Tomorrow Afternoon at 3:30

Tomorrow afternoon at 3:30, I'll be doing one of the following:

A) Going to see the Dark Knight
B) Flopping around on a "Slip and Slide".
C) Cutting my hair off
D) Going home to Los Angeles

Which one do you think I'm doing?

As much as I'd like to do all four of those things tomorrow afternoon, and buy a winning lottery ticket on top of it all, alas, only ONE of those fabulous choices will actually be going down.

If you guessed "D" -- One more week, folks. One more week and I'll be back in my beloved El-Ay.

If you guessed "A" -- Nope, because I haven't stooped to going by myself yet. I'm waiting for my sister to stop saying, "It looks too "dark" and scary." Um, yeah, because it's called the "Dark Knight", m'dear.

If you guessed "B" -- Nope, that was yesterday. Or rather, I was trying to flop onto the Slip and Slide, but I found I just could not throw my body to the ground like you're supposed to. I'm sorry, but a bit of plastic with some water running on it doesn't scream to me, "Flop onto me, please!"

So that leaves, cough, option "C" on the table.

I still can't believe it myself, but I do indeed have an appointment to get my hair cut off tomorrow. Courage is needed because as I type, I'm sort of I'm in the midst of a freak out over it. I need to relax and try to convince myself that it's just hair. It'll grow back.

How much hair am I getting cut off?

I'm not really sure. But after a year of growing out my relaxed-to-within-an-inch-of-it's-life hair, all the scraggly, bone-straight ends have got to go. My natural hair is like four times thicker and healthier. I also keep getting these really bad tangles where my kinky/curly natural hair meets the straight hair, and I can't stand it anymore.

My hair when it's not curly comes halfway down my back. But my natural hair is maybe only six inches long. Maybe longer. I'm not sure. But who knows what I'll be left with at 4:30 tomorrow.

Wow, this time tomorrow night, for the first time in my entire adult life, I'm going to have short hair.

Short
NAPPY
hair.

Short + Nappy.
Nappy + Short.

It's a combo that our culture teaches black women to hate and despise from the time that we're small. We're taught to run from Short + Nappy, not towards it. What I'm undertaking tomorrow is the beauty equivalent of me trying to throw my body onto a Slip and Slide.

I have no idea what I'm going to look like when I come out of the salon. EEK!

Wondering what brought this decision on?. Well, I've been thinking about cutting the relaxed ends for several months now, and I never summoned up the courage. Plus there is always someone there to say, "Don't cut your hair. You won't look good with short hair." Or folks wanna know what I'm going to do with it after I cut it off. "You're not going to just wear it out in public like that, are you?"

Sigh.

This morning when I decided to get it cut, there was so much going on, so much reminding me that I really have to seize the day. I have to be fearless and just take the plunge. And besides, my sister tells me that if it looks totally crazy, she'll get someone she knows to hook me up with a weave.

Gosh, me plus a weave? Then I'd really be ready for my return to LA!

Wish me luck!

Double

As elder brothers and sisters are inclined to do, my brother and sister would tell me that I wasn't really their sibling. According to them, one day the doorbell rang, our mom went to answer it and, lo and behold, a baby was on the porch in a shoebox!

Alas, it wasn't Moses chillin' in a box that used to contain Air Force One's. Nope, supposedly, it was moi.

Even though I didn't really believe this "shoebox on the porch tale," when I was maybe seven or eight, I began to wonder if I was not only a shoebox baby, but also if, maybe, just maybe I'd been separated from a twin. I wondered if that twin was left on some other doorstep with some other family.

This was, of course, totally ridiculous. I knew I didn't come in a shoebox, and knew I had no twin. But I pictured the fun we'd have tricking people and getting all Parent Trap on them. And let's not forget how cool and popular the Sweet Valley High twins were back in the day.

Fast forward almost 30 years and my nephew took this photo of me down at that Bean thing in Downtown Chicago. When my four year-old saw it, he remarked, "Look! You have a twin!"

"It's a reflection," I said.

"No, it's a twin! It has your hair!" said my son.

I went along with it so he'd hush up, but goodness, I couldn't help but realize, that my twin would have taken the plunge and already chopped her hair off.

So why haven't I done this too?

*******

PS: The twin can also write Diablo Cody a letter telling her how much Juno sucked.

Hair Segregation

In my younger (and decidedly more revolutionary) days, I used to have a good time terrorizing stylists at mainstream chain hair salons.

I'd walk inside -- because they all had signs that said that they "welcome" walk-ins -- and the receptionist would immediately get all bug eyed over my presence.

As sweet as could be, I'd say the eight words designed to incite terror in the heart of whoever was behind the reception desk: "I'd like to get my hair done, please."

This person would usually look at me as if I'd announced that I had a nuclear missile strapped to my chest. "You want to get your hair done. Here?"

I'd innocently reply, "Yes, I'd like a wash, condition and roller set under a dryer, please."

I always sort of appreciated it if the receptionist just cut right to the chase and honestly admitted, "Oh, sorry, we don't do black hair."

If they didn't immediately say that, then there'd be a couple of minutes of whoever was behind the counter hemming and hawing and uncomfortably shuffling papers. And then I'd hear, "Well, we had one girl who does black hair but she's out today/all booked up/just quit/got hit by a plane that magically fell from the sky and landed right on top of her."

Even worse would be the, "We don't have anybody who does black hair but I guess Suzy Q here could give it a try if you want. You might have to tell her what to do though."

Uh, no thank you.

I probably did this maybe 20 times between 1997-1999 and then quit because I figured it was a bit depressing to keep putting myself through the agony just to prove a point about what I already knew, that their is hair segregation.

Even at salons I absolutely loved, like Art + Science in Evanston or the TIGI salon here in LA, when I called, I had to specifically ask if they had a stylist that knew how to work with black hair. Usually there was just one person.

Sometimes I wanted to organize a class-action lawsuit because I figure if you're a hair stylist you should be able to do any body's hair, no matter what the hair texture and no matter what the person's racial or ethnic background. But I concluded that racial equity in hair styling must not be getting taught in beauty schools and I haven't really seen this change over the years since I stopped my salon ambushing.

So what brought all this back up for me? Well, this afternoon I was in Rite Aid, getting frustrated looking for my favorite shampoo, the Creme of Nature with the green writing on the bottle. I've been using this shampoo for 15 years and suddenly, it seems to have disappeared. I was checking out the teeny section allocated for "black" hair care and started thinking (and not for the first time) about how there's total segregation of hair care products. Hair care for so-called "ethnic" hair is in a whole separate aisle than the shampoos and conditioners everyone else supposedly uses.

Why can't the tin of old school Dax pomade (and does anybody really even use that stuff anymore?) be on the shelf next to American Crew or Garnier Fructis pomade? I mean, hair grease is hair grease, right? And why can't the L'Oreal stuff be on the shelf next to the Organic Root Stimulator?

Some might say that having everything separate makes it easier for black women to find what you need because then you don't have to waste your time sifting through the endless bottles of shampoo to get what you want. And maybe that's true since right now if you're looking for "black" hair care products at my local Rite Aid, you only have two feet of shelf space to sift through.

However, black women also buy many of the same conditioners and shampoos that everyone else does so we're constantly jumping back and forth between two aisles. In fact, many black women don't use any of the products in the so-called "black/ethnic" section because they're buying the hair products in the "mainstream" section. Pantene sort of realized this when they released their so-called "Relaxed and Natural" line, which sits right on the shelf next to all the other Pantene products.

So why don't the other product lines follow suit? It seems like they should with all the moolah that black women spend on hair care.

What's up with the drugstores that shelve hair products that are geared toward black women in a separate, back of the bus sort of manner?

I'm pretty tired of hair segregation. Aren't you?

The Long and Short of My Hair

It's almost midnight on a rainy night in LA. Twenty minutes ago I had a pair of scissors in my hand. I was thisclose to snipping off all my hair.

But I chickened out.

I have a lot of fear about cutting all my hair off and as the days continue to fly by, I've been reflecting a lot about what's behind this fear. I know folks will say that it's just hair and it'll grow back, but when you're a black woman in America, such a laissez faire attitude toward hair is not so easy to have.

I've found that getting to a place of comfortability with my hair is a little like unpeeling the layers of an onion. Like dealing with an onion, peeling back the layers of hair can also cause a few tears. It makes me think about the insidiously racist messages about beauty that black women, including yours truly, receive.

One of the most recent layers I unpeeled was chemical straightening (also called "relaxers" in case you didn't know.) Over the years I've gone back and forth with relaxers. In high school and college I used them, but didn't have the money for the upkeep so my hair didn't always look so hot. Post graduation/post life in China, I stopped straightening. --I need to learn how to use the scan function on my printer so you all can see some photos of how big my hair was after a couple of years of growing out all the straightened ends. I think it stood a good six inches horizontally off my head. I'm sure it would've been bigger, but since my hair was also pretty long, the weight of it pulled all the bigness down a bit. I'm not kidding. It was seriously the biggest, awesomest hair ever.

About four years ago I started straightening it again, mostly because I felt pressure to seem more "professional". It's hard to sit in a meeting with a principal or district official when you feel like you have the biggest, most unprofessional hair ever. Whether the pressure was real or a result of my own psychosis is certainly a fair game question, but let me just point out that we do live in a world where last fall, a Glamour Magazine editor told a group of lawyers the following:

"First slide up: an African American woman sporting an Afro. A real no-no, announced the 'Glamour' editor to the 40 or so lawyers in the room. As for dreadlocks: How truly dreadful! The style maven said it was 'shocking' that some people still think it 'appropriate' to wear those hairstyles at the office. 'No offense,' she sniffed, but those 'political' hairstyles really have to go."

Of course, Glamour did whatever damage control they needed to do at the time. But, I'm still waiting to see the pages of their magazine really reflect the diversity of black hairstyles. Actually, to take it a step further, I'm still waiting to see the models in the magazine reflect some true diversity, period. But maybe I'm somehow skipping over all the pages with black, Latina and Asian models.

Anyway, I was increasingly dissatisfied with straightening my hair. Every time I went to get my hair done, it took like five hours. It was also expensive, both in terms of the salon cost as well as styling products/conditioners. I needed all the conditioners and styling products because the more straightening and flat ironing you do, the more damaged your hair becomes. It's like a vicious cycle because it takes more and more effort to make it look decent.

I'd been considering going back to natural for about a year because I was sick of the straight hair and how flat and boring it was. The final straw was last July when I transitioned out of my job. About a week after I left, I went to get the roots of my relaxed hair touched up. My stylist was super busy chatting about her daughter. I was exhausted and not paying attention to any of it. Before I knew it, she ran the chemicals through not just my roots but through my whole head of hair. This is SUCH a no-no, not to mention it's never taken too much to straighten my hair in the first place. This second application of chemicals was a total disaster. My hair felt rough, it would not hold any kind of curl and it looked like straw.

I vowed to never go back to her again and then spent the summer dousing my hair in all sorts of deep conditioning treatments and avoiding my flat iron unless absolutely necessary. I figured the long term solution was to find a new stylist, but the thought of doing such a thing was really overwhelming. Most black women have the nightmare stories about the stylist everybody else swore was awesome and then they walk outta there half bald! AAGH! It's really hard to find someone you can trust.

I also didn't want anybody I needed to drive an hour through traffic to go see. I didn't want anybody's cousin Re-Re who did hair in her garage. And as much as I loved Dominican stylists in NYC, I didn't want to pay the Dominican stylist who'd opened not too far from me the extortion-type rates they were charging. So, I wore a lot of hats.

It wasn't till after school started last September and some issues with my eldest son feeling confident about his blackness emerged that I started really reflecting on how straightening my hair was sending my boys the wrong message. How could I tell them to be proud of their skin and hair when I was constantly chemically altering mine? And again, it's not like changing from flats to heels. Whether we like it or not, black hair is politicized. Because there's so much baggage tied to our hair, I felt like I was going along with the societal message that a woman of African descent is not as attractive if her hair is not long and straight.

I thought about how my son would see billboards of Beyonce up in Hollywood and he'd always comment that he liked her hair. I started explaining how it wasn't really her hair, that it was a lace-front wig. He'd look at me like I was crazy, and to tell you the truth, it made me feel a little crazy to be explaining it all to him. I thought about how I didn't want him to turn into one of those guys that only likes long, straight hair, or, even worse, one of those brothers that proudly proclaims that he only dates girls with light skin and long hair. I think if I ever heard my son say that, I'd throw up. So, I realized he needed to see a role model of natural hair in the woman he most closely identifies with. And that would be me.

In the past, growing out my hair from a relaxer wasn't such a big deal because I'd had stylists that didn't leave chemicals on too long or run them through my hair twice. So the difference between my natural hair and the straightened hair wasn't as noticeable. I'd rinse it with water in the morning, throw some leave-in conditioner and hair gel in it and run out the door. It would all curl up nicely. But this time though, it's really noticeable because my hair is so straight.

Since the end of October, my solution has been to straw set my hair. I wrote about all of that here so I won't rehash it. But once every week, I roll all my hair on straws and then dry it. The whole process takes about two and a half hours to do, but compared to the five hours I was spending dying in a salon plus daily styling, it's totally worth it.

However, I've been thinking for awhile now that I need to peel another layer off the hair onion. I need to just cut off all the over-processed, straightened ends and only have my own natural hair. I don't like being tied to a straw set but without it, the straightened part of my hair looks horrible. If my hair is shorter, I can just rinse it and go. But, I've never had short hair in my entire life. The shortest my hair has ever been is chin-length and I hated it.

I'm so afraid to cut it because I'm worried I'm going to look awful with a six-inch 'fro on my head. I do have a measure of vanity in my bones and, in case you didn't notice, I live in Los Angeles, the vanity capital of the world. I'm not trying to look like a buster.

Then I think about all those messages we women get about long hair and how all that feels like it's doubled for black women. I question everything, so I wonder, am I still perpetuating this racist insanity of aspects of a black woman's worth being tied to long, straight hair? Should I just take the plunge and chop it off? I know some of you have taken that step, so I'd especially love to hear you weigh in on this.

I know that with each layer of societal brainwashing that's removed, I get closer to my true self. I'm just not sure if I'm ready to give it a go with the scissors.

Los Angelista's A to Z

This morning while I was over at the fabulous 1969's blog, I saw she'd made a list of herself from A-Z. She got the idea from an interview with Halle Berry in InStyle magazine. I told her I was going to steal it because it just looked like a LOT of fun. Plus it's sunny and 80 degrees here in LA and I can't concentrate on much else! I have all my windows open and there are two hummingbirds singing away. Gosh, I love Los Angeles. So here's me from A to Z. At least, for today it is!

A-Adam-12: Adam 12 is my teddy bear that I've had forever. I don't know how long I've had him but it must've been since I was a baby. My children are a bit afraid of him because he has no mouth and a bad leg. But he's a secret agent and he's been on a lot of spy missions over the years so he has the right to look a little jacked up. Plus he has no mouth because he's gotten a lot of kisses from me. Not that kissing me means you necessarily end up, with, er, no mouth...

B-Ballet: I studied ballet until I was 16. I loved dancing in my pointe shoes. I wish I'd never quit. I regret that.

C-Chai: I looove chai! Some people say, "I need a drink," when they feel stressed. I don't. I say, "I need a chai." I don't mind drinking it when I'm not stressed either. But since it doesn't come cheap from Coffee Bean or Starbucks, I'm trying to perfect my at-home chai brewing recipe.

D-Depeche Mode: My favorite band in the whole world since I was a young lass that tied boys to trees and beat them with sticks. I probably sang "Just Can't Get Enough" to my victim as I whacked him. Hmm. That makes it sound like "D" should stand for "Dominatrix", doesn't it?

E-Ears: I didn't get my ears pierced till I was 18. I have a very low tolerance for pain so after getting the left ear pierced, I almost didn't want to get the right ear done. But I figured that would look a little odd so I sucked it up.

F-Facebook: I was so resistant to Facebook but I've gotten to reconnect with so many people I'd fallen out of touch with. It is sort of awkward though when folks I don't really know request to be my friend. And just because we chatted once three years ago, that doesn't mean you know me. I just ignore these requests and I feel guilty about that. Maybe I should just send the person a message and tell them, "Hey, I don't think we can be Facebook friends because if my car broke down on the side of the road, I couldn't call you!" But I'm too chicken to do that.

G-Gentleman: The older I get, the more I see the value of a man knowing how to be a gentleman. And I see the value of mothers and fathers training their sons to become gentlemen.

H-Hair: I haven't straightened my hair since July of '07. I'm going to cut the straight parts off when my sister comes out to visit me in April. It'll be the first time in my entire life that I'll have short hair but I'm looking forward to not having two textures on my head.

I-I Love You, Mommy: Every time I hear my sons say this to me, completely unpromted, my heart just melts. If those are the last words I hear, I'll die happy.

J-Justice League: I didn't even know what the Justice League was before I married my comic book addict husband. Sure I knew about Batman, Super Man and Wonderwoman, but Green Lantern? Hawkgirl? I had no clue. But now, I am a total Justice League convert. I might even be Hawkgirl for Halloween this year.

K-Kick Butt Cardio: Violet Zaki's "Kickbutt Cardio" DVD has really been kicking my, um, butt. I don't feel bad having a hard time getting through the workout because it's fun and besides, SHE has a hard time doing it. Every time Violet says she's about to keel over and die, for some reason, I feel better. I wish I could hire her as my personal trainer.

L- Leela Thai: Leela Thai's my favorite Thai restaurant in all of LA. They have the best red curry with tofu there. I used to order from them every Friday night but now I'm down to twice a month.

M-Memory: I have a terrible memory. The upside of this is that I've developed the habit of telling the truth because I can't remember what's true half the time, let alone any lies.

N-Narcissism: The reason why I'm doing this A-Z list. But don't worry, I won't fall in love my reflection in a pool of water.

O-Orlando Bloom. He's not the best actor on the planet but I don't really care about the acting. His name should be in the dictionary next to "Smokin' Hot Eye Candy". He's sooo hot, I even have a Legolas doll. Sometimes I take it down from it's place of honor on the shelf and... okay, I'll just stop that thought right there.

P-Pacifica's Spanish Amber. I've been wearing this scent for the past couple of weeks and gosh, it smells so good. I smell my clothes when I take them off because I like it so much. I want to get the candles too but it might be too heavy of a scent for summertime. We'll see.

Q-Queasy: I get queasy really easily. That Alice in Wonderland teacup ride at Disneyland is a nightmare for me. Riding in the passenger seat in a car is sometimes tough for me too.

R-Ranunculus: They're my favorite flower. I try to get them for myself at least once or twice a month and I once got them for free from a stranger at at the Trader Joe's on 3rd and Fairfax.

S-Santa Barbara: Will someone please just buy me a house up there? It's such a beautiful area. Okay, you can't afford a house? A small condo will do just fine. Email me and I'll send you my address so you can send me the key to my new digs.

T-Treasure Hunting. I used to read books about treasures found in lost cities and from shipwrecks. I wanted to be a treasure hunter for a while there. Now I just settle for watching movies like "National Treasure" and "The Goonies".

U-Underwears. My four year old likes to strip his off and run around the house yelling, "Mommy, I don't have on any underwears!" One of these days he'll stop saying "underwears" and instead it'll just be "underwear". And I'll feel sad because I'll know my little wild boy is growing up.

V-Virtus Sola Nobilitas: Also known as "Virtue is the only nobility". It's my family motto. Love it. I even have a key chain with the motto on it.

W-Winter: Did I mention that it's 80 degrees here? Yeah, I love winter in Los Angeles. And now I'm going to listen to "Love Like Winter".

X-Xavier Gold: One of my favorite old-school house tracks is "You Used to Hold Me" by Ralphi Rosario and Xavier Gold. Xavier Gold is the singer and wow, she can SANG!

Y- Youth: I've always liked the Sophia Loren quote about the fountain of youth:

"There is a fountain of youth: it is your mind, your talents, the creativity you bring to your life and the lives of people you love. When you learn to tap this source, you will truly have defeated age."

Z-Zebra: I used to get called "zebra" all the time by mean children who teased me for being half white and half black. I'll never forget how mean those kids were. I know many of you got called names for a wide variety of reasons. Hopefully we each know better than to call other people names because we know how awful it feels.


A-Z, that's me as of today, the 27th day of February! I encourage you to try making this list because it was really fun. I would tag some of you and turn it into a meme, but I'll let you tag yourself. If you decide to do this, let me know.

It Was Time For A New Look

Instead of chopping off all my hair last night, I changed my blog.

If this is your first time here, you have no idea how this space used to look. But if you're returning to my fine and dandy piece of real estate on Blog Planet, for a second there, you may have wondered if you'd clicked on the correct link.

Looks different, doesn't it? And if all you see is a bunch of yellow, that's one of the glitches I have to work out. It's not supposed to look like that!

Change is a scary thing sometimes, but it was just time to put the lighthouse template out of it's misery. I was chatting online with one of my friends a few hours ago and ran an initial "test" of this template past him. He totally called it when he said that the "lighthouse" template was never really me. And truly, I only picked it because it seemed less "ugly" than many of the other ones offered by Blogger when I started this space three years ago.

But this one, these colors, if you come to my house, these are the colors you'll see.

I'll confess, I had a lot of anxiety about changing this spot, not the least of which was a fear that my entire blog would disappear. That fear is no joke, no matter how many times I have this whole thing backed up. So for the past week, I've been doing a whole lot of reading and researching about templates and how to customize them. I know only the most basic HTML, like how to strikethru or bold something, and besides, Blogger Beta is in XML so it's a little bit more challenging to figure out what's what.

I got my feet wet by changing the template on my other blog, the sadly neglected Reading and Listening. When that one didn't completely fall apart, I made a brand new "test" blog to try out this template and experiment with the colors and fonts. The test blog was successful, but I still wasn't completely ready to take the leap. You see, when you switch templates, you lose all your widgets and links. I have a whole lot of you in my link list, and along with all the other tweaking I need to do (because it's still doing weird glitchy things), guess what I get to re-type today?

Uh huh! All the links to your blogs.

Anyway, are you bored yet with all this technical talk?

Yeah, me too. So if you're dying for something more interesting to read other than the play-by-play of changing my blog, head over to Anti-Racist Parent and read the article I wrote for them. It's called "Explaining Michael Jackson". Go check it out but don't go stalking me just because you now know about my last name.

Oh, and I'm only slightly kidding about the hair thing. I had the scissors in hand!

Dear Sweeny Todd

Dear Sweeney Todd,

I have come to the conclusion that I no longer live in Los Angeles, the City of Angels

Driving down Beverly Boulevard the other day, it's clear that this is now your town. It's the "City of Sweeney Todd".

Sweeney, how is it that you're managing to be everywhere?

I counted over 25 Sweeney billboards lining the five mile stretch of Beverly between Robertson Blvd. and Vermont.

Aren't you worried about overexposure?

True, each billboard comes with a nice swath of red. I think that's supposed to represent a splatter of blood. But I know you're misunderstood, Sweeney. Tell me, it's just you doing some free form painting, right?

Also Sweeney, I've read that you're some sort of a serial killer. In fact, they call you "The Demon Barber of Fleet Street". LA is a great place for you then because not only do we have a whole lot of "demon barbers" with their overpriced salons, most celebrity murderers get away with it in this town so don't worry about a thing!

I'm not sure if we have a "Fleet Street" though. I think the only "Fleet" folks here might be familiar with is the laxative kind. Oh, the ways some folks out here try to stay thin...

Despite this Sweeney, I have to be honest. I just don't know if you're really ready to take over LA.

I mean, you're really pale all over. Even your lips are bloodless. I know you're not Dracula so I'm thinking that pale problem could just be a crystal meth issue. Let me make you an appointment at a spray tan salon.

Besides, looking like you do, you need to start worrying that someone from Hillary Clinton's campaign is going to start a rumor that you're not only a drug user, but quite possibly also a drug dealer.

I mean, if they could insinuate this about Barack Obama, the most un-drug dealerly looking guy on the planet, what might Clinton's spin meisters do to you, Sweeney?

So, let's clean up your act!

I'll send you to the MAC store at the mall and you can fight it out with the teenagers over the concealer. Trust me, it's worth the money.

An added bonus is ff you flash your razor blades in the store, all the teens will probably think you're really cool and emo. Besides, half of them already think you're that guy from My Chemical Romance, Gerard Way.

Don't worry, Sweeney. I know Gerard's giving you a run for your money, but I think you're still winning the, "I look like death warmed over," race.

But if, while looking at Gerard's picture, you start to feel like the gray streak in your hair is a tad too aging for you, I'm sure we can hook you up with a colorist to just take your hair to a pure black.

And, um, it's not that I want you to stop feeling like yourself, but while we're at it, how do you feel about us borrowing your razor to cut some layers in your hair as well?

Your hair's also sort of frizzy and dry. What's up with that? Do you need someone to take it back to the old school and hook you up with a deep conditioning treatment and a dollop of Blue Magic?

I'm only telling you all this, Sweeney, because if you want me to go out with you next weekend you are going to have to get it together before then. I know it must seem odd that it's only the beginning of our relationship and I'm already trying to change you, but yeah, don't have me showing up to the theater for our date only to be embarrassed by your crazy self.

My ultimatum?

If you can't handle business and make yourself more presentable, I'll just go out with Kiera Knightly again like I did last weekend.

Didn't know about that, did you, Sweeney?

Yes, that's right! Kiera and I went to go see "Atonement" last week.

Sigh.

I just can't stop thinking about the two hours Kiera and I spent together. I even tried to get her to eat a sandwich but she turned me down.

Yeah, overall, I think I had a better time than she did, but she looked absolutely smashing in her green dress.

Now, Sweeney, don't be angry about me and Kiera. I'm just keeping it real with you. So you let me know what you want to do and get back to me as soon as I can..

Blowing you kisses and don't try to cut anybody with that razor,

Los Angelista

Straw Hair

It's Saturday night again. Wasn't I just here a week ago? Funny how it came back around so quickly.

I spent my day at a Los Angeles Unified School District parent leadership training. I'm now president of the School Site Council at my kids' school. I got myself elected to pretty much every other school committee as well.

That means that today I was supposed to be learning about how to be a member of all these committees. That happened somewhat, but what I really came away knowing for sure is that there are some VERY angry parents in this school district. Every time the facilitators presented some information, they'd ask if we had any questions. Without fail, a parent would stand up and launch into a tirade about all the illegal (or legal and wack) stuff some principal is trying to pull.

I get their issues. I truly do. But after two hours of this, I was mentally exhausted. After four hours, my goodie-goodie self was texting my sister and socializing with the lady sitting next to me. After six hours, I felt like bumming a cigarette off of someone and taking up smoking just so I'd have a reason to go outside.

This marvelous day was capped off with me winning a door prize that came wrapped in Star of David wrapping paper. It was a pair of 99 Cent Store candlesticks. Uh huh.

And now I'm home and determined that this will not, I repeat, NOT be another Saturday night of laughing at my email spam. Seriously, it can't be. Especially after I spent Friday night curling my hair up with straws.

Yes, I said straws.

This was yours truly at around 1 am last night.

Yeah, for the uninformed, that's called a "straw set". And I hope it's obvious it's called this because those are drinking straws up in my hair. 72 drinking straws to be exact.

It took me about an hour to put them all in. Then I sat around for eons waiting for my hair to dry. I watched two movies, wrote a friend and by 1:30 in the morning, it still wasn't all dry. The gifted-child in me figured I'd just prop a whole bunch of pillows up and sleep sitting up, like if I was on an airplane.

That worked for awhile. But by 3:30, I finally gave in and laid down on those straws. Ouch! The uncomfortable things we women do for beauty! Believe me, I was so grateful my hair was dry when I got up two hours later.

I'll confess, this straw thing was an impulsive, spur of the moment experiment but I really like it. It was interesting though how today while I was busy socializing during a session, the lady next to me was all, "Girl, your hair is too cute! Where'd you get it done?"

"Um, I did it myself," I replied.

"You did it yourself?" she asked in disbelief.

Her mouth fell open while I nodded proudly and replied, "Yeah, I learned from a YouTube video.

"What! You learned how to sew in some weave from a YouTube video?"

We had about 30 seconds of back and forth, with me saying, "No, really, it's not a weave! It's my hair!" and her saying, "Stop frontin'! That has got to be a weave!"

I thought I was gonna have to let her pull my hair to prove to her that it wasn't a weave, but she finally believed me.

This led to a discussion about hair and black women in general. I told her about my recent decision to not chemically straighten my hair anymore. You can read all about it in an article I wrote about a month ago for Anti-Racist Parent. But in a nutshell, it's because I no longer feel I can teach my kids to be proud of their blackness if I'm changing an inherent part of my black identity, my hair.

She shared how brave she thought I was for this and confessed, "'I can't stand when those naps start growing out of my head! They're so..." She paused and sighed, searching for the right word. And then it finally came.

"Ugly."

She's not alone in feeling this way. Black women are trained to do battle with and hate their hair. Most black women in this country have no idea what the natural texture of their hair feels like. At least that's not the case for me because I've gone back and forth between straightening and not straightening for years.

If you're not black, no one cares if you decide you don't want to straighten your hair to within an inch of it's life, till it feels like straw. But if you are black, wearing your natural hair can become an ideological and political statement. And it's a fashion "don't" according to a (now former) Glamour magazine editor.

But, I'm really feeling my "don't" hair so I'm going to keep rolling with it. In fact, I think I'll sit here and pull on my springy curls while I watch the movie classic, "Network" on PBS. It's a very appropriate Saturday night choice since as far as the haterade on black women's hair, "I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore."

What's Really For Sale?

In the summer of 2005, I got to talking to another woman who's youngest daughter had begun going to the same home day care my own children go to. This woman, we'll call her Betty for the sake of this story, had her hair braided and I complimented her on how cute it looked. She said, "I did it myself!" Was she kidding? I can barely do a French braid down the back of my head, let alone do cornrows across my entire head.

Betty thought my hair would look cute in braids and offered to braid it for me. I had two main concerns: price and time. I asked her how much she charged and the price she named was fair. On to my second concern: the last time I'd gotten my hair braided, back in my senior year of college, it took two days to do it. I'm not a college senior now so I don't have two days to sit around. However, Betty assured me, "No, no. We Africans are not so slow as you black people. We braid from the time we're born. I can braid you in six hours." Now I know how there are some Africans and also some black folks from the Caribbean that think black Americans are lazy, good for nothing idiots. They think they're better and harder working than African-Americans. But, I couldn't tell if that was her vibe so I left it alone. After all, six hours sounded long but tolerable. We talked some more about what kind of style I wanted. I had decided on diagonal cornrows in the front and then small single braids in the back. I also wanted some fake hot pink hair braided into the back. (What can I say? It was summer!)

The next Saturday, Betty came over, arriving at about 9:30 in the morning. I made her some coffee and then we set up beauty shop in my living room. Betty sat on the couch and I sat on the floor in front of her. She was surprised by how much hair I had and confessed that it might take her till 5 or 6 pm. Nonetheless, she got right to work. We watched TV and, of course, got to talking about lots of things. At first we talked about the average superficial stuff you'd talk about with anyone. But, I'm always curious about people's lives so we quickly got into some deeper conversations after I asked her what it was like in her home country and why she came to the States.

Betty talked about how she'd grown up wealthy in her home country but her family had lost everything due to civil war. She talked about being forced to watch her father get murdered and her mother being raped. She talked about how her husband had come here to the States with her and their two children but had taken a trip back to their country to take care of some things. She'd never heard from him again. She didn't know if he was alive or dead and it'd been two years. All she knew was that he'd been taken away by some soldiers and no one had seen him again. She'd found out she was pregnant with their daughter a week after he left. I felt an immense amount of empathy for her situation. It was heartbreaking to listen to her graphic descriptions and experiences.

Then, Betty asked, "Do you smoke?"

"No. I never really got into cigarettes. They smell bad and I like really nice, white teeth" I replied. (It's true. At the risk of sounding like a horse breeder, I absolutely adore nice teeth.)

Betty clarified her question. "No, I mean, do you smoke weed?" she asked.

I was a little taken aback by this question but I attributed her directness to cultural differences. I answered her honestly, "Nope, I've never used any drugs of any kind."

"Wow. That's amazing. You've never used any drugs?"

"Nope. Never used any drugs," and then I picked up the remote and began to flick through the channels. Maybe she'd take a hint and stop asking me about this. Drugs are a sensitive topic for me because unfortunately, I've known way too many people who've had their lives destroyed by them. It makes me sad to talk about drug use.

She couldn't take a hint. "What about your husband? Does he smoke?" Her hands moved quickly over my head, pulling my hair tightly as she braided.

"No, he doesn't smoke weed either." I couldn't read her body language to really tell if there were questions behind her questions. It would be an understatement to say that I felt a little weird at this point. My antennae were definitely up but when someone is braiding your hair, you can't see their face because they're sitting behind you. I had no way to really know, was this just genuine curiosity or was this her way of feeling me out to see if she could sell me something?

"So, no drugs? Not even cocaine?" Betty asked. Now I knew. The average person, cultural differences or no, doesn't ask you if you use coke. Hmm. What was really for sale? Braiding services or something else?

I made some sort of joke about Nancy Reagan and her "Just Say No!" slogan. It went over Betty's head, so I said I needed to go to the bathroom. While in the bathroom, I could see from gazing at my reflection in the mirror that she wasn't even halfway finished with my hair. But I also didn't want some crazy tweaker up in my house. Kick her out or keep getting my hair braided?

The hair won out. I didn't have any real proof that she was involved in drugs, just my gut. I should trust my gut, I know, but I'm also a little vain and I wanted my hair to look cute. So, when I came back out I told her I wanted to watch a movie. I figured the longer the movie the better. I put the first Lord of the Rings on and turned the sound up a whole lot. I guess she took the hint because she didn't ask me about drugs anymore. We watched movies the rest of the time she was braiding, only chatting in the vaguest generalities about music and culture. Betty finished my hair at around six at night and I drove her home since she'd taken the bus to my place.

Two weeks later, Betty called me and asked me if she could borrow $100. She said she was desperate. Her baby daughter didn't have any diapers and they didn't have any food to eat. I was empathetic but I don't lend money to folks that aren't related to me. I told her this and she continued to beg me for the money. I finally relented and said I'd lend her $50. I suppose I felt guilty because, drugs or no, I hadn't lived through a civil war. I probably felt a little bad too since she kept going on and on about how lucky I was to have my husband here, while she was all alone and had to survive on her own with two children. She swore she'd pay me back the next week.

I took the braids out about a month later and my own hair, hair that had been halfway down my back, fell out in huge clumps. My stylist told me it was probably a combination of my hair being braided too tightly and my own hair having a bad chemical reaction with the fake hair that Betty braided in. Whatever. All I knew was that I was left with this super thin hair that had to be cut to chin length, the shortest it's ever been in my entire life. I was pissed. All that empathy I'd had for Betty went out the door. I wanted to beat someone's ass, preferably someone who'd asked me if I used coke and owed me $50.

A week after my haircut, I saw Betty. "Oh, you cut your hair?" she said.

"I had to because all my hair fell out after I took out the braids." I know my tone was unfriendly but I was mad. My hair was totally jacked up and this heffa was shrugging her shoulders and saying, "Maybe your hair is not so strong because you're father is white."

I decided to ask her about the money she owed me and she told me how she'd fallen on hard times but she'd pay me back as soon as she could.

"But is there anything else I can do for you...anything I can get for you?" No thanks, Betty. I'm just fine, thank you. I don't want or need to snort anything up my nose.

Now, a year and a half later, her husband has miraculously reappeared. At times, I've wondered if soldiers really had captured him. I've wondered for awhile if she made the whole story about her life back in her homeland up so I'd feel sorry for her. One thing I know for sure, people involved in cocaine tell a whole lot of lies. Maybe he just was being a loser husband and didn't feel like being with her anymore and so had bounced for a while. I haven't heard the whole story of what happened to him and how he came back, because I've barely said two words to Betty. Of course, you already know she never gave me back the $50.

Yesterday, I went to drop off my youngest son a bit later than usual and so I ran into her. I always say, "Hi, how you doing?" and that's about it. Nowadays, Betty's driving a Mercedes SUV. It's wrong for me to assume I know how she got that Mercedes, isn't it? I only have my gut to go from, but I couldn't help but think that "business" must be booming.

To-Do List Overload

I keep two to-do lists, a personal list and a professional list. I like to cross things off of both but this week I found I was mainly crossing off the professional list and neglecting the personal list. I'd post a picture of my list for you but I can't find my camera right now. All week long I said, "I'll just do this on Saturday." Well, now it's Saturday and good grief, my head might explode.

At the top of my list is, "Pay bills." Sounds fun, I know. But with the magic of online banking, voila, it's done. Now I know how much money I have to waste when I venture out in search of a new fish tank later this afternoon.

Right now, I'm going to get my jacked-up hair done. I've worn it in a very Victorian, school-marmish bun all week and I can't take it anymore. I also have to get my squirrel-tail looking eyebrows waxed. I thought of cancelling my appointment but my hair is a mass of split ends due to too much flat-ironing. Soo, I have to be at the salon at 10:30...I know, that's 13 minutes from now. I'll be leaving my house in a hot second. No, I haven't broken up with my stylist yet so I probably won't emerge till around 2 pm, if I'm lucky. This is problematic since that's a good chunk of time that I could be using to do other stuff. Ahh, the price of beauty. That's where the fun ends though.

The rest of my afternoon will be spent buying and setting up a fishtank, acquiring new bathmats and kitchen towels, going to the grocery store, picking up suits at the cleaners, cleaning my house and... on and on and on.

Enough blogging...I'd better get started.