My hair is a beast. Taming her is never easy, but over the years I've perfected a regimen that suits my style from business meetings to soccer games. With her out-of-control-curly-nature I experimented with every look in the book. She was asymmetric with a bob. She was even long and straight to below my shoulders. And for a good while she was shorter than my eyebrows and blonde.
That's the look we had when we met Kaz.
He fell in love with 'Annie Lennox' before he transformed into 'Tracy Ellis Ross'. But that didn't bother him one bit. He was simply happy that I didn't complain about getting my hair wet when we went to the beach.
We have always been a simply happy couple. And now a simply happy family.
Until the beast began to get out of hand. When I last straightened her, she fell to the center of my back. But maintaining her look when she was straight was more work than I wanted to put in, so I let her go curly and wild.
And that's how Kaz preferred her.
Oddly enough, aside from my hair, we were the least interest couple in the neighborhood. Three kids and one dog. A minivan and sensible sedan. Between his khakis and my button up blouses we could have been mannequins at the Gap on weekends.
And you could definitely tell our book by our cover. Church on Sunday. Homework and dinner with the kids before bedtime. A little television. A little missionary and cowgirl three nights per week. Soccer & gymnastics on Saturday morning. Date night at the movies on Saturday. Back to church on Sunday.
We are boring and we love it.
But my hair was getting out of control. Most people think that she wakes up bouncy and perfect but taking care of her was beginning to take up my entire morning. So I began to seek treatment for the devil atop my head - an exorcism to tame the beast, not drive her away. I loved her, but I didn't like her controlling me.
My regimen began with a few natural oils from the beauty supply store, but over time that simple recipe evolved into a voodoo regimen of cococut oil and burning incense. Every Sunday night after the kids snuggled into their beds, I would apply my recipe and do 20 minutes of yoga before a warm shower to wash it all out. Then Kaz and I would watch a little TV while the beast quietly dried. Then the three of us would fall asleep after the 11 o'clock news.
Perfectly boring. The beast may have looked wild, but she was no longer a problem.
But one summer day our perfect little world developed a tiny wrinkle. That Sunday Kaz went to get the laundry from the basement while I was getting our twins out of the bath. I had almost gotten them to sleep when our older son yiped from the bathroom. "Cold water!" he shouted. Kaz checked on him and quickly realized he must have accidentally shut off the water heater when he was in the basement doing laundry.
Unfortunately, my brain was on autopilot after all of the kids were asleep, because I immediately rubbed my concoction through my hair and into my scalp before knocking out some much deserved yoga. It was a hot day outside, but not terribly humid enough to run our air conditioning, so I was excited to get my sweaty body into the shower.
I didn't remember about the hot water until I was naked and hopping under the cold stream. I would have yiped as loud as our son if not for fear of waking the kids. I didn't want to ruin their sleep routine.
With just my robe on I tiptoed down the hallway and into the kitchen to ask Kaz how long it would take for the water to heat up. He looked up from folding the laundry with a smile and said, "About another hour."
The back of our house faced west so the bedrooms were a little warmer than the rest of the house. I wasn't going to put my clothes back on my sweaty body, so I laid my towel across the bed and stretched out onto my stomach. I grabbed my tablet and started reading articles from the Sunday paper that I'd saved to read during the week.
