Jeneration X: One Reluctant Adult's Attempt to Unarrest Her Arrested Development; Or, Why It's Never Lancaster, Jen (read more books .txt) š
Book online Ā«Jeneration X: One Reluctant Adult's Attempt to Unarrest Her Arrested Development; Or, Why It's Never Lancaster, Jen (read more books .txt) šĀ». Author Lancaster, Jen
Staceyās sputtering with barely suppressed laughter and sneaking photos of me in the mirror. However, Iām an ace with a round brush, so I donāt panic. I mean, when I did my friend Angieās hair on our last girlsā weekend, she looked exactly like Phil Spector until I did the final comb-out and then, voilĆ ! She was all Katie Holmes Interprets Jackie Kennedy Before All the Unpleasantness and it was FAB. Whatās going to happen here is heās going to give my tresses a few flicks of a rattail comb and then Stacey is going to be VERY jealous.
The stylist gives me a few flicks of a rattail comb andā¦ now Iām ready for the swimsuit competition on Toddlers & Tiaras.
What the hell?
āThis is more āShirley Templeā and less āBrigitte Bardot,āā I tell him.
He assures me, āItāll loosen up while retaining volume. Give it a few minutes and tousle it with your fingers.ā
I tousle the ever-loving shit out of it while Stacey pays and gets us a cab, but all that does is make my fingers tacky from product. When I try to separate the curls, they donāt loosen up and give me big, sexy volume. They instead splinter into smaller, angrier, more aggressively springy curls.
Iād have been a big pain in the ass about this if I were paying, but itās on Stacey and the whole experience was fun, so I gather my hair-snakes into an elastic band and we ride back to the hotel. I spend most of the trip sticking my head out the window, but thus far thirty-five miles an hour of wind hasnāt made a dent in the do.
While Stacey rests before dinner, I assemble my hair-fixinā toolsādryer, conditioning spritzer, round brush, comb, travel-sized flat iron, and the kind of silicone-based serum that takes even the most unruly tresses from Shakira to Gwyneth in seconds flat.
I spend the next thirty minutes alternately squirting my hair and pulling it taut with a brush, but every time I release the lock, it sproings back into an enormous spiral.
Why is this happening?
The more I tug and spritz, the bigger and stickier my hair gets.
I feel like David After the Dentist. I keep looking at my head and asking, āIs this real life?ā
I finally give up and rinse, assuming that if I start from scratch, I can turn this hair-donāt back into a hairdo. However, since Iām only using Dallas tap water and not, you know, holy water, it is almost completely ineffectual.
I remember one time I watched an episode of Jersey Shore where Pauly D. went swimming and his coif stayed perfectly in place. At the time I thought this was some sort of trick photography, but now I realize he must have employed the same kind of witchcraft as my stylist today.
When Stacey and I meet up in the lobby, she asks if I took a nap instead of dealing with my Medusa. When I tell her no, she clamps her lips together and her eyes water, but she makes no further remarks. Yet the entire time weāre on the patio enjoying our dinner, her gaze keeps falling on my barely restrained hair-bush.
I scour my hair in the morning to no effect and itās not until I wash it on Illinois soil that I finally get it looking normal again.
I donāt know why I was so surprised by all of this because with a motto like āEverythingās bigger in Texas,ā itās not like they didnāt warn me.
But going forward, trust me, I will never mess with Texas.
Reluctant Adult Lesson Learned:
The phrase āAre you game?ā is an enormous red flag. Heed it or eat beef heart. Your call.
CĀ·HĀ·AĀ·PĀ·TĀ·EĀ·R TĀ·WĀ·EĀ·NĀ·TĀ·Y
Quickbooks, Quicker Shovels
Never hire the cheapest accountant you can find.
This dictum doesnāt have direct bearing on what happens next, but itās an important rule that Fletch and I learned the hard way; ergo it bears repeating.
Speaking of business, last year, Fletch quit his job to manage the corporate end of my writing career full-time. I realize this sounds like weāre very fancy and important, but thatās not the case.
Frankly, I needed someone to get my lunch.
Between what Fletch spent on multiple daily Starbucks runs, monthly parking at the Sears Tower, dining out, and dressing up, his salary was kind of a wash. You know how some moms quit their jobs because the child-care costs are killing them and itās cheaper for them to stay home with the baby? In this case, Fletch is the baby with a taste for custom-tailored shirts and indoor parking. [Fletch just read this and says itās me whoās the baby in this scenario and heās the caretaker. He is wrong.]
Also, after putting in years of sixty-hour weeks at jobs he hated in order to earn enough for me to pursue a writing career, I kind of owed him. Thatās not to mention how I kept screwing up the business end of things by stuffing important corporate notices in drawers because they looked boring and I was busy creating. [Fletch made me add this whole paragraph. And he rolled his eyes at the ācreatingā part.]
So we decided he would become my assistant.
Turns out heās kind of terrible at it and I would fire him in a minute if he werenāt particularly conscientious about providing a noncereal-based lunch. Since weāve started working together, Iāve yet to waste a single afternoon recovering from a sugar crash. Yay, Fletch!
Weāre eating our Fletch-fetched lunch in the kitchen todayāJimmy Johnās Beach Club, a perennial favorite of mineāwhen Libby leaps to her feet and begins to glower at something outside the sliding glass door. Her entire ruff goes up, too.
āThatās weird,ā I say. āWhatās with her?ā
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