Halfway There; Locks of Love

To commemorate the (just over) halfway point at 21 weeks, I decided on Sunday that I wanted to get my hair cut. Or, more honestly, it has been blessed hot here for the past couple weeks, upper 90s and humid and much hotter in my magnifying glass of a Volvo, and I had to shed something somewhere to deal with it. Weight shedding isn't happening, and I can only shed so many clothes and maintain enough decency to appear in public, so that left...hair. Monday after work I walked into Great Clips beside the office and asked if they would cut my hair for Locks of Love, an idea I thought of at the last minute. Happily, they did so, and I got two birds with one stone: a free haircut, and knowing a nice blond-ish wig full of thick pregnancy hair will go to a child who needs it for one reason or the other.

Halfway belly!

I didn't get a picture of my long, blong, waving pregnancy ponytail gathered in a band and lopped off 10 inches up, but it felt a little like seeing your arm hacked off and held up for your inspection, as if you're supposed to be pleased. That is mine, and the lady is dangling it in front of my eyes, and now she's putting it in a bag and taking it to the back room, noooo...

But I can't deny the freedom, weightlessness and increased air conditioning of short hair, and isn't this the ultimate triumvirate of gifts that every pregnant woman seeks? I sure am happy as a clam, but I don't know if Sam will be so pleased when he returns from out of town on Friday. (Yes, I am a coward and got my hair hacked while my significant other was out of state.) I've yet to meet a man who prefers his wife with short hair. Good news for him is that I still have half a pregnancy left of crazy fast hair growth. It may even be back to this before he arrives on Friday:

But right now it's more like this:

I am sure the verse 'a woman's glory is her hair' is biblical, and I get a sense of what that is about. There is something of glory in long hair, something demur, graceful, lengthy and utterly feminine, cradling the face and laying down the back. But as I told my Mom when she started growing her hair out for the first time in decades: with long hair that is not definitively curly, be prepared for a life of discontent. For I am every hour putting my long hair up in a ponytail, or shaking it down around my shoulders to release pressure on my scalp, then gathering it in a bun because it's become scraggly, then letting it down because the bun has given it a nice wave, then putting it up to walk or jog after work...the cycle goes on.

Now is a time of rest from all that - at least for a few weeks or months. The best part about short hair is that I can do little pigtails shooting out from each side and fancy them cute and appropriate rather than juvenile, which they would be with longer hair.