Amy Lu's View

Wednesday morning I got my Real ID. #AchievementUnlocked.

This triumph was especially sweet as it came on the heels of a crushing defeat: On Tuesday, I completely failed to get my Real ID.

Yes, I spent almost two hours on my 50th birthday waiting at the DMV and left empty handed. (I tried to get a regular ID as a Plan B but the wait was just as long). I didn’t fail due to lack of proper documentation (I did at least do enough of my homework to come with all the necessary paperwork) but I simply did not take into account current DMV wait times.

I was almost in tears as I left the DMV. Not only was I disappointed and frustrated, but I started to panic. Since my license was soon to be expired, was I going to have to take the written test? Or horror of horrors, the behind the wheel test?

And no, the librarian couldn’t find the answer… but luckily my husband could. I did NOT have to retake any test as long as my license wasn’t more that a year expired. Hopefully I wouldn’t have to wait in line that long.

But when and where would I achieve success? I did not want to try the Minnetonka location again, so what location should I gamble on? (Hennepin County allows you to make appointments online but there weren’t any available for at least two weeks).

I looked obsessively at the Minnesota Driver and Vehicle Services website to consider which location would be the best, and finally decided to try Roseville.

Overall, my trip to the Roseville license station was highly successful (once I figured out where to get a number so I knew where I was in line) and I only had to wait about half an hour. Other customers did make comments about how long the wait was but I just smiled knowingly.

I don’t actually have my Real ID yet, as they will send it to me, so I just have a piece of paper that is my temporary license. I don’t know if it’s super snazzy or holographic or what. I do know my photo is awful and I look frightened and harried but that is an authentic representation of the whole Real ID experience.

I hate wasting time, so I’m trying to focus on what I learned during my whole quest to get a Real ID to make the whole experience useful:

• Don’t wait until the last minute to do things
• Don’t fall victim to the Sunk Cost Fallacy: Just because you’ve waited over an hour at the DMV, it’s not worth it to keep waiting if you’re obviously not going to get helped before they close
• Don’t jump to freak out mode as soon as things don’t go as you go hoped or planned

Hmmm, none of those takeaways are groundbreaking, but sometimes we have to keep learning the most obvious things over and over until we really learn them.

I’m sure I have learned this before, but once again, I am surprised that Karen Carpenter’s birthday is so close to mine (just one day before.) Thank you Crooners. The song that Dan Chouinard and Dane Stauffer performed was actually “Yesterday Once More,” which is awesome, but “Rainy Days” is a personal hard-to-beat favorite.

Here are the based-on-texts I sent myself thoughts during the Crooner’s Birthday Club tonight:

• Shout-out to the Key of D (I agree…only 2 sharps)
• Singer Dane Stauffer played the 60 Card (as in I don’t know the lyrics to this song because I’m 60)…I basically did this at our last Pigeons gig (for 50)
• “Playground battlescars”–don’t remember what that references anymore but it sounds awesome
• The Old Fashioned at Crooner’s sucks but the Manhattans are good
• “That’s the Night That Lights Went Out in Georgia”…whoa…what was up with the 70’s?…a pop song about the injustice of the criminal justice system?
• It’s really cool that the bassist has a foot tambourine
• I also have no idea what the lyrics to “Benny and the Jets” are or what they mean…

And a tangent about the menu…Crooner’s, why oh why did you get rid of the vegetarian mushrooom ravioli? I’ve been planning on having that all week! AND the vegetarian sandwich? I was so impressed by your range of vegetarian options and now they are gone. The risotto is fine but not as good as the ravioli…why did you choose that?

 

 

 

I missed my second day of 50 Days of Amy because I had a case of vertigo last night. No blogging for me, as I had to go to bed ASAP–even (slightly) before 10:00!

For me, vertigo isn’t related to heights or Hitchcock, but is basically really bad, ongoing bed spins that seem to hit out of nowhere, without the fun of earning them through drinking. Vertigo makes it hard for me to walk without falling and makes me slightly nauseous. My case is similar to  Louise 2’s from “Arrested Development” (and much less severe).

Let me assure everyone that my vertigo is NOTHING SERIOUS and not related to any other problematic medical condition. I know this because I did see a doctor when it first hit almost three years ago, when I did panic and think I had a brain tumor or something. It’s an inner ear thing.

Luckily, after the first few original “attacks” (so dramatic!) my vertigo went away. I think it’s back now because I’ve had a low-level cold/allergies/sinus gnomes? for the past couple of weeks that are messing with my sinuses. I’ve had three instances in the last week or so, and hope it will once again miracuously disappear. But I do have  (expired) medication (which I barely needed and can hopefully get refilled) and Physical Therapy exercises (which I’ve lost the instructions for but can hopefully find) if needed.

But the main takeaway is that my blogging streak is already thrown off! However, I’m not going to count this as a failure, due to extenuating circumstances. I will not be deterred or discouraged.

AND I have learned that I can backdate posts! I will try not to abuse this power, but it makes me feel more like I’m adhering to the rules of my blogging streak if I can have posts with the “correct” date.

Onward with 50 Days of Amy, and hoping that from here on out, the only things that make my head spin are alcohol or love!

I’ve been thinking about and preparing for my 50th birthday for a long time. I want to make the most of it. I want to do something special. 

I present to you: 50 Days of Blogging. 

Hmmm, that may not sound so special, but one thing I have learned from running is the love of “streaking”—challenging yourself to do something (running at least a mile) for X number of days. (There has also been and will continue to be drinking and socializing to celebrate my birthday, and hopefully a cruise).

While I do hope to do a 50 Day Running Streak for my birthday, I also wanted to do something different. Something that I love doing, but that would be a challenge. So I decided to challenge myself to blog for 50 days in a row, starting on my 50th birthday (today).

It’s like the Twelve Days of Christmas, but it’s 50 Days of Amy. The count starts on my Birthday  (today, March 3) and ends April 21. 

Blogging feels appropriate because not only do I enjoy it, it gives me a sense of accomplishment and makes me take at least a brief pause to stop and notice and contemplate. It makes me feel like I have some control over the crazy fast pace of the passage of time, which I am definitely aware of at 50.

For the purposes of this challenge I will cut myself a lot of slack. It’s not as easy to quantify as “post” as a “mile” so I will say a “paragraph” will count as a blog post. I had aspirations of having a theme for this challenge, but in order to accomplish this, the theme will just need to “Amy”—whatever I’m thinking about that I can manage to wrangle into some type of blog post. 

Including photos or images to accompany my posts will be optional (finding these can be surprisingly time-consuming). I will allow myself to have lame post titles and to chop big topics/rambles/rants up into several posts. I may not attempt to have snappy conclusions. 

And in that spirit, I wrap up with a simple, “Let the Streaking begin!”

Last night I posted one of my more popular Facebook posts:

Chad to me, “I don’t think I have the same relationship to salad that you do.”

Now I am hardly a social media influencer so “popular” is relative, but this post received more “likes” and comments than my posts usually do (Yay for qualified successes!) so I feel I should set the record straight: NO ONE has the same relationship to salad that I do. Or at least no one I know or can imagine knowing.

A paraphrased rendition of our conversation that led up to the famous/infamous Chad salad quote:

• Me: Aren’t you excited I got our most favorite salad dressing?
• Chad: What?
• Me: You know, the ginger sesame dressing. You can only get that at Cub.
• Chad: What?
• Me: Don’t you like that? I thought you liked that…
• Chad: Sure, I like that, but I don’t think I have the same relationship to salad that you do.

It’s not just that I like or love or even need salad. It’s beyond preferences and feelings. As Chad so uniquely and humorously describes (in a way I never would have thought to) I DO have a relationship to salad. And like all relationships it’s time-consuming and filled with emotional nuances.

This was not always the case. Far from it. I didn’t even eat salad as a child and teenager (I barely ate vegetables beyond tomatoes and cucumbers) and disdained it, “cleverly” referring to it as “rabbit food.”

I only begrudgingly started eating salad in desperation as a funds-depeleted college exchange student in England. I often felt so food deprived (especially when going out to eat) I would consume whatever I could, even salad. Living in England planted the seeds of change, but the transformation from despising to needing salad was gradual. I definitely was not on Team Salad when Chamy began.

My love of salad is not motivated or sustained by health concerns or being a vegetarian. It comes down to two simple factors/beliefs:

1. I love eating.
2. Salad gives me the most eating “bang for the buck” as I can consume the most volume for the least amount of calories (as long as I am careful about dressing, cheese, avocado, nuts, grains, fruit, etc. As a result I am super picky about salads prepared at restuarants or by others. A Ceasar “salad” may be tasty but it does not fit my salad criteria.)

So just because Chad doesn’t have the same relationship to salad that I do, it does not mean he is anti-salad. He doesn’t necessarily seek it out, but he will consume it in moderation.

Now Chad not only doesn’t have the same relationship to salad that I have, he doesn’t have the same relationship to food (and we are probably both outliers on opposite ends of the spectrum). Not only do I love eating, I love spending as much time eating as possible.

Chad, on the other hand, resents the time and effort that eating requires on a daily basis (special occassions are an exception). He gets emotionally and even physically exhausted at times by eating.

Surprisingly, our different orientations to food actually works well for couplehood, perhaps even better than if we were more similarly matched. Or perhaps it’s most important we share the bond of weirdness when it comes to food. Our biggest challenge is that Chad has a touch of misophonia (aversion to the sound of eating) and salad-eating is a loud endeavor.  (I’ve learned to always have background noise on and/or not be too close to Chad when salad consumption is in process).

There’s a popular saying/meme “Alcohol–because no good story start with: ‘That one time I ate a salad.’ ” (Of course there are variations for specific types of alcohol). I’m clearly not opposed to alcohol, so I object to two of my loves being placed in a false dichotomy. It’s not alcohol OR salad. Or maybe if alcohol is the start of the story, salad is the prequel.

…What I was thinking when I titled this blog post. Or more precisely, this blog post draft.

Well, calling it a “draft” may be rather aspirational. When I just opened my blog and went to drafts, I was totally mystified with this draft, that actually consisted only of the phrase “God Only Knows…”

Having saved just a title for a potential blog post isn’t actually that surprising. As I’m not that organized, I often save post ideas as drafts, and sometimes I try to capure the idea with nothing more than a title. (Post ideas that have yet to see the light of a computer screen include “Being an Alcohol Snob,” “”How My Family Lacked Holiday Traditions,” and “Musings on my 30th Class Reunion”–yeah, that one’s been sitting around for almost two years…).

But I was, and am still, surprised that I have no idea what I intended to write about based on the title “God Only Knows.” God Only Knows WHAT? When our cats will stop living in the basement? When I will finally go to the dentist? When I will stop injuring myself because I run when I shouldn’t? When I will learn how to set-up my keyboard and plug it into the Pigeons From Hell sound system? When I will stop getting annoyed because Chad leaves his coat on the back of a chair (instead of hanging it in the closet?) When I will stop dyeing my hair and accept my natural color? When I will stop being annoyed if people say “you can’t eat that because you’re a vegetarian”? When I will stop getting excited by my birthday? When I will ever write my friend Pat? When I will stop opening bags of food (chips, cereal, etc.) in a manner Chad finds aggressive and weird (and aggravating)?

So many possibilities, but I still don’t know what I thought my blog post could be about. But, after staring at the line “God Only Knows” for several minutes (maybe only seconds) I at least know what it refers to: The Beach Boys song “God Only Knows.”

Now seems as good as time as any to divulge that for most of my life, I have not liked the Beach Boys. In fact, I have actively disliked them.

I’m not going to apologize for that (hey, we like what we like and I don’t support the concept of “Guilty Pleasures” or, in this case, “Guilty Displeasures.”) I don’t think we should pretend to be who we’re not or embarassed for our preferences, but I also think we can change our mind and our tastes and our interests as we learn and experience new things. I think getting older can mean being more open-minded. I think as a youth I disliked the Beach Boys because they were “dumb” beach music. I also disliked beaches–I was a self-conscious Midwesterner who liked environments that facilitated covering one’s body as much as possible.

The passage of time has not lead me to becoming an expert on the Beach Boys, but I have learned that Brian Wilson is widely regarded as a musical genius and that his life story is incredible. I have more appreciation for their skill and musicality, and I was even moved by “God Only Knows” when I heard it played during a Guthrie theater production a few years ago. It’s haunting and aching and lovely.

So when we heard the song performed this past Saturday by two of our favorite performers (Dan Chouinard and Prudence Johnson) at one of our absolute most favorite places in the world (Crooner’s) it definitely affected me. That’s one of the things I love about going to Crooner’s–I learn about “classic” music that’s new to me and learn to hear and appreciate familiar music in a new way. Plus, Crooner’s creates such a sense of community through shared music experiences, that I even look forward to talking to strangers at dinner (like the delightful couple that we shared a table with on Saturday).

Maybe my mysterious blog title should be taken at face value, and I was going to ponder the question posed in the song: “Where would I be without my beloved (i.e. Chad)?” (Definitely shouldn’t tackle that tonight, especially in a post that is already too long when I’m tempted to pontificate about the potential of the multiverse).

I officially declare the “Chamy Staycation of 2020” a success.

It may be the only staycation of any length (3 work days plus the weekend) we’ve ever had–definitely the only one in recent memory (and yes, for me, “recent memory” only covers a range of 3 hours–3 months).

I’ll admit, I was a little nervous about this staycation thing. Would we be able to strike the right balance of getting some things done that we wanted to (that is, “decluttering”) with doing things that were fun? And let’s get real, would Chamy be able to weather their staycation together time without the distractions of a typical vacation–we rarely (much to Chad’s sadness) just spend time at home.

And would decluttering just devolve into bickering? Ah, “decluttering” is such a cute word, and totally not accurate. We are well beyond cluttering. We were decrapping.

I think the key to our staycation success was managing expecations. We knew we couldn’t possibly do all the decrapping that we need to in just 5 days, but we made significant process. Yes, there were (and continue to be) moments of despair as our successes only seem to highlight how much we have left to do, but this is a journey, right? Now that we’ve started down the road to Having Less Shit it can only get better (although at the moment, one of the rooms we’ve tackled actually looks worse).

And I can celebrate the personal satisfcation of having figured out how to take paint and electronics to the Hennepin County Hazard Waste Drop-Off Facility in Brookly Park. (The staff was super nice but I found it extremely confusing!)

Of course we didn’t spend the whole staycation decrapping–there was Day Drinking (we made a Happy Hour at 3:30, excitingly scandalous, at Centro, a place we usually don’t frequent) and we met with our minister (NOT for Day Drinking) and hung out with some good friends and checked out the newish NE Arcade and saw the new Harley Quinn movie and watched episodes of the Harley Quinn animated series (I’m a little shocked but how much I adore both!) and I made pizza for National Pizza Day. And we went to the gym every day, because that’s how we roll and there was Day Drinking and chip binging to attempt to burn off.

So as staycation ends I’m feeling accomplished and inspired and wanting more–more time to decrap and go to bars/restaurants I’ve never or rarely been to (not to mention all the museums!) and to just hang out and chilax with Chad and the furry members of the household. Luckily, I do have quite a bit of vacation days stored up so there could be more staycations in my future.

I don’t think I’ll feel like I’m missing out, though, if I never go to a hazardous waste drop off site again.

The Golden Rule isn’t always the best approach.

I always try and remind myself of this when it’s Chad’s birthday. If I did unto Chad as I would have Chad do unto me for his birthday, it would be a month-long celebration with much fanfare. It would officially be a BIG DEAL in which much attention, accolades, and praise would be showered upon Chad.

Of course Chad would hate that.

Chad’s attitude about birthdays isn’t because he’s upset or embarassed about getting older. He’s not going to be bothered if you tease him about being 50. He just doesn’t like being the center of attention unless he’s on stage or in the pulpit (and then, bring it on!) and he doesn’t like all the bother and complications of most social events.

So I knew that Chad would not enjoy a big celebration for his birthday, but I was inspired to give him an experience that I was pretty sure he would enjoy–being mentioned for his “Blursday” on his favorite podcast, “”Too Beautiful to Live” (henceforth referred to as “TBTL”).

Now I am not nearly as big of a fan of the show as Chad (mostly because I lack the technical skills needed to easily play a podcast), but I am aware that on Thursdays the hosts do a “Blursday” segment where they wish Happy Birthday to listeners. (Thursday + Birthday = Blursday, I assume, although I was originally trying to Google it as “Blersday.”) And thus my quest for getting Chad featured on Blursday began.

Okay, my quest mostly involved sporadically thinking “Hey, how do I get Chad on a Blursday?” Finally, on the Wednesday of the week before his birthday, while Chad was at his long-standing weekly Geek Night (wherein he plays some type of role playing game with a cast of regulars) I sat down at our laptop and tried to figure out how to make him a featured Blursday recipient.

I searched the TBTL website, but no instructions were readily apparent. Admittedly I had enjoyed a few drinks by this point in the evening, but all I could find was the “Contact Us.” So I clicked on that and submitted a slightly over-the-top but entirely true message about how much Chad loved the show and that he should get a shout-out for his 50th birthday. And, I donated 50 dollars, because hey, a I am not above buying my way onto a podcast.

I even filled out the “Ten of the Week” Questionnaire on behalf of Chad so he could get featured in the weekly TBTL Newsletter, just in case that had anything to do with Blursday (I won’t waste space here trying to explain the “Ten of the Week” but if you need a conversation starter with Chad, now you have one!)

I had done my best, and now all I could was hope that by the next Thursday (January 30, Chad’s actual birthday) the podcast deities would see that he was mentioned as part of Blursday.

The next evening, January 23 (a week before Chad’s birthday) we were hanging out in our kitchen post-Happy Hour listening to that morning’s episode of TBTL. The hosts were talking about the “Ten of the Week” and Chad remarked that he would have a hard time answering the question ” Who was your very first celebrity crush?”

“I can’t stand it anymore…I can’t keep the secret any longer!” I exclaimed, and proceeded to tell Chad the whole saga of my Quest to get his Blursday acknowledged. This included my filling out the “Ten of the Week” questionnaire for him and answering “Princess Leia” to the celebrity crush question. Chad was pleased and bemused, especially by my on-going inability to keep a secret.

Chad said that the TBTL team actually responded to Blursday requests pretty quickly, so he could actually be mentioned on that day’s show. So we kept listening, and sure enough, Chad got a shout-out. I was so excited, and also happy that I got mentioned, too. It was a Win-Win. The only downside was that my plan came to fruition a week early, but hey, that just gave us another week to savor our “15 minutes of fame.”

Chad even said later that he was secretly hoping that I would get his Blursday on-air. SCORE. #HUSBANDBIRTHDAYWIN.

You can listen to our moment in the spotlight at approximately 1:38:00 via this link: https://www.tbtl.net/episode/2020/01/23/3082-so-pitted.

Andrew: Amy wants to wish a Happy 50th Blursday to Chad.

“Thank you for bringing such a sense of community to his life and so much humor and joy and for giving this long married couple something to talk about that usually doesn’t end in a fight. We love discussing how we are ‘Andrew’ or ‘Luke’ and using that to figure out our various personality and relationship quirks.”

Andrew: That’s from Amy to Chad and by the way I think Amy is not as familiar with the inside workings of TBTL [SO true!] but she also donated $50 to go along with this Blursday.

Luke: WOW Aim [I LOVE that Luke called me “Aim.”]

Andrew: So that was really, really sweet. I’m not sure if she wanted me to mention that [Of course I did, it got me/us more attention] but I thought it was really sweet.

Luke: It’s not required it’s always appreciated, a little gratuity, where are we going to go with that? Grease the skids if you want to get Chad’s Blursday to the top of the list!

Andrew: Want to get your blurs wet?

Tonight I finally decided to get my oil changed. It’s been on my mental “to-do” list for quite a while, and the flashing “5%” (indicating I only have 5% of my oil life left–thank goodness I don’t have that warning for my actual life) was adding to my overall background anxiety.

While I was waiting to get my oil changed, I decided to write down a “to-do” list of things I hoped to accomplish with the rest of my evening.

Spoiler alert, the last item on the list was “Blog.” A-ha! Could I turn my most current to-do list into a blog post?

A BIG TANGENT: I regularly struggle with what to call a “to-do” list. Chad used to label his to-do lists “STD” for “Stuff To Do,” what a clever boy, and I want to be creative like him.  I’m curious about if he still does make STD lists–afterall, STI, with the “I” standing for infection, is the more woke term these days. Would “STI” be a “Stuff to Instigate” list? Perhaps more importantly, does he still make lists at all and why don’t I see them? Are they all digital these days?

BACK TO OUR REGULARLY SCHEDULED BLOGGING…Here is the list I came up with tonight (annotated for context and entertainment)

• Finish ordering Chad’s birthday presents
• Write my friend Pat a letter (Pat doesn’t do social media, email, texting, and I’m phone call averse, but we both like letters)
• Create a Facebook Event for our upcoming Pigeons From Hell gig (February 27 at the Acadia, be there!)
• Respond to a friend’s email about Applause Theatre workshopping a play he co-wrote
• Send out various emails to organize upcoming Applause Theatre staged reading of new plays (February 19 at the Roseville Library, be there!)
• Print out tickets to various upcoming plays and concerts (if I wait to the do it right before the show I usually get seriously stressed) and make sure said events are on our calendar
• Pack gym bag with tomorrow’s work outfit and necessary grooming supplies and implements so, weather cooperating, I can go straight from gym to work in the morning–also need to make salad and pack lunch and other food provisions
• BLOG

Did my to-do list work as a piece of blogging literature? Actually, I’ve thought about using one of my to-do lists as blog fodder for quite a while, as a way to capture a slice of my life and the desires and aspirations of the moment. But was this list worthy to be the one saved for posterity? Should I have waited for a list that was more interesting or kooky? (Oh who I am kidding, I am very likely to recycle this idea).

I think I DO like this list because it’s an average Amy list–not a pressure filled-one created in the midsts of a looming deadline. It’s not an outlier.

I also feel really grateful that everything on this list (with the exception of packing my gym bag, making a salad, and printing tickets) is something I’ll enjoy doing. I may get frustrated if I don’t make the time to do all these things, but they are all things I can recognize that I want to do and I choose to do. And even the iffy entries aren’t unpleasant and support things that I really want to do.

In the play that Chad and I were recently in, (“Uh-Oh, Here Comes Christmas“) I had a monologue (that I adored doing) in which I complained “…my things to do list was growing…like mold.” And yes, sometimes I do feel that way about my to-do lists, but tonight, my list represents possibility more than obligation.

And as you may have noticed if you read my blog at all regularly, I like lists. To-Do lists (with “necessary” tasks), lists of things that are my “top whatever” or things that I’ve learned or done or am thinking about or hope to do. I find lists especially appealing as I turn 50–what a great way to record all my various highlights–until I remind myself that 50 is a pretty big number for a list.

I’m not at all systematic or organized about these lists…I’ve briefly done the listography thing but most of my list making is haphazard. I love the ability to organize and record my thoughts and feelings and memories in a very loosely-organized way: just slap a bunch of slightly related ideas together with bullet points without worrying about connecting words or thoughts or grammar.

Hmmm, I think I see a possible “List of the Reasons I Love Lists” in my future.

 

My dad used to do many things—both intentionally and unintentionally—to annoy my mother. One of these was to refer to the “beauty salon” she frequented as the “beauty saloon.” 

Whatever one called it, my mother regularly attended Julie’s Beauty Studio in Fall Creek to have her hair “done.” It wasn’t quite “Steel Magnolias,” or maybe it was—the rural Norweigan/German Wisconsin version (“Titanium Sauerkraut”?). Julie was a longtime friend of my mother’s (sadly both women are now deceased) and although as a teenager I wasn’t aware of much open camarderie or bonding going on at the saloon (sorry, SALON) I think my mom definitely derived some comfort in her visits.

My mom also seemed to have an almost moral stance that hair could’t just be—something needed to be done with or to it. Hair needed to be managed: cut, colored, permed and styled. Perhaps imposing order on one’s hair was a way to create some order out of the chaos of life.

While I certainly spent many hours of my life as a child and teenager at Julie’s Saloon (whoops, I mean SALON—I can see you grinning Gordon!) as an adult, I have had no regular hair maintenance program.

This means that except for a brief stint in my mid-20’s when I had really short hair and had a regular stylist that I saw at JC Penney’s at Roseville (Ed), my visits to a hair care professional to get my hair cut have been highly erratic. I’ve reached the stage (rock bottom?) that I’m lucky if I get my butt to Cost Cutters/Fantastic Sam’s 2-3 times a year to get my hair cut.

This state of affairs is NOT because I’m cheap (although I am) or because I’m making some type of social/aethestic statement about how I prefer my hair “natural”—I absolutely do NOT. I could write an entire blog just about coloring my hair and the quandries (logistical, environmental, health-related) that poses.

Suffice it to say that I do not feel compelled to accept (much less afirm) my hair in its natural state, but I find it too inconvenient to enlist professional help on a regular basis. It also becomes a viscious cycle: because I don’t regularly see a stylist, I feel there are more barriers to just dropping in at a discount facility.

It’s not that I don’t trust the Fanastic Sam’s and Cost Cutters of the world (I’ve actually had really good luck as their patron) but there are extra hassles. Will I be faced with trying to make awkward small talk with a stranger? Will my stylist mock me if my roots are too promiment or my hair is too dry and damaged? Will my stylist be insistent about doing something with my eyebrows? (Okay, this only happened once, but seriously, if I gave a damn about my eyebrows  would I be at F@#$ng Cost Cutters? Plus, after the car accident I was in when I was 16 I am just really happy that I have both eyebrows…)

Time to wrap-up the ranting: It’s a new year and a new decade, and I feel very accomplished that I’m kicking it off with a successful haircut (the stylist even complimented me on my DIY hair color job). I’m also trying to learn a little life lesson by ruminating on how even though I think my hair looks so much better, I was still a little sad to let go of all those inches (my hair was the longest it’s ever been pre-haircut). Change is hard, even when we want it, even when we think it’s good.

I can’t help but smile when I remember that as a teenager I thought I couldn’t possibly have long hair past 30, because then I would be way to old for that nonsense. It would just be sad, and make me look like Willie Nelson.

Now that I’m almost 20 years past my self-imposed deadline, I don’t quite know what to think. I do worry that sometimes I look like Willie Nelson, but getting older also makes the threat of helmet hair more and more real.

As I toy with the idea of New Year resoluations, I don’t foresee myself ever being a regular salon patron but perhaps I can make a little more of an effort to do some regular hair upkeep. And I can rebrand my DIY hair efforts as “Amy’s Beauty Saloon.”