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. 

Parenthood in Rio de Janeiro. I swear I'm not scared!

I have found that irrational fears and parenthood go hand and hand.  I can't help but worry about the silliest things. 

Living in Rio de Janeiro does not help my irrational parental fears.   Take a simple thing like my 3 year old going on a field trip with his school.  My typical irrational fear would be him getting separated from the group.

Now let's add Rio de Janeiro to the equation. I worry that there's going to be a random shooting on the street where the school bus happens to be passing. Or he'll get separated from the group, or get snatched, and I'll never see him again do to the lack of infrastructure in the country. There's also stray bullets, food poisoning, wild monkey attacks, giant mosquitoes, and bum poop.

People, I did say the fears were irrational.

I honestly forget about these irrational fears most of the time. Day to day activities distract you, especially with two little ones. Plus, there are so many great things here for your kids, that it's hard to put an active imagination above the high quality of life they do have.

You forget about the meningitis outbreaks that happen in Rio de Janeiro, knowing your kid is vaccinated.  You put them in a good school near your home in a good neighborhood.  You cross the street when you are about to cross paths with the area's crazy, glue sniffing bum.   And you liberally apply mosquito repellent during dengue fever season. 

When the day is done, you live here and you're going to have fears regardless of where you live.  Of course the fears here are a little heartier then those at home...

Hey, at least I'm not so irrational as to suffer from any of the following:

Arachibutyrophobia – The fear of peanut butter sticking to the roof of the mouth
Genuphobia - Fear of knees
Xanthophobia - Fear of the color yellow or the word yellow

Ok, knees do freak me out a bit.

What are your irrational Rio de Janeiro fears? Parenthood fears? Come on, tell me!  I know you all have at least have one.