The highlight of my day

I want to say a few words about hair. My hair, if you want to know, is very curly and can get quite bushy, so for the last few years I have been growing it out to keep it heavy and low maintenance. This plan has worked for me pretty well, except for the time last year when I got bangs and the year before that, when a well-meaning beautician in Ireland misunderstood my foreign accent, so that when I said "trim", she thought I said "Cut four or five inches off and give me the Friends haircut that Jennifer Aniston had in 1995", bless her heart.
After much indecision and careful research, I decided recently that I wanted this haircut that Kirsten Dunst has, so I made an appointment and marched into the salon today with confidence and poise, having spent all last night trying to talk myself into cutting off all those years of growth. Once inside, however, Julie (my all-knowing hairdresser) thoughtfully reminded me that left to its own devices my hair is more inclined to look like Art Garfunkel than Kirsten Dunst, therefore this haircut would not really be practical. (If you don't know what Art Garfunkel looks like, click here.) So I got a trim.
Although I took the boring way out (and I may still go back and get the haircut, why not?) there is something very esteem-building about a visit to the salon. Your get your hair shampooed with products you can't afford yourself that smell like a delicious combination of men's cologne and magic marker, then women do mysterious and wonderful things to your head that you could never replicate at home, and you leave feeling like a million bucks because a spell has been cast on your follicles that binds until you wash your hair again yourself. I believe I could have left with a mullet this afternoon and still felt like a million bucks, because it would be the shiniest, most fragrant mullet ever to be ruffled by a spring breeze. Don't listen to anyone who says you can't buy that kind of confidence.