Why Did I Donate My Hair
Before
As some of you know yesterday I cut off 9" of my hair to donate to
Beautiful Lengths. Some of you might be wondering how I came to the decision to do this? There are many answers actually. The first is I'm cheap. I normally cut my hair to between my chin and my shoulders then let it grow to 2-3" below my shoulders and repeat. This is truly because I am too cheap to pay for more regular haircuts. But being cheap is not enough to get 9" extra inches of hair. No, there's also the fact that around May when I should have gotten a haircut I was working an insane number of hours. So when I finished work later than normal at night I never really had the time to sit and wait to get a haircut. That ties into the next reason, I don't like people or to be more specific, I don't like being around people I don't know. Not that people could tell that based on how much I'm on twitter or
plurk or how I podcast and spend hours in after shows. So my natural
tendency to avoid crowds and strangers kept me from getting my haircut. Next we have vanity. Not that I consider myself to be terribly vain more to the contrary actually. However in the middle of July I was getting ready to go to the Girls Night In Podcast (now the new show is
Girls Night In Radio) Meet up. For the first time I would be meeting listeners of the show. I knew how I liked to do my hair with it longer and I wasn't sure about how I would do it short. So I decided I'd wait until after the meet up. Around the time I returned home I started thinking about donating my hair. I had heard of
Locks of Love and checked out the requirements. At the time I had about 7" to cut. Locks of Love requires 10" to donate. I honestly had no idea how long it takes hair to grow and at that point I decided to let it grow so I could donate it.
So the months went by and my hair continued to grow. This is where we run into the problem. I have a very large head, as in I don't actually know anyone who has a larger one. It's so big I can't wear hats and I have problems getting hooded sweatshirts over it. I also have very thick hair so combine the two, and I have a ton of hair which gets really heavy for my easily
aggravated neck (I get tension headaches so bad they become migraines without proper medication). Several weeks back I started getting pain in my neck from the weight of my hair. Around that same time I was watching
Ellen and she had
Hilary Swank on sporting a new short do. She talked about how she had given her beautiful hair to
Beautiful Lengths. They make wigs for women with cancer. It turns out 58% of women who are diagnosed with cancer list losing their hair as their number one fear and that's over fear of dying. In fact 8% will decide not to have chemo or other treatments for fear of losing their hair. That's right, they will
forgo a possible life saving treatment because they don't want to lose their hair. The donated hair is made into wigs for these women to help they decide to do chemo which will hopefully save their lives. The other thing that got me thinking about them is they only require 8" of hair
minimum.
I wrestled with if I should continue going for 10" for
Locks of Love or do
Beautiful Lengths. Both are great causes but in the end the pain in my neck was getting quite bad. I was having tension headaches every single day from the weight of my hair. I had Marty measure my hair and he said I had 8.5"-10", 11" if you counted just the very longest and depending how short I got my hair. I wanted to make sure I had at least an extra inch over the requirement so I decided on
Beautiful Lengths. I knew I couldn't wait longer for it to grow a couple extra
inches.
After following all the prep instructions I went into the local Great Clips right before close. The stylist had never heard of
Beautiful Lengths but said if I were donating to
Locks of Love the haircut would be free. I had intended to pay for it so not a big deal but as I told her about the organization she decided not to charge me, she said she wouldn't feel right about it. I thanked her and gave her a huge tip. She also said that most people can get two ponytails out of their hair but she got four from mine! It take 6-8 ponytails to make one wig so my hair will make about 1/2 of a wig!
I guess in the end the answer to the why I donated my hair was because I could.
After
It was actually still damp from the cut and dried right in the middle of my neck.
"Voters approve ban on gay marriage"
I find myself deeply saddened tonight. I've always thought of Wisconsin as a state of good, tolerate or even accepting people but tonight they have failed me. While 61.4% isn't an overwhelming majority the shear fact that it's above 10% is alarming to me. It never ceases to amaze me how afraid people are of things or people they don't understand. Some people say they don't have a problem with gay people having equal rights under the law, they just don't want it called marriage, well they just help get Civil Unions Banned as well. I feel future generations will look at these bans and other intolerance towards gays the way most people today look at the way this country used to treat African Americans, as unthinkable. I guess I thought we had made strides in this country since the 80s and 90s but I guess not enough. Can someone find me a state with more love in their hearts so I can move there? I feel disheartened so I'll leave it at this, don't fear people that are different than you accept them, learn from them, and celebrate diversity.
ABout time... an update
-Memorial Day weekend Marty & I painted the guest bedroom, dolphin fin grey. It's simple, but we didn't want to offend our guest's eyes. I will be making eggplant purple curtains. We also took up the hidious carpet which revealed the most beautiful hardwood floor, I've seen. They used a special tape to hold i tdown, so there was no damage to the floor. Yippee, no sanding!!! We moved the bed, so there is a scrapbooking area in there for me and we will be moving the treadmill up there once we get an LCD TV. We have to figure out how big of one we will need.
-Starting the following Thursday evening through Saturday the company I work for personalized shirts at the state track meet. On top of working Tuesday and Wednesday more then my normal 8 hours, I put in 40 hours down there. I was tired and then only had a one day weekend. I wish MD was after the meet, not before.
-Last weekend we stayed home and rested. I slept a ton, even more than normal. I napped both days for about 3 hours as well.
-Work has been very busy for 3+ weeks now. Jean, our lady that does about everything (excpet my job of coarse) is gone from yesterday through tomorrow. So things are extra hellish. Yesterday I actually got into a shotting match with a customer. We do their contract printing from the other side of the state. Their customer sent in some art in the right format so all I had to do was print it. When I get art that I don't have to touch, I never send a proof and this ladies' boss (the owner over there) has told me there is no reason to. So yesterday I get this call from her asking who I sent the proof to and I said I didn't know. So she said well we didn't get one and I told her I don't for art like this and she went on about how I redo art and always sent it and I said I didn't redo this art.... Well their customer had mispelled something and that part of all 250 shirts was already printed. So finally she was yelling at me, blaming me and I was so pissed I couldn't speak. Finally I gave her to the owner here. After I calmed down a bit I remembered I had spoken to her boss on this particular order and asked if they needed a proof and he said no. Well so we are paying to redo these shirts including overnight shipping them in, because their customer can't spell. I couldn't even have spell checked the art because the words were in outlines which can't be checked. THe topper is I was still pissed about it and talking to a co-worker and my boss said that I screwed up, which pissed me off even more. So from now with this customer when I get art in the right format I'm going to turn around and email them back their exact file and ask them to check it for mistakes. Does anyone else see how moronic this concept is?!?!?!
