Friday Night Miscellany

So, tomorrow I’m going with the ladies from the investment club to a spa for some special treatment. Among other things, I’m supposed to get a hair cut. I’m panicking now because I haven’t the faintest idea what I want to happen with my hair. Since my former hairdresser moved a long distance away from my office in March, 2006, I haven’t had a hair cut. I haven’t been able to find a reasonably priced substitute downtown, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to pay $45 to $60 for a dry cut – not even including a wash and style! That’s ridiculous. So, I’ve been trimming my bangs myself – quite inexpertly, I might add. I’ve tried all the usual tricks – holding the hair up and snipping from various angles, plastering the hair down on my forehead with tape and then attempting to cut by following the line of the tape, dividing my bangs into small sections and cutting each section. It makes no difference. I am genetically incapable of cutting anything, including my own hair, in a straight line. So, I’ve had some interesting experiments with bangs during the past 18 months. I’ve tried looking online for hairstyle ideas – what a joke that is! And I’m too cheap to plunk down $6 for a hairstyle magazine. I’ve looked through countless advertising sections in the newspaper for the past several weeks, diligently searching for something! My efforts have yielded two hairstyles, neither of which I’m thrilled with but I figured I’d at least be able to use them as a starting place to explain to the hairdresser what probably should be done to give me a new flattering style. So, I’ve not been in the best of moods lately. I made two – yes two – trips to the mall this week. I generally don’t like to go there unless it is absolutely necessary, like all my clothes having holes in them or they spontaneously combust. I’m not a shopper. That’s the other thing the ladies are supposed to do tomorrow – after we finish at the spa. Go shopping. Yech. Back to my ill-fated mall sorties. The first one was on Monday night after work, to return a pair of slacks I ordered online that, when tried on, where about eight inches too long! Not only was I charged the ridiculously high rate of $7.95 to have this single small parcel shipped to me, if I wanted to return the slacks to the vendor I had one of two ways to do it: by mail – paying my OWN shipping and using my OWN packaging, or hauling the slacks designed for a woman seven feet tall to the local catalog center. I arrived shortly before 6 p.m. – to find a line 20 people long, and one clerk behind the counter. I shall not regale you with the rest of the tale, which is ugly, really ugly… The second trip to the mall was tonight. There was an advertisement from Boston Store for a certain item I thought I might buy as a Christmas present for Don. The price was right, but it was only available at this special price between 6 and 9:00 p.m. tonight and midnight and 6:00 a.m. tomorrow. What was I thinking? I decided to go tonight, so I stayed on the bus and rode it all the way to the mall, just has I’d done Monday night. I shall not regale you with the rest of the tale, which is ugly, really ugly, even uglier than Monday’s tale. I did, however, have the privilege of waiting for 15 minutes for an order of Big Mac and small fries, carry out, from the McDonalds in the Food Court, and the 12 year old clerk behind the counter acted insulted when I flagged her down and asked her where my order was. The girl does not know how close she came to having her head taken off with a swipe of my fingernails… I caught the bus home. Got off at my stop and, although I was tired, disgusted and pissed off, and it was freezing cold outside to boot, I had a prescription that needed to be refilled if I was to take my blood pressure medication tonight. So, who the hell is going to be at Walgreens at 7:15 p.m. on a Friday night. Nobody. But it was still going to take "at least an hour, because we’re really backed up" said the pharmacy person. I bit back what I REALLY wanted to say and said I’ll come back tomorrow. All right, he says, we’ll take care of it tomorrow. Gee, nothing like customer service. So, I’m exhausted and I’m going to bed. I have to be up early tomorrow in order to get beautified and then shop without buying anything at all until I drop. Being a woman is hard work.