Hair...what a curse!  No matter what kind of hair we have we almost always long for something else.  Straight hair?  You want curly.  Curly hair? You want straight.

As an older woman, I was tired of a lifetime of fighting with my curly hair.  Rain was the dreaded enemy.  Before straighteners, there was Dippity Doo.  Remember that thick pink gunk?  I'd goop down my banging and taped them straight, only to have them boing up again once the tape was removed. Then I tried to have it straightened...and it rebelled and fell out.

So as I aged and my hair got thinner, I cut it off.  Yes, really really short.  So short that women would come up to me and ask if I was a cancer survivor.  No, I'd say, I'd a bad hair survivor. The response is often - oh, I wish I had the courage to cut my hair that short.

You have a choice - be a slave to your tresses or free yourself!

It was during a period in my life when I felt I didn't have control over most of the things that were happening to me and around me.  But the one thing I could control was my hair...so I cut it off.  I went to a men's barbershop the first time and told him to cut off anything that curled.  Later I found a "proper" hairdresser and have been going to him ever since, to avoid that shaved neck thingy that barbers do.

It's turning grey faster than I'd like but I refuse to color it and support a bad habit.  Besides I need it cut once a month and I'd weep over the expense of having my colored curls lobed off.

I am so grateful to my mother that I had a easy birth, hence a well-shaped head!  And grateful to Bill, my hairdresser, for the great haircuts. My biggest regret - never being able to flirtatiously flip my hair. Curly hair doesn't flip.

I also grateful that I no longer have to buy any hair product except shampoo.

Free yourselves, ladies, cut your hair off!

Spring is slowly springing and that means ... time for all those medical checkups

First the dreaded colonoscopy.  Once every five years (if you check out okay at the last one) I get to drink copious amounts of fluid that runs through you like Niagara Falls.  The doc prescribed some odious cherry-flavored powder that you mix in a gallon container.  And I refused to drink that much liquid.  I knew I would cease to swallow half way through.  No way!  I was so grateful when his office said there was another way, with less to drink.  Of course it cost a lot more, but it's only every five years so I splurged.  (Splurging on something that makes you poop somehow sounds wrong - splurging on a new purse or pair of shoes makes more sense.)

The anticipation was far worse than the event, except I had to get up at 5 a.m. to finish drinking the vile liquid and I am not a morning person!

I'm happy to saw everything came out just fine...excuse the pun.

On Monday my sister underwent surgery because she had diverticulitis and developed an abscess in her intestines.

How did she let it get so bad?  Isn't the pain of diverticulitis a good clue that something's wrong?  When was her last colonoscopy?  I don't want to ask her these questions - they would only make her feel worse.

Yesterday I had my annual mammogram. No big deal.  Once a year, a few minutes of slight discomfort and done until next year.  I do wish a woman would invent a better machine.  I know it was a man because only a man would want a woman's breast squished like that.  Imagine if men had to undergo a penis flattening by pressure...the equipment would be improved quickly.

PLEASE have your regular checkups!  Make a check list for yourself and actually look at it at least once a year!  If my sister would have done that perhaps she'd still have the feet of intestines they had to remove.