As long as your hair is.

That’s how long I’ve known you. (a coworker said this to me the other day)

I can measure my life by the length and/or color of my hair. White-blond and uncut until 2^nd grade when I bravely sat in the beautician’s chair and had at least 12 inches chopped off by my own design. Bowl cut in 3^rd grade. First perm in 4^th. In 6^th grade I cut my own bangs about 2 inches too short, just in time for winning the science fair and the cheerleading/basketball awards banquet.

I started seriously cutting my own hair in 8^th grade when I was 14. I had a spiral perm and didn’t have to worry about cutting evenly because it was so curly. In 12^th grade I chopped my hair so short I looked more like my brother than I had in years.

Right after graduating from high school I bought my first box of hair dye. Auburn. My mother helped me pick it out. It was 13 years before I saw my natural hair color again. I went through various shades of red and purple and pink before I got sick of it and felt the need for a do over. So in February of 2008, in the middle of a pretty brutal north Idaho winter, I stood in my bathroom and shaved my head. Shiny bald. With a razor. And I told myself I was not allowed to cut or dye it for one year.

I made it a year and a half before losing it and chopping my hair and dying it Ronald McDonald red.

And then I moved to Oregon and decided I’d probably have better luck finding a job with no hair rather than hair that was a strange faded orange-ish red-ish color.

So I shaved my head again. Flawed logic I’m sure, but I did find a job with my shaved head. And I’m pretty sure they would not have hired me with the orange hair. I think I’m pushing things there with my visible tattoos. God forbid I ever pierce my nose again.

But back to my hair. It’s growing. Half an inch a month. Which most people tell me is really fast, but I find the whole process painfully slow. I have trimmed the back a few times, but only to avoid having a mullet. All in all I’ve left it alone. And it’s driving me nuts. It’s in that strange in between stage where it’s not short enough to be a cute Mia Farrow pixie cut, and not quite long enough to do anything with.

But I’m not going to cut it again for awhile. I’m tired of starting over.

(and I will add more pictures to this as I find them.)