Fuuuuuuck. I'm sorry, but fuuuuuckkkk. Groan it with me, it's the only way to express my feeling about my haircut. Growing out layers sucks, and at some point you will experience the Really Shitty Stage. I am there. I'll be 46 next week and I have a six-year-old's haircut. Think Scout in To Kill a Mockingbird, complete with too-short bangs. (And why the fuck did he even trim my my bangs? I wanted to grow them out. Fuuuuuuck.) Think Stepford Soccer Mom Extreme Bob. Remember, I'm 46 next week. I think I look pretty damn good for my age, I am not too bugged by being 46, but right now I am bugged by being 46 with this haircut. With this hair I look like a nun or a gym teacher. Or the nun who teaches gym. This calls for bolder makeup and jewelry until this passes, if not an actual bag over my head. Why did I have to get there right around my birthday? Am I not suffering enough here? I know in two weeks this too shall pass, that's why I'm growing out the very short layers, my hair grows too fast to maintain super-short hair - a cut every four weeks max at $36 a pop does add up, not to mention the scheduling issues involved - and I got sick of having to figure out how to style my hair every four days, as it grew like the time-lapse pictures of a bean plant. In two weeks my hair will be fine, it will have passed the gym-teaching-nun-soccer-mom-six-year-old bob and my hair will once again assert its wavy independence over a mere stylist's scissors and enough styling product to hold the roof on in a hurricane. But right now I want to barf, and I'm very frustrated, because there is no way in hell this cut will work with my natural fine wavy hair in this extreme humidity, so I am doomed to look like shit for a couple of weeks, at least. Then it will grow past this ugly stage and it will be okay. It will be okay. It will be okay....I can tell you this much, nobody's touching my head with scissors for two months. Maybe three.

Murphy's hair came out okay, but she could have taken his legs shorter and his tail is way too long. I can fix the tail with a quick snip or two, and I may get disgusted enough to take the legs shorter too. Why is it so hard to get a stylist, for human or canine, to do the same thing twice in a row? His cut was fine last time, I take him back to the same woman, she says, "Do him the same way?" I say yes, and yet, it is not the same. Why does "the same way" mean "not really the same way?" I'm not picky, I just want the parts of the dog that drag in the wet grass or have Hygiene Issues to be trimmed neatly to minimize the Issues. I do not examine every follicle and say "Oh, his left ear has three hairs that are too long!" But when the hair around his ass is too long, I am the one who will deal with the consequences at six a.m. on our walkie. I expect to not have to deal with that after plunking down the big bucks for a professional grooming. I think that's reasonable, especially since I pay as much for his haircuts as I do my own.

There is only one answer for this trauma, I need a glass or two of wine and an email to the Boys for a felting yarn fix. And avoid mirrors like Dracula, no, that's not right, vampires can't see themselves. Oh, to be a vampire for the next couple of weeks....