Gidget’s New ‘Do, and Will We Ever Be Normal Again?

This girl is exhausted after spending an entire two hours at the groomer (mostly because Mommy had a conference call and couldn’t pick her up as soon as she was done). She is not exactly half her size, but a lot of what had looked like pudge really was just fluff. She’s ready for summer.

I need a haircut too, at least a reshaping. I wasn’t thrilled with my last cut, it was too tight on the sides and a bit too long and floppy on top. All I want is to have all the layers nice and even all over my head, okay? Why is this so damn hard?

Maybe my hair is just getting crappy in my old age. I’ve always had very fine hair, but a lot of it. Getting past 60 I can definitely see it’s nowhere near as thick or healthy as it used to be, at any length. Between the awkward haircut and my limp hair, I’ve been bummed.

So I consulted my oracles: Google and Buzzfeed, as well as Amazon, and decided to try this stuff: Pura D’Or. I’ve only been using it for a few days so I can’t speak to whether it’ll actually grow new hair or anything, but I do notice my hair is looking bulkier, so I’ll take it. It’s expensive, obviously, but it really only takes one pump to get a ton of rich lather/conditioner. Super-long hair might take two pumps, but even so, this really will last a long time.

Now that Gidget has a summer hairdo, I need to make an appointment to reshape my own.

I’ve updated and posted my resume, because, yeah, the job still sucks. I realize the odds of finding a new job over 60 are slim to none, but if I don’t try, the odds are obviously zero.

On a related note: I’m getting better at dodging conversational land mines with my co-worker (the one who asked me about the quack “doctor” peddling dog dewormer as a cure for COVID). It was a close call. The following happened over IMs, thank GOD – face to face, I might not have been able to control my face.

We were talking about work and then he mentioned that he was getting his first dose of the vaccine, and I said I’d just had mine on Friday, all perfectly sane conversation. I said maybe we’d be back to normal this summer, if the spring breakers don’t screw it up for everybody….still fine. He said something about the stupidity of that behavior, it’s too soon, etc. Still fine…. Opening up too soon…yep, still in agreement.

Regarding everything opening too quickly, I said, “I think it was Dr. Fauci who compared it to spiking the ball on the five yard line.” I thought I was making a common football analogy, appropriate to the conversation.

Silence…we’re doing this over instant messaging, so I saw ………dots of him typing something…erasing….typing something else….erasing….

Then he finally wrote, “I don’t know, I just don’t trust him.”

You could have heard the tires squealing in my brain as I reversed away from this topic, because I have to work with him, but I really, really wanted to ask WHY anyone would “just not trust” a world-renowned expert, but share links to discredited nonsense from right wing media on a variety of subjects.

And I had just answered my own question, so ABORT!! ABORT!! BAT-TURN! GET OUT OF THIS! Let’s just talk about work again.

It’s so unfortunate that we are here, constantly trying to avoid conversational land mines because we no longer share a reality. We had actually had a rational conversation, a shared reality, until I said “Fauci.” It was like some sort of trigger word. It was particularly weird since I was just saying something we had already agreed on: We could be at the end of this if we don’t screw it up by opening up too quickly. This is, God help us, apparently a “liberal” position these days, and he was in agreement…until I used the wrong name.

We are not going to be what we thought was normal again, are we?