Clients

I just wanted to take a moment to share about the great clients that I have had at beauty school recently.

My school uses Paul Mitchell products. Paul Mitchell has a men's color line which I have never used - until the day this one man came in. He had great white hair and an air of sophistication about him (aka he was bald on top). In addition to being completely open to suggestion, he asked a bunch of questions to me and my instructors and gushed about how much he was learning. He ended up with a great cut and I was entirely pleased with the results from the "flash finish" color product. He enthusiastically shook my hand.

I recently watched a movie titled Saint Vincent. One of the main characters was a blonde stripper with an eastern European accent. When this lovely client came in I couldn't help but make the connection. Unfortunately she was one of the clients who doesn't say much (which makes me nervous) and after her keratin treatment told me her hair didn't feel any different.

Darn.

But I put pretty waves in her hair and she made a point not to put her scarf on on the way out so she wouldn't mess them up.  Sometimes it's impossible to know what people are thinking.

That same day a girl came in and ASKED for me to give her an updo for a dance she was going to. It touched my heart because the first time I took too long and made her late to photos for her function. We hugged on the way out.

There was a similar lady who had come in months ago for a simple haircut and, for some reason, REQUESTED me. I struggled so much the first time but she made me feel like I had been a professional even way back in October. And I was able to serve her with better quality and speed than last time.

I have also been blessed by a woman who is slightly advanced in years who was inspired by Katy Perry and myself to ask me for blue streaks in her hair. And she was the first client who asked me to tease her hair. I love teasing. And she told me, "it looks a lot better teased." That felt nice.

There was one woman who came in shortly after an unexpected death in her family. She was planning the funeral as I was doing her hair. When I was done, she looked in the mirror and told me "I haven't lookeded this good in years."

- a big change from, "I'm sorry, I look so haggard right now."

I sprayed her a lot and told her not to worry about her hair because it would last till the funeral.

It was such a blessing to be a part of that.

But my FAVORITE experience, which I am writing down so I never forget it, is when a client told me as I was teasing her hair (this is a different one), "you're really good. You are definitely in the right profession."

So much to learn, but so much encouragement to remember.

Box Trolls

I was watching a movie called "the box trolls" and was struck by the villian's being allergic to the thing he wanted the very most. It was just perfect for a (dark) family film where actually killing the villian to get justice is not appropriate.

Have you noticed in less grown-up films where themes of pathos and revenge and guilt and what-is-justice are avoided, the bad guy is more likely to fall prey to a cliff, alligator, ocean, or swirling cloud, rather than a knife to the heart from the protagonist?

The good guys tell the bad guy it might not be so good for him to eat the cheese and his identity doesn't come from it, blah blah etc, (the writers rid them of all culpability) and he does, and he explodes, and everybody is happy because everyone wanted him to die secretly but nobody wanted blood on their hands.

The underdogs in the movie are the box trolls themselves, a species of little blue hairless lumps with arms and legs that wear boxes for clothes and dig in the trash for materials to fuel their underground tinkering workshop.

They don't speak English but grunt cutely and express human emotions - and are depicted as purely good.

I feel that they may have been designed to compete with minions. They're cute, little, a different color, and there are a lot of them. They act as a group, and they have an underground lair. On the other hand, this movie is based on a book and maybe the designers just couldn't help it.

In any case, I like the box trolls better than minions because they have integrity and intelligence. Enough said.

Struggle Bus

Before school one day I noticed that my car was covered in little ice puddles. It was beautiful. More beautiful was the fact that my car was clean!  Dad had taken my car to the wash and discovered that manmade cleaning methods just won't remove the gunk from the pooping trees under which I often unwittingly park at school.

After school that day the ice had melted and my car was covered again in tree poop.

Winter truly is a blessing, for its ice and snow have been the cure for the strange gooey berries that have befallen my civic.

I was speaking with a classmate who had also come upon some strange struggles that day and she used the greatest phrase: "struggle bus." Now, I couldn't remember what it was when I got home and had to text her ("it's something like trouble train"). But after that day I hear the phrase more often.

The wheels on the struggle bus go round and round.

HERE's a struggle: growing up.  About a month out from graduation, it has become a new rule that if students do not arrive at or before starting time, they must wait an hour and 45 minutes (until the end of break) before they can clock in and begin accumulating hours.

For someone who almost always comes in five to fifteen minutes late, I had to choose between two reactions to this policy change, and really, I had no right to be angry and indignant. I'm 21 for goodness' sake. I live 15 minutes away. There's no reason for me to ever be late.

Instead, this is how I responded: 

Challenge accepted.

And for those days when I'm running late, I park right outside with my blinkers on, run in and scan my hand into the time clock, and then go park my car. GENIUS.

Wish me Luck

I'm sitting at doctor's express again. Stupidly cut myself with a utility knife opening a makeup package. 

Embarrassed. 

Lots of dreams lately that are hard to explain.

Helicopters and marshmallows falling from the sky, a big stuffed bear whose eye is the door to a different world and also a talking black cat. Giving an unpleasant guy dreads and taking an unreasonable amount of time - staying after in the gray light, unhappy. 

Lightening my hair and being Alice in wonderland with tall trees and animal friends in a baseball stadium. And looking for jewelry in Macy's - again. Conversation with mom where she wants me to flatiron her hair. 

Definitely there are more. 

But they're so plotless that it's not even fun to recount them. 

The ponds by my school are frozen. 

I'm missing school right now waiting for stitches. I feel slightly guilty. My thumb is healing as I sit here. I could super glue it myself. 

I was reading a couple of aesthetician's magazines I borrowed from the lunch room at my school and have discovered that as much as I feel undereducated by my school about aesthetics, I no longer have interest in it!

I have often claimed that I want to know everything, but having spent so much time learning what I have learned, the information in those magazines was too much. It's too late for me to reject what I have learned about hair.  Skin products, machine overload, technique overload assaulted me in those pages. 

Still waiting. The lady up front says the doctor has a "complicated physical" in the back. 

I'm pretty sure I can just super glue my thumb shut by myself but mom wants me to stay. 

Oh well. 

There's a television in the waiting room. Why are there televisions everywhere? There was one in the sketch aesthetician's place I went to once too. They're everywhere you look at Applebee's. 

Oh man. Now the tv here is repeating what I've already seen. 

There's a girl who recently graduated at nearly the same time as her father passed away. I told her I wanted to make her a painting (as a tangible way to show her that I care). 

Of course, I have forgotten about this until today when this girl showed up as the replacement for our very pregnant receptionist! Thank GOD I saw her!

Gotta get working. 

We talked and she said she wants something bright and cheerful. 

Scratch the weird obscure symbolism stuff I was considering. 

There's a lady next to me who's been waiting for two hours. There's a semi-elderly cute/sarcastic coughing couple who were given doctor's masks by the secretary! I've never seen that done before in a doctor's office. 

May I not catch the flu and graduate late. 

If it is your will, Lord. 

Did I tell you my sister and I are going on a road trip? (Lord willing, once again.) Route 66 and back again. Sister had been doing all of the research until two days ago and now I am hitting the books. 

So to speak. 

I am hitting the laptop (which has been healed since Kenya, praise God)-(I believe this may be the blog in which I have given God credit the most times) and have designated a trip journal. 

I am taking ownership of this trip. 

I have figured out our return route, researched average weather conditions at all major cities along our route, and ordered a couple of books about road trips for us to read to each other while driving. 

I have also applied to receive a new driver's license. Which I have lost. 

I told someone I lost my license and their immediate assumption was that I had had it revoked for some act of badness. 

I have simply misplaced it. 

My hope is that I will find it and then have two licenses when I receive my new one!

Not sure if the old one becomes null at that point, but you know, bars probably will accept it. 

My next task is learning how to camp and researching what people take and what people leave behind on road trips. 

Wish me luck!