Revelations two

During a recent business trip, I sat close to a woman who had a near perfect head of hair. I couldn’t stop staring at the glossy black curls, loose and beachy, sort of Jennifer Aniston on the rebound yet structured, well formed - , so that I puzzled for longer than I should be willing to admit to you, whether she’d employed a wide barreled curling iron, hot rollers or the newly revived sponge curlers everyone has been discussing.

And for God sakes, I wondered, what kind of miracle hair product had she used?

I watched with utter fascination (and unreserved envy) as the day passed; her flawlessly coiffed mane wore no signs of resignation. A few times I shushed Shaune out of my head. I could imagine what he might say about the length of her bangs; the hazards of knowing a person too well, I guess. He’d likely give me his very unfashion forward opinion that she was in desperate need of a trim; maybe make a clever joke about sheep dogs.

But at dinner, even after we’d walked several Toronto city blocks to the restaurant, a windy cold evening with which I took no chances, my hair pulled haphazardly into a ponytail, this woman’s hair rolled elegantly off of her shoulders, unchanged, smug, pristine.

I asked her, finally, what the secret was, admitting even to myself that my 10 hour preoccupation with this stranger’s hair might be a teensy bit excessive.

Friends, this is my very long and winded way of telling you that I have added a fifth style to my hair repertoire!

You see, up until now, I toggled fairly consistently between straight and curly (which is a very fancy way of saying left to air-dry with a touch of mousse) and also ponytail and messy bun (by which I mean: ponytail pulled halfway through). 

And it’s never been documented anywhere that I know of, but I do believe sometime after Deaglan was born and just before I came back to work after Naveen joined us, I may have broken a regional record for most days donning a ponytail.

Braggy I know. But true.

Anyway, apparently like Dorothy, I had the power all along; because while for years now I’d been using my flat iron to straighten my hair, in one flashy blindsiding second this woman – Jillian – gave me the stunning news that it can also curl it.

I love epiphanies. If you ask me, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with an A-ha moment.

It was like that a few months ago when I took a long hard look at my cleaning routine. I’d been struggling as any full time working parent often does. Every week I crammed all my cleaning and laundry to-do’s into one Sunday afternoon. I vacuumed. And I scrubbed. I folded.  And I put away.

But by Tuesday morning the house always looked like we’d been raided by the feds searching for an illicit stash of heroine.

I remembered that a few months back, Shaune had subtly dropped into conversation that while growing up his house was always tidy. Naturally, I took this very, very personally and questioned the foundation of our marriage, considered whether this was the right time to get in touch with a Divorce Attorney. 

But then the next time I saw Fran, my mother-in-law, who I adore by the way, I asked her outright. “How did you work full time as a nurse and keep the house clean with four kids?”

“I got a lot of my cleaning done in the early mornings before everyone else was awake.”

A-ha!

So for two months now, I’ve been getting up 30 minutes earlier than usual and cleaning the main floor of the house. It’s changed my life. I can’t tell you how much happier we are. The messes still get made, in fact Naveen actually thinks we live in a landfill, evidenced by the way he eats toast and casually drops the crust on the floor without skipping a beat, and I still do laundry and a more thorough cleaning on Sundays. 

But I have to admit I no longer cringe at the thought of someone ransacking our house mid weekday. Sort of like that wearing clean underpants in case I die today rule.

The kids on Sunday evening after they'd been bathed and clothed by Shaune. You'll want to note their mismatched pyjamas, matching pieces for which were in the very same drawers he got these.