Not tired, can't sleep.

I was so ready for bed, and now I'm wider awake again. Such is life.

I wanted to record some observations my hair cut experience yesterday. I am generally wary of mall salons, because you never really can know what kind of hairdresser to expect. Last time I went to this place in Crossgates both the woman cutting my hair and the token flamboyant male beautician wouldn't shut up about how fabulous my hair looked. Seriously, it was ridiculous almost to the point of insincerity. Maybe they were shooting for moral support or something.. I think I got a lot of inches cut off that day.

This time I was only there for a trim and was assigned to a shy twenty-something with good bangs and a typical Awl-bany drawl. Very, very non-hair dresser personality, which I guess is good because it busted up some stereotypes in my patterned mind. She incorporated awkward foreign phrases into most things she said, like "au naturale" and "the whole enchilada." She asked me strange questions like, "So what are your plans for the rest of the day?" I guess the question isn't inherently strange, but it was strange the way she asked it, really intense and like she had some kind of context for my response.

She spent the rest of our time together complaining about her swollen gums and how much she hates going to the dentist and hasn't been in a long time because she doesn't have insurance and she had a feeling this tooth might give her trouble because it has gumline cavities and she thinks she might need a root canal which might be painful but her dentist is gentle and usually numbs her mouth real good so that she can't feel it for three days afterward because the novocaine interacts with her meds anyway. She asked me to look at her jaw and tell her if one side was swollen. I said, "You can probably tell better than I can since I've never seen you before."

And THEN she told me that she HATES teeth and wishes they would just pull hers all out and give her dentures instead.

And all I could say was "Yeah," because I like my teeth a lot and think dentures are pretty creepy, and because I didn't want to seem insensitive.

I couldn't help but wonder what kind of "meds" she's on that interact with novocaine and can be afforded without health insurance. I really hope she feels better soon. She did a great and lovely job, despite inappropriate conversational skills. She gave me a wild flipped-out blow-out (blow-job?) and a zigzag part, which I promptly rearranged in the restroom as soon I as paid the twenty-five dollars plus big sympathetic tip.