"Having A Blonde Moment"

In my humble opinion it's never advisable as a woman, to make big decisions on the cusp of yet another birthday. Sometimes I suspect myself of self-sabotage...ie. doing things to myself, for no particular reason (the more extreme and random the better) just to wind myself up. Yesterday was the perfect example.

Lately at bedtime I've been watching 'Suits' on Netflix (very funny show due mostly to wise-cracking, handsome, arrogant, and supremely clever lead) in an effort to completely disengage from reality. 

For you see life continues to be a struggle with the double bonus of being both stressful and soul crushingly mundane. The house sale is dragging along to such an extent that any excitement I'd felt about moving has now dissolved into a distant cold ache. I feel like a kid contemplating next years Halloween costume the day after Halloween, who has just been told there is a strong chance the family might convert and become Amish in the meantime. 

To make matters worse, we are dealing with a freeholder who may or may not be a vengeful sociopath, and prays the sale will fall through so that he can offer up a paltry sum and take the flat off our hands for the cost of a Christmas Ocado order. (He also exhibits, in my opinion, all the behaviour of someone who is incredibly sexually frustrated, and due to his difficult nature and profoundly hairy back, I hold out little to no hope of that situation rectifying itself anytime soon.)

Anyway, I digress. The monsters are now producing so much laundry per day as to make two daily loads a necessity. Mostly I feel like a Cinderella who gets up hoping to go the damned ball every single bloody day, but doesn't stand a chance because it's laughable that she'll be able to complete her daily chores. And so I try (I really do try) to be as positive and good natured as one can be whilst sniff-testing other peoples dirty pants. I even on occasion even find myself humming along to fetching melodies with the in-house spiders and the odd blackbird - but to be frank, I am beginning to sink into the quagmire of the mediocre and mundane, and no amount of mimicking Mary P. is going to change that.

Ah, except another birthday looms on the horizon...this week in fact. Not one for celebrating my birthday (after twenty-one it's all about diminishing returns), I caught a great line on 'Suits' the other night where someone is commenting on the leads expensive haircut, and I thought to myself, "It has been AGES since I've had an expensive haircut." (In fact, my last haircut was done by yours truly one night a few weeks ago when I rather fancied a few extra layers, and I did not too bad a job thank you very much - good enough anyway to fool the owner of the salon a few days ago when I went in for my consultation.)

So this year for my birthday, instead of adding to my outrageous collection of coats and black ankle boots, I decided to treat myself to a truly expensive haircut. Like the guy in 'Suits.'

At the salon, I randomly floated the idea of 'balayage' (an expensive free-hand painting technique to add texture to your waves...and a great word to boot). I was quite clear about my personal abhorrence of orange tones (once having spent a summer dousing my brunette locks in lemon juice and emerging like a Latino gang member at the start of school in September.) I tentatively pulled out a picture of a brunette with blond bits at the end and the hairdresser clasped his hands and declared, "Then that is what you shall have!"

And indeed that is kinda what I have. I didn't exactly expect to be quite as blond as I am - or as 'frosted' - as the husband has dubbed it. Last night in the salon, with all the mood lighting and candles it looked rather California sun-kissed and cool.  However this morning, in the harsh light of day, (and without the benefit of the two complimentary flutes of Prosecco I was given throughout the three hour procedure), I do look a touch...unnatural. However, I am already composing an email to the lovely hair stylist (who made the grave error of giving me his personal email address last night), suggesting ways he might like to try and 'tweak' it. I fully expect it to end up in his spam folder.

I read somewhere that our thoughts can have an effect on our outer appearance (hence all those self-affirming mantras we're supposed to say to ourselves in front of the mirror) and given the early onset dementia I keep nattering on about, I suppose it is time to retire the 'brainy brunette' look and give way to the blond that is desperately trying to get out (if only she could remember the way)...