A little off the Top please

I confronted one of my only remaining fear in Rio de Janeiro today, the hairdresser. 

I haven´t had a lot of luck in that area since I came years ago.  I´ve been to all kinds of stylists: the cheap, the expensive, the trendy, the gay, the trendy and gay, the gay and expensive, the gay and cheap, and finally the old.

Overall, my experiences have been inconsistent.  I´ve had 2 cuts that I´ve been relatively happy with. The majority were nothing special.

And last but not least, one horrible cut followed by the fix of said haircut that could only be described as less horrible. My longer than shoulder length hair ended up a boycut after my lady in San Diego fixed all the wrong doings.

So after all the ups and downs, I decided to wait until I visited home to get a cut from now on.  I´m lucky enough to have hair that usually grows out nicely.  Waiting a year isn´t too bad.  But a year in a half is pushing it. 

A lovely friend of mine, who is an ex-hairdresser, came to visit Rio and offered to give me a trim so that my locks wouldn´t have to suffer the long wait. Note to self, do not let your well meaning friend cut your hair when you are opening your second bottle of wine.

It wasn´t that bad.  Not at all.  But it was a little... boxie.  Basically, I´ve been pulling off the ponytail for almost 2 months. 

I may not be high maintenance, but that´s bad, even for me. 

So I decided to take care of it. It´s my 30th birthday tomorrow and I do not want to spend it in a ponytail. 

The hardest part of the experience was explaining what I wanted.  I can´t do in English, imagine in Portuguese.  The woman might as well had spoken French as I do not understand one bit of hair vocabulary.  Untapped market here people! Write a book!

Anyway, it worked out well. I do have the same haircut I had when I was 17 but that´s not too bad. 17 going on 30.  At least no one went at my locks with a razor this time around.