New Hair, New Me

What is it about coloring your hair or getting a new haircut that lets us see ourselves as different people?

When I was a kid, I hated being a brunette. I thought my hair was ugly and my eyes were an ugly brown. I thought I was ugly.

When I was probably about thirteen or fourteen, my mom let me use the ever-popular Sun In. I was so into the idea of being blonde that I over did it. The problem was that I have almost black eyebrows. Looking back at old photographs, I did not look good as a blonde (or as blonde as I could get) with such dark, bushy eyebrows (of course I thought I did back then).

As a teenager, my mom let me color my hair a few times, mostly as an older teen though. I went red a few times but since my hair was already brown, the red was more dark auburn. I liked it and always thought it looked great on me, especially when I grew my hair out very long (which never happened as a young child because my mom had a hard time brushing snarls out of my hair and wouldn’t let me keep it long unless I was going to be able to take really good care of it). Of course, looking back at the pictures from then I see now that although it wasn’t awful, it wasn’t the best look for me either.

The one common thing I see in all of those old photos from times when I colored my hair as a teenager and a young adult is that I changed my attitude. I saw myself as something else, something that I wasn’t every day. When I changed my hair color, I changed my clothing style, my facial expressions, everything.

Throughout my adult life, I changed my hair color here and there, tried streaks, highlights, and changed my haircuts here and there as well. But I stopped doing that. Eight and a half years ago, I decided I wanted to be a blonde again. I was tired of the “ugly brown.” However, I did not have the money to pay a professional, so I used the method I had used most of my life and bought a box of blonde hair color. The problem was that I had such dark brown hair that I ended up buying four or five boxes, each time unsatisfied with my hair color. When I finally got as close as I thought I ever could to a blonde color, I realized I still had almost black eyebrows that I was terrified to color. I always thought that if I colored my eyebrows, some would drip into my eyes and I would go blind. That was the last time I ever colored my hair….until now.

Just a few days ago, I took the plunge. About a year after having my daughter, I cut off my long hair and went to a long-short style or a medium length cut which I would keep up every so often. I still didn’t have the money to see my hairdresser as often as I should, maybe once or twice a year do I ever splurge on a haircut. Something was missing though. After fighting with my husband and battling stress at work, I felt it was time for a change. I decided to go back to a similar color that I had long ago, find something fun and flirty, something red and blonde and brown all wrapped into it. I booked the appointment with my hairdresser and waited (it usually takes months to get into her because I need an evening or a weekend appointment because of my job but this time I was able to flex my work hours for an event coming up that I had to work on a Saturday). The day finally came and I went into the salon excited and not a bit nervous. I was ready for the change. I went to work feeling like a million bucks and a totally new person.

Why is it that we women feel this way? Why do we change our hair and suddenly get a renewed sense of self? When we break up with someone or change our careers or have a death in the family, why do we cut our hair or color our hair? Why do we cover up every semblance of our old selves and create a new identity based on our hair?

While watching Ally McBeal on Hulu, I noticed that when two of the characters Billy and Georgia were going through marital problems, Georgia cut her gorgeous, long blonde hair super short. Every time Ally went through a relationship issue, her hair changed as well. More recently, on Superstore, one of the main characters, Amy chopped her hair off and got highlights when her marriage became rocky as well. Why is it we do this? Why is it they showcase this on television shows? Is it because we think we need to reinvent ourselves to get over this pain, this transition?

I don’t know what it is, but I certainly feel better and feel like I look better. I even do my hair in the morning now! Before I would get up and shower and sometimes blow dry my hair, sometimes just let it air dry, maybe put it up in a ponytail but more often than not just leave it down. I have never been one for styling because I can’t ever seem to get it right or don’t have the patience or curls never last anyway; but now I want to curl my hair, I want to put the effort into it looking nice. This might fade as it did when I was 18 and got a really short cut that I had to blow dry every day with mousse while my head was upside-down, causing me to grow my hair out and never consider the same cut again; or when I had a beautiful perm that I had to use curl enhancer on every day and finally just combed it out harshly every day until it got frizzy then used special shampoo to make it smooth out. But until it gets old, I am a new woman. I am a new me…and I like it!

When Co-Workers Become Like Family

When I hired in at the non-profit I work for currently, I was a temporary assistant, just for the heat season (which in Michigan was October-April, even though I hired in in December). Our location was housed in an office of another agency and it was just the two of us, everyone else worked for the other agency. I quickly became good friends with my boss, Marilyn. Her daughter was my age, but she was fun and happy and just an all around good person.

I don’t know when it happened that we became such good friends, but one day when I had been working for her for a few months she invited me to her family’s Easter egg hunt with my kiddo and husband. We just seemed to fit right in.

My agency had three people quit at the same time and I quickly applied for one of the positions because I would be getting a promotion to a job equivalent to my boss’ position in another county and it would be permanent. My boss supported me fully, she even recommended me for the position. I was hired right away!

My new county was different, but I was now working in the administration building. It was a big change, being the boss and being in a new county that I had never worked in or lived in.

I started off rocky with my assistant, I felt like she didn’t like me very much; I couldn’t blame her though, I mean, I was only with the agency three and a half months and was her boss after she had been there for three years; not to mention I was younger than her children. My first week, one of the senior workers quit when she only had twenty days left of her working there. My first client yelled at me. I was supposed to oversee three counties and couldn’t connect in two of them. Things were not going all that well.

Through everything, my former boss, Marilyn kept in touch, we saw each other at meetings and she was always just a phone call away. Soon, I started connecting with my other two senior workers and my assistant. I became friends with them all. Working for the same agency, under the same bosses, we started to be able to connect at work. But it suddenly became more than that.

My former boss, my friend, my confidant, Marilyn received a job offer she could not pass up recently and sadly, she put in her two week notice. Today was her last day and I could not help but feel a twinge of pain as she would no longer be my lunch buddy when we had all staff meetings. I am happy for her, I am excited that she is about to start a new chapter in her life though.

Tonight we had dinner together and it felt so final. She will be in my life still, we have become forever friends in the short year and a half that I have been with the agency, but I feel saddened by our loss.

So this leaves me wondering when my coworkers became like family to me? When did I begin to love this woman and feel like she is one of my best friends? When did my assistant grow on me to the point where I feel her pain when she is having a hard time with things? Where I want to defend her when I think our boss has treated her unfairly? When did my senior workers become close enough to me that they offer to loan me money if I need it or a place to sleep if I have a fight with my spouse? When did I become so connected to these people?

In saying goodbye to Marilyn, who had been with the agency almost nine years, I realized that she too had formed these bonds with her coworkers as well. It must be even harder to have these bonds for nine years and have to say goodbye. How am I going to handle it when it happens? My senior workers will be leaving me in a few short months as their contracts will be up and it seems almost impossible to say goodbye to them now.

I have never had a job for that long and the jobs I have had for any length of time, I never really connected the same as I do where I am at now. I mean, I had friends, and some of them are still my friends on social media; but working where I work and doing the job I do, it gives me a lot of time to talk and be personal and make connections on different levels with people, I just feel like the connections are different. Only one time before did I have such a strong familial bond with a boss or coworker and it pained me to say goodbye but overjoys me when I can speak to her on occasion.

So this leads me to question where do these bonds come from? Why do we attach ourselves to others like this? Why is it we can love our coworkers like family and yet some of our family we barely speak to? What is it with our society that we go to work and spend more time with our work family than we do with our regular families?

In Search of The Mommy Friends

So I find myself a mother of a 5-year-old little girl. I have no friends with kids. Well…let me say I have no real friends with kids that live close. I have one best friend who has two children close to my daughter’s age but she is over an hour away. Then I know a couple of people who have kids close to my daughter’s age but I don’t know that I consider them friends or not and I don’t know how to say “let’s have a play date,” because I am so busy and so are they.

As a mom who works full time with a husband who works a lot too it is really hard to find time for friends. My daughter made friends in dance and preschool that she still sees at her school or on her bus and I know their parents, it’s just hard to connect. My hairdresser has kids that go to my daughter’s school but it’s really hard to find time to ask her to hang out too. Then there are those who she has just met these past few months in kindergarten and I don’t know their parents because I work full time and don’t get time to go to school things much.

Don’t get me wrong, I want mommy friends, I would really love to have them actually. But where do you find the time to connect? When I am off I want to be with my family. I suppose when my daughter gets older, she will do more and then I can superficially connect with these moms, but what about friends?

Even my best friend, it is so hard to talk to her because one of us will text and then the other will take forever to respond because we are doing something.

I just want to have mommy friends, friends who I can complain about my kid to and not feel like an awful person. Friends who I can complain about my husband to and not feel like a bad wife. Friends who are going through the same things at the same times as me.

I connect with people at work but they usually don’t have kids my daughter’s age, most have kids that are adults and they many times do not understand parenting in this day and age. I don’t care what you say, parenting is different now than it was even when I was a kid!

I just want a mommy friend. Is this too much to ask for?

Starting the Perfect Graduation Gift At Age 3

I read once in an online article for Time Magazine about a dad who asked every teacher and coach his child had to write a message to his daughter inside a copy of Dr. Suess’ Oh The Places You’ll Go!

We decided that we would do something similar with our daughter. We chose to have her teachers write letters to her to have when she graduates high school. We started early, she was enrolled in Early Head Start and we asked her teacher to write a letter to her when she aged out of the program at 3. She thought that was a wonderful idea and she wrote her a letter and sealed it up.

The next teacher we asked was her music teacher, Miss Anna, who did not end up writing it, and although I emailed her twice after our daughter stopped doing lessons, she never came through.

I also asked her tap and ballet instructors to do so, but they did not either, so I didn’t ask again. We did skip a few along the way though. She was enrolled in a gymnastics class where the entire University gymnastics team coached the girls and we thought there were too many coaches to pick one to ask. She was in a cheerleading camp for 3 days and it was coached by the Varsity squad at the local high school and we felt that not only was it too hard to pick one, but they didn’t have enough time with her and they were just kids themselves. She also participated in what our area calls “Smart Start” athletics, and there were several coaches there as well, so they were also left out when she played t-ball and golf.

When my daughter was 4, she enrolled in a daycare with a preschool room where there was 2 main teachers and at least 1 assistant. When the main assistant graduated college and was moving, I asked her to do so, she lovingly agreed as well. When my daughter “graduated” preschool, both of her teachers thought it was a great idea and also participated.

I assume that her kindergarten teacher will participate too as she sent all of the kids postcards in the mail shortly after school started and sent them Christmas cards as well at Christmas.

As the years go on, I hope that most all of her teachers will participate in our asking them to write her a letter. It is a small task that takes very little time and you don’t even have to like my child to do so, tell them they were a bit “spirited” or a tad “overwhelming,” give them some advice for moving on in life, something.

I only hope that when my daughter graduates high school and I give her the bundle of letters from her teachers that she reads them and knows how amazing she is. Some of the letters written to her were not sealed or in an envelope so I did read those before putting them in an envelope and I know that her teachers see the amazing kid she is and know she will be an even more amazing young adult.

The Great Potty Dilemma

So my kiddo was interested in the potty about the average time, around 16-18 months, I am not sure exactly when it was because she is now 5 years old. We bought her one of those little potties that sing when you pee in it. She loved that thing but didn’t really use it much and we decided not to pressure her.

By the time my daughter was 3, she still was not potty trained. We tried forcing her, we tried not forcing her, we tried a “potty prize box,” which by the way worked great when she actually went (we took a diaper box and put dollar store items in it and mini chocolate bars and Shopkins and plastic coins that were worth 25 cents each when she cashed them in for money and she got to choose one thing each time she used the potty without an accident). My daughter got rashes that were awful because she would go to the bathroom in her underwear and not tell us that it needed to be changed, her pediatrician said that her rashes were the worst she had ever seen. We did not know what to do.

We tried enrolling her in preschool hoping she would get potty trained faster that way seeing other kids doing it, but when she got into one at a church, she was denied a spot because she wasn’t potty trained. They held her spot for us for a few months to try to get her trained and we had her in pull ups telling us when she needed to go, but they refused to take her unless she could go on her own completely. We broke her of pull-ups finally. But she still had lots of accidents, which meant lots of rashes.

At 4, she still refused to potty train. Sometimes she would go by herself and sometimes she wouldn’t. We were really at the end of our ropes and didn’t know what to do. We would still use the “potty prize box” and we would use a chore chart where she could earn stars for doing chores as well as going to the potty without accidents. Finally, at 4 ½, I started a full time job so she was in a daycare that had a preschool room 3 days a week. I was afraid she would have accidents there. But to my surprise, she only had 1 accident the whole time she attended (from December until kindergarten started in late August). But she still would not go all the time at home, it was inconsistent.

At kindergarten, that was the real break through, she actually had maybe one accident at school (well, the year isn’t over yet, but it’s over half way over). She stopped having accidents at home for a while as well.

The accidents started back up again at home but those we thought were really on purpose, so we decided to penalize her; each time she had an accident while playing she would lose whatever it was she was playing with for a week. This really didn’t work too well. Finally, after a while, after lots of lectures, begging, pleading and taking away her tablet a couple of times, she has minimal accidents at home, I think she has had one in the last month.

Although she is not completely without accidents, she is 5, I can’t expect her to be perfect. But we have come a long way, a very long way. I don’t know why she waited so long to potty train. I don’t know why she was so stubborn. We weren’t extremely mean to her, we didn’t push her, we tried every suggestion we could find. I guess some kids just want to do things on their own time.

I guess the part that always upset me about it from the age of 3 on was that she would tell me when she was in the car that she had to go and she would actually hold it until we got to a place that had a public restroom most times. This meant that she could 1) feel when she had to go most times, and 2) hold it when she wanted to most times. These things meant she had a normal, functioning bladder but it was just her refusal and stubbornness.

To all of you parents out there that have similar issues, just know you are not alone. Don’t feel shamed because your kid doesn’t want to use the potty. If you have no medical reason that they don’t use the potty correctly, and it is just personality, you can overcome it in time, it will work itself out. You are not alone.