Pass the Shears

During our Africa trip in the first year of our marriage I began cutting Jared's hair...and I've been doing it ever since. At first I buzzed it with the electric razor, but neither of us are into that look any more; so I use scissors the old fashioned way.

Yesterday I decided to take a whack at my own. At one point (in our low-budget circumstances) Jared returned the hair-cutting favor; but since then he's refused - it's too much pressure. My hair was driving me crazy, so I decided to turn in the wardrobe mirrors and have go.

Some of you know that I've been growing my hair out since last winter - in Arab culture women's hair is long. Maybe later I'll shorten up when I understand all the cultural meanings of hair. But until then, I've been working on growing it...until yesterday. I don't know why exactly, but I cut a lot off! I intended a trim and a re-shaping. Instead I took off about three inches! That's not much, but since I have curly hair, the shorter it is, the more it curls up and the shorter it looks. As I was cutting, it looked like less in the backwards image of the mirror; plus it was pretty fun; and I got carried away.

It looks fine, but it's a bit sad since just this week (1) my friends were remarking (favorably) how long my hair was getting and (2) Jared noted how pretty it was long. So, kinda too bad that I just chopped the long part off.

Next time I won't be so drastic, and maybe I'll even beef up on my salon vocabulary so I can try to explain what I want in Arabic and let a professional have a go. (But to be honest, I'd rather mess up my own hair than someone else. Even in my own country I'm always suspect of haircuts!)