Last night I got my haircut in the last appointment of the evening, and oh, my stars and garters was it relaxing. I was one of a handful of people in the salon, and it was quiet and peaceful (minus the hairdryers and the radio of course). I didn’t feel like the Most Unfashionable Person in the Salon (even though, as usual, I totally was) and I nearly fell asleep when the assistant washed my hair. Is there anything better than having someone wash your hair for you? Scalp massage + warm water = bliss.

The woman who cut my hair gave me what is probably the best haircut I’ve ever had the last time I was there in February. I think I freaked her out by telling her that, but she did a perfectly wonderful job last night as well.

However, getting my hair cut always reminds me that no matter how much I do in the self-grooming/makeup department, I do a fraction of what many women do. For example:

Me:

Hair: haircut every two months or so, depending on when I get over my anxiety of having my haircut to make the appointment in the first place.

Nails: short, unmanicured, often with chipped remainders of polish on them, often peeling.

Toenails: always manicured but usually once every 2 months or so - unless I’m hugely pregnant and I can’t see my feet. Then I get obsessive about having painted, polished toes.

Makeup: eyemakeup, powder foundation, lipstick applied at 6:30 am. Not reapplied for the rest of the day. Absent as if it were never there by 5pm. I so rarely look in the mirror I try to stay away from anything that might run or smear simply because I wouldn’t know if it were taking a walk across my face in the middle of the day.

Stylist:

Hair: Long, effortlessly shiny, in some simple but probably complex style of multiple sections held back from her head in one giant huge barrette. I could not attempt this look at all, even if I had long hair, without looking like I’d taken an egg beater to my head.

Nails: Mid-length, acrylic French manicure. Perfectly filled in. Very flattering.

Toenails: No clue. She was wearing Manolo high heeled boots.

Makeup: Perfect eye makeup, foundation, lipstick, blush, mascara and perfume. At 8pm. After having worked since 11. Seriously. It’s just not fair.

As much as I like keeping the bare minimum of style so that I can get out the door with as little effort (and as much sleep) as possible while avoiding looking like a complete slob, sometimes I wonder if maybe I ought to pay closer attention to myself.

I’ve tried acrylic nails, and find them to be evil. And manicures are a huge waste of money since the polish chips and peels off within 2 days, and why spend $7-10 a week on something that doesn’t last?

I find highlights to be too much effort and way too much money for too little time before I have to go back for a touch up, and forget dying my hair altogether. For one thing, I like my natural color, and for another, the smell of the hair dye would send me over the edge of nausea. I can wear and reapply makeup, but I usually just forget.

When I sit and think about it, the impracticality of all that personal maintenance rears its head and I realize I’d rather spend the time and money on a book. Once a nerd, always a nerd. But, this nerd sure does appreciate a good hair cut.

I just had to call my cell phone provider because suddenly I had no voicemail. I don’t like voicemail. In fact, I hate it. It takes too long to get through when you’re listening to messages, and even if I do, when I call the person back who left me the message, they or I or both will end up repeating the info anyway so what is the point?

The weird thing about my provider is that they have overly friendly tech support personnel. Seriously. They have a running monologue in some attempt to be more personable and they tell you every thing they’re doing - like I care? I don’t want to know what it is they have to do. I just want to have my problem fixed.

So since I had no voicemail, and I spend a portion of my day underground, I had to reactivate the voicemail on my phone.

“Hi, I have no voicemail on my phone.”

“Ok, I understand you have no voicemail on your phone and I apologize for that and I can understand how that would be an inconvenience and I can see how that would be just devastating.”

“Not really. I don’t like voicemail, but I should have it on my phone.”

“Ok, I understand you should certainly have voicemail on your phone and I understand that it should be working. Let me look at your account to see why you don’t have voicemail, and I apologize for the inconvenience again, and I see that you have no voicemail. I can see how having no voicemail would be a problem. It can be very difficult to get through your day and do your business.”

(At that point I had to cover my mouth with my hand. Yes. I can’t ‘do my business’ without voicemail.)

“Ok, I see that your voicemail account was inadvertently turned off and let me turn it back on and I apologize again for the inconvenience and may I place a test call to the handset to test the voicemail system?”

“Oh, that’s not necessary. I can test it and set it up from here.”

“Ok, would you like me to stay on the line while you set up your voicemail account?”

“So you can hear me have to try three times to leave a coherent greeting? Nah. I’m good. But thank you very much for your assistance.”

“You are very welcome, ma’am, and I apologize again for the inconvenience of not having voicemail and I am pleased to say we have fixed your problem so you should have no problems with voicemail from now on and should be able to use voicemail whenever you want and if there’s any other problems with voicemail or your handset please call us here any time day or night and thank you for giving us the opportunity to serve you.”

“Ok. I’m going to go do my business now and set up my voicemail. Thanks.”

Arranged in numerical order for your ease and convenience!

1. One thing I forgot that is somewhat annoying about being pregnant is that you have no, well, water pressure. You have to pee? Feels like the same level of urgency, somewhere between “OMG run NOW” and “Hey, see that ladies’ room? Move on in there pronto. Trust me.”

And yet there’s never any real indication of how badly you have to go - or how much. Could be gallons, could be a tablespoon. But it’s allll equally urgent. And equally a panic when get that awful feeling, and you’re on the subway, in New York where it’s impossible to go to the bathroom without paying for a meal first because there are no public lavs you want to use.

2. I tried to read the profiles of the victims on the Times’ site. I started to cry at my desk. Had to stop.

I’m such a wuss.

3. And speaking of crying, where did my eye makeup go? I put it on at 6.35 this morning. By 9.35 it was gone. I didn’t rub my eyes or otherwise wipe the makeup away. Even when I started weeping at my desk, I blotted in a ladylike fashion so as not to look like a smeared Tammy Faye for the rest of the day.

And yet, two tears and three hours, and my eye makeup is gone. What was the point of it?

4. I am getting my hair cut tonight, because the salon I found in February has late hours on Wednesday nights, and Saturdays are insanely booked up. On one hand, I’m kind of excited because I can get that taken care of on a weeknight, and relax while having my hair washed (the most blissful feeling, really - hot water and a scalp massage? Ahhhh), and then go home to sleep.

The only problem is, it’ll be all professionally blown out… just in time for me to go to sleep. And I’ll have to wake up, shower, and attempt to recreate it myself tomorrow, because somehow, overnight, my head increases in weight to about six tons, and flattens my hair into a straight line that stands out parallel from my face by about an inch. This is not an attractive style for anyone. So I’ll end up paying for the full treatment, only to go home and… sleep on it?

Meh. It’s still better than taking two-plus hours on Saturday to get it done then in a crowded salon when I’d rather be sleeping in and hanging out with the manly men.

5. We’ve gotten into the habit of Doing Things on the weekends as Freebird grows up and has more energy to burn off during the day. Last weekend it was the Jersey-fied Gymboree clone near our house (a huge success), and this weekend, if the weather is indeed nice, we’re going to go to the zoo near our home.

I’m now scouring the internet for a selection of toddler-friendly activities for the wee dude.

6. The news is reporting that the Governor of NJ’s motorcade was going 91 mph on the Garden State Parkway at the time of the accident that seriously woofed him up.

Let me put fears to rest: that is completely normal for the Garden State Parkway. There’s often two lanes, and one is going the speed of sound, while the other is going the speed of light. Jersey drivers are, for the record, insane, and in a hurry. 91? Most people from Jersey are reading that and probably thinking, “Yeah. I’ve definitely hit 90 on the Garden State. Might have been yesterday. No, it was this morning.”

Reading these tips on how to talk to kids about violence like the shooting at VTech from KidsPeace (dude, a 125-year-old nonprofit? Word.) helped me calm down a bit, too.

My inner 10-year-old is very appreciative. 

1. There are responsible thinking people whom I’d probably enjoy having a beer with (pregnancy not withstanding) who own guns.

2. Owning a gun does not make you evil.

3. It is far too easy for individuals to procure guns, ammunition, and the ability to kill a lot of people in a short time.

4. Protecting the right of an individual to own an assault weapon or a semiautomatic handgun is ludicrous. Under what circumstances, aside from causing harm to another person, would such a weapon be necessary or even “a right?”

5. Even other countries are astounded that it is relatively easy to procure semiautomatic weapons:

There was harsh condemnation for U.S. gun control laws. In Sydney, Australian Prime Minister John Howard said Tuesday the university shooting in Virginia showed that America’s “gun culture” was a negative force in society.

“It’s not a question of an Indian professor getting killed in the firing. This is related to the American gun laws,” said K. Subrahmanyam, a former member of India’s National Security Council. “We can’t do anything about it. It is something which has happened in the United States. They have got to change the law.” Source: CNN.com

I hate the American television news channels. I hate that the bottom line of eyeballs and sponsors is more important than any so-called journalistic responsibility. I hate blanket coverage of events as they unfold, giving the viewer the idea that the news channel has some idea what’s going on. I hate that naming a source becomes secondary to being first. I hate just about everything about the American television news machine.

On the night of September 11, 2001, when the planes had stopped diving into us, the news was in mass hysteria. Pretty much everyone was in hysteria, understandably. But no one knew what was happening, and even though the actual events of that day ended by 10:30 am eastern time, for the following 24-48 hours, it didn’t matter if the information came from a disheveled man wearing a tin foil hat. The news media would put it on the air. So long as they prefaced it with “sources say...” the news reported anything and everything it heard. It wasn’t so much a filter of information as it was a giant mudbattle, and they just threw everything on the air to see what stuck. Whether or not they’d have to retract it was no big deal; it was in the moment of a developing story. They can say whatever the hell they want.

On 9/11/01, I heard multiple reports of a box truck stopped on the George Washington Bridge, driven by turban wearing men, and found to be filled with explosives. A bombing of the bridge was stopped in the nick of time! Another terror attack foiled at the last moment! I remember hearing that report at least three separate times on three different news stations, one radio, and two television. Was it true? Did it ever appear again? No. And no.

There were rumors of survivors in air pockets of the Trade Center rubble, and even then I knew that was bullshit. Not that I’m a forensic expert, but no one, nobody, no how, could survive that big of a building coming apart and falling down on top of them. It simply defies all laws of physics and the limitations of the human body.

And even as the news media threw whatever it heard on the television and radio, it also censored itself. Well over 200 people jumped out of the World Trade Center before the towers fell. No one talked about that beyond the eye witness reports that day, and the pictures of the falling men and women the next day in the New York Times. The jumpers are never mentioned, out of tacit agreement.

So the news media gets to decide what to say, what not to say, and how to say it, and the driving force behind it isn’t some myth of integrity, or some attachment to journalistic “standards,” whatever the fuck those are. It’s all about the ratings. Used to be if a news establishment had a scoop, they had at least a day to figure out how to present it - the next morning’s paper, or the 6 or 11 o’clock news. Now they have to run to airtime because some other blanket news station WILL beat them to it.

There’s no responsibility in news reporting anymore, and there’s no need for it. Sponsors are salivating that their ad is going to air at a time when every eye in America is glued to the television. The news will say anything, do anything, to remain relevant and competitive, and there’s really no solution to make it better. The news media has to be a private enterprise, because God forbid the government own any of it - not that it doesn’t wield considerable influence already. We’d never hear anything of value if the White House ran the news completely. But because it’s a private enterprise, it’s driven by ratings and the monetary value of each minute. It’s not about accuracy or even truth. It’s about being first with the banner headline, first with the breaking news, first with the random bit of information, inflated until it’s a shadow of its former self, thrown at the viewer over and over until it sounds almost new and newsworthy.

CNN is still red-bannered and growing more awful by the moment, and it’s time for me to stop reading it for awhile, since no one has any concrete information yet and news outlets have reached the point of “Let’s put anything up on our site and verify it later!” I cannot abide that, especially the thought that parents, unable to reach the Virginia Tech website for news from the university itself, might be reading and feeling worse and worse, not knowing if their child is safe. It makes me ill, the irresponsibility for the sake of ratings (but ratings drive advertising, and as Don Imus will tell you, most decisions are made on the back of the almighty ad dollar).

So: other news that’s not violent, sad, heartbreaking or scary:

The origin of the Easter bunny! A Pagan Goddess named Eostre - isn’t it always the goddesses who are fabulous?