basically I think about it constantly until I finally go and get another haircut. This means I spend half my year thinking about getting haircuts.Is this all in my head? (Ha-ha) I don't think so. I don't know how I'm getting ridiculous levels of this hair-growing-super-vitamin, since half the time I forget to take my multivitamin supplement. The same thing happens with my nails. I play guitar, and so I have to keep them short, but some days I'll go to grab my guitar and look down and wonder why the hell my nails are back again. I suppose this means I'm healthy, or something, but it costs too much to be healthy!

Anyway, I'm off to go compare prices. I want to resist the urge to go to Williamstown's only salon, which is the feed-you-swiss-chocolate-while-massaging-your-feet-type, and will basically cost me half a day's worth of pay...

[Images from Salon Bogar, Beauty3sixty5]