It's Like a Candy Cane, Except You Can't Eat It

Sometimes the urge to do something weird comes over me with little warning, and I'm overwhelmingly compelled to do it.  So yesterday when I decided that Christmas red highlights would be the perfect Winter look for me, I made a quick call to the JC Penney salon where I had a hair appointment scheduled for the next day.  I wanted to make sure they had some kind of flaming shade of red on hand, and I checked to see if they needed to add more time for me.  Everything was good, so I made sure I had a picture of exactly what I wanted, and then I just had to hope that Faye, the nice older Asian lady who'd only done my hair one time before, was up to speed on peek a boo highlights and such. 

My friend karen was concerned that I'd look like I had a head trauma, but my friend Burgundy thought it would be the best thing I'd ever done.  She suggested that I pair my hair with a wonderfully ugly Christmas sweater, of which she knows I have an impressive hideous collection.  Here's the facebook convo we had (You can skip this part if you'd like, but I think it's funny):

Burgundy: "And you won't be crying tmr!!! You'll be in the mirror admiring your festiveness! Or searching for an ugly christmas sweater to wear with your awesome hair!"

Amy:  ‎"................................. OMW.... I hadn't even thought of pairing this look with a Christmas sweater. I'm so excited I could burst!"

Burgundy:  "HAHAHAHA! It would be AMAZING!"

 Amy:  "Should I go fiber optic light-up or Santa frogs? Or kittens with ornaments??"

Burgundy:  "Oh gosh, could you imagine your hair with the fiber optic????? You'll be the talk of the town!"

 

Amy: "That's the direction I was leaning too. I'll have to make sure I'm good on batteries... You know, I'm supposed to sing at church on Sun night."

Burgundy "YES!!! That's the most perfect occasion I could ever think of for all of this!"

Amy: "And it doesn't just light up... IT FLASHES."

Burgundy:  "It really just keeps getting better and better....Jersey won't be the same. Pictures!!"

Amy:  "Jersey might be the one place where this could go unnoticed! I mean, it's just not gonna pack the same punch as doing this in a small, conservative SC town, but still... the awesomeness of this exists anywhere!"

Burgundy: "I'd have to disagree....I mean, yes, that is where "jersey shore' was born....but I really think a fiber optic light up sweater...THAT FLASHES...on a lady with red hair, singing about baby Jesus.....it's really going to be a head turner lol. You'll definitely have everyones attention though!"

Amy: "I almost wet my pants.."

Then I started thinking maybe my non-lit sweater with frogs in Santa hats might be better for that event.  And my excitement continued to grow.

The next day, I went waltzing into the salon a little early, or actually right on time, which doesn't usually happen with me because of my chronic lateness tendencies.  My husband thinks I can't tell time, but I've told him repeatedly that the inability to understand the passing of time is something you're born with, and there is no cure for it.  Anyway, moments later I'm in the hair chair and I'm showing Faye the picture of hair awesomeness and she said, "No, I can't do that."  My heart sank as I immediately considered how boring my plain golden locks were gonna be for Christmas.  She explained how they didn't have that exact same shade of red, and she'd never done those peek a boos.  And, apparently working with blonde hair is terrifying or something, when you wanna slather some permanent red color on just a few pieces.  I guess she could sense my sadness so she called all the other hair people over and shared the situation, and I was sure one of them would come to my rescue and say they'd do it, but they all said "No."  So I understood and I said to just do the usual.  Now my dreams of the hair and Christmas sweater were shattered.  But I had no idea my day would soon turn into pure HAPPINESS.

One of the hairstylists, Evelyn, kept looking at me, and asking questions like, "What if it were to fade soon?...  What if it stayed and you grew tired of it?"  I assured her that I had given this much thought (for a whole day) and that I understood fading, and how I was mainly doing it to be festive for Christmas, but if it didn't fade after that, I wouldn't die or anything.  Faye was more like, "If something goes wrong, it would be hard to strip that red out, which would really damage your hair...  And I've never done this before..."  So then they decided they'd do it, and I had NO FEAR.

So Faye did the usual stuff to my hair and had me under a dryer and I watched as Faye and Evelyn had a meeting about my hair.  The hand gestures and arm motions suggested they were acting it out.  These women were on it.  They seemed to work out most of the details and I couldn't wait to get out of that dryer,  not just because I was so stinkin' excited, but because I can't breathe in those upside down bowls of hot air.  Soon I'm back in the hair chair, and it felt just like I was about to undergo a medical procedure.  They explained what they were gonna do, there were latex gloves involved, and the lights kinda seemed like operating room lights, after having spent a few minutes in that dark dryer.  The tone was serious.  And in the bowl before me, was the hair goo, that looked like a melted fire engine.  They worked together as they carefully placed three foils on each side of my head.  It was intense.  It was as though they were dissecting a bomb.  They trembled a little, and every move was slow and cautious.  They talked it all through.  Meanwhile, I was giddy. At one point, they didn't realize a tiny little bit of red color had gotten on the comb, and one of them combed thru my hair, creating an instant crisis, but they sprung into action and were able to fix it...mostly.  Once the last foil was clipped, they breathed a sigh of relief.  I had no idea red peek a boos could cause anxiety!

So the timer was set, and everyone was just standing around and celebrating the successful placement of foil.  Suddenly we noticed that Evelyn was staring at the bowl of red goo, with great excitement in her eyes.  Then she grabbed the bowl and ran!  "I want to do mine too!" she proclaimed.  Faye pleaded with her, "No, don't do it!  You'll regret it!"  I excitedly yelled, "DO IT! DO IT!  IT'S CHRISTMASTIME!..."  (Because if I'm gonna look like an idiot, here's my opportunity to take someone down this path with me) So within a minute of my foils being completed, Faye was applying the red to Evelyn's short brown hair.  I quietly said to Evelyn, "We are going to be SO awesome." She seemed to agree.  I was laughing and beaming with pride, thinking I'd started some new exciting hair craze, right there in the JC Penney's hair salon.  I was hoping everyone would jump to their feet and shout, "I'LL HAVE THE FIRE ENGINE HAIR!!!"  And then we'd all high-five, or fist bump, or something. But then I realized that most of their clients at that moment were 80+ year old ladies who didn't seem to express any interest.  But I think that's too bad because I could just see a group of Grandmas, with fire engine red hair, going out on the town and stirring up some real trouble.  I would find it inspiring.  They could call themselves "Red Hots" or "Old Flames" or "The Red Headers" or "The 5 alarm Grannys."

Fifteen minutes later, the timer sounded, and I asked, "How are you going to rinse it?  What will happen when the red washes into the blonde?  They had not totally decided how that part was gonna be handled but I trusted them completely.  We went over to the sinks, and the idea was suggested that I go face-down in the hair sink.  So the next thing I knew, I was standing over a salon sink bowl, while Evelyn held all of my blonde hairs back, and I leaned in and let the foils of red hang down.  It was just like when someone cares enough to hold your hair back while you hang over a cold toilet bowl to vomit, except this was way more fun.  I was laughing so hard, I couldn't breathe.  We were all dying.  People were watching.  Then Faye was spraying cold water in my face, which I think may have blown some chemicals into my eyeball because it began to burn my retina out, but I didn't worry too much about that.  A towel and a few more accidental facial blasts of water seemed to resolve that little problem. Soon she got the red all rinsed and washed.  Then I sat in the chair like a normal person, which I was glad of because it's hard to hang upside down while you're laughing so much, because there's some real potential for drooling (which I managed to avoid), and then she finished washing and conditioning my hair.

Faye dried and styled my hair and it was perfect! Red peek a boo highlights "peek" out on each side of my face.  My hair is like a candy cane, except you can't eat it... and it's not minty.  Everyone loved it, especially me.  They said the color was perfect for my skin tone and everything.  The ladies asked, "Where are you going?  What made you want this hair?"  "Well...," I replied, "I AM going to church tonight.... They'll love it.... and I'm going to visit family for Christmas so it'll be nice to look weird for that..."  They asked where I was from and I said, "NC" so now they probably think Carolina Girls are a little crazy.

"I'm sorry I brought stress into your life today, Faye," I said, on the way out. "NO, you brought FUN!"  She even hugged me, and said, "Everyday- it's boring here.  People come in and everyone gets the same ol' thing.  Then YOU came in!" ... Still, I made sure I gave her a good tip.

A few minutes later my daughter saw my hair and just began screaming with excitement and jealousy!  "Don't worry, Elizabeth," I said. "I've already told Faye you'd want this too." But she will have to wait until Summer, since hair color isn't allowed at school. So for now this awesome hair is ALL MINE.  That's too bad though, because we could have been peppermint hair twins.  I can imagine us singing "Hard Candy Christmas," by the tree, on Christmas Eve.  We'd be as good as Dolly Parton... 


There was wind right before this pic!  Here you can at least see 1 or 2 of the 6 streaks. Some of them are hiding, hence the name, peek a boo. I think, where the 2 colors meet, it actually seems to create the narrow lines like you see on a candy cane.  Also, I learned that it's hard to take pictures of your own hair.


So at the end of the day, my daughter thought I had super cool hair, my hairstylist had learned some new techniques,  I had festive candy cane Christmas hair, and everybody's happy-- except for maybe a few haters who'll think I'm too old for this or will say it looks dumb, but inside THEY WISH their hair was so awesome.

Look at the Candy Cane
What do you see?
Stripes that are red
Like the blood shed for me

White is for my Savior
Who's sinless and pure!
"J" is for Jesus My Lord, that's for sure!

Turn it around
And a staff you will see
Jesus my shepherd
Was born for Me!

How Cherry Pie Came Into My Life

"Steve, you're gonna wreck Cherry Pie," I said, as we weaved in and out of traffic. "No I'm not," he replied. "I'm just trying to get us to where we're supposed to be." Cherry Pie is my car, and how I met her has everything to do with New Jersey.

Months earlier we were living in the upstate of SC. I could see my home state of NC from the back windows of my house, because that's where the mountains began. We'd watched the sun slowly dip behind them many times in the years we were there. Each day I'd watch birds soaring over the abondoned peach orchard behind our house, as clouds slowly drifted by. I often felt envious of the birds. I knew they could see the world, while I spent days stuck inside. In the summer, late afternoon storms would roll in sometimes, and blacken the sky behind those blue mountains, and I thought it was beautiful. At night I could see the moon.  We were like two old friends, the moon and me, keeping each other company while everyone else slept.  Our family lived in the country, and at every roadside stand, you could pick up all the freshly picked peaches you could ever want.  The smell of a peach cobbler, fresh from the oven, took me back to childhood at my Grandma's.  Life was great in SC.  I thought it was one of the most wonderful places on Earth.
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View from our family room.  This is where I did my bird and cloud watching...



And yet again, I mention birds in a blog post.  I'm starting to think this is abnormal...

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Took this one from inside the house.  We had snow last year!  I know 2 pictures of the same thing were not necessary, but since I couldn't decide, I just posted them both rather than struggling for days over which one.  It's my blog afterall, so I can.

But last year our life in SC ended as abruptly as a book being slammed shut in the middle of a good chapter.  If that moment could have made noise, it would have sounded like a record player's needle violently snatched from your favorite old vinyl record.  It was over.  And five minutes later, a job offer in NJ fell into Steve's lap, like rain from the sky.  I still remember saying, "I'm not going to NJ." But we were told that the people of the church where Steve's Dad is pastor, were praying that we'd want to come up here.  I got scared because when a church-full of people start praying, things start happening.  They wanted Steve to be their youth pastor/music leader/teacher/and whatever else...  At least if he wasn't a senior pastor anymore, the four of us wouldn't have to live as cats hanging upside down from the ceiling, as we had the last 3 years or so.  That sounded inviting.  We'd also be working with our own kids as well, and give up the constant struggle to protect them in the life we'd been in.  We could all breathe again.  Breathing is good.

So a few more weeks passed and we were packing up everything we owned-- NJ bound.  During all of this time we experienced great loss.  I won't go into what all it was, because I honestly don't even want to think about it, and certainly no one needs that kind of depressing information while reading a goofball blog such as this.  Put simply, there was death, loss of friends, betrayal, financial loss, lives turned upside down, rejection, sickness,  leaving SC and the life we'd had for 8 1/2 years, while Steve was a pastor.  There.  That's the gist. We experienced more drama than the daytime soaps I'd watched with Grandma when I was growing up, which she calls "the stories." But now real life was harder than the stories ever were. 

During all of this, I took the time to prepare a fun list of demands, which would have to be agreed upon, for me to move to this northern state with a questionable reputation.  This is where Cherry Pie comes in.  I won't go into all of the ridiculous things I listed, not that I've forgotten them.  I'm still waiting for him to say, "Get ready.  We've gotta catch the train to NYC to do that ice skating at Rockefeller Center."  (Which one of my friends happens to be doing today.  When are WE going, Steve?) But among the many things listed, was a new car for me.  Sounds reasonable, right?  It would actually be a necessity in our new life, but I wasn't sure how we would buy it because medical bills had left us as broke as dirt.  But as soon as we got up here, the money for the entire car also just fell into my lap, just as the job offer had fallen into Steve's. Now I know money is money, and money is the root of all evil and all, but this money was so special to me.  Explaining why that was, would be difficult, but I felt like a ray of sunshine was shining down on me from heaven.   So about a week after the move, we were car shopping.  I was walking by some cars, when suddenly I asked, "Wait... What are these little cutenesses?"  That's when I met Cherry Pie.  And soon, she would be mine.


Now the night we bought Cherry Pie was certainly bizarre.  We found ourselves sitting in the dealership at 10pm.  We were tired.  They were tired. We just needed to finish signing papers and get out of there. Life had really taken a toll on me lately. I struggled to put one foot in front of the other, for weeks. And like Randy Travis used to sing, I felt "like a stone" that had been "picked up and thrown"... to NJ.  But the sales manager, who knew NOTHING about us except that Steve is or was, or kinda still is, a pastor.  He had no idea what the last several months had been like.  Suddenly he says, "I need to tell you my story." .......  What?  I'm exhausted and semi-suicidal, and you're gonna tell us your life story?  So he begins talking, and I'm thinking, "Great, we're gonna be stuck here all night in a showroom, that smells strangely like paint thinner with a HALF-CRAZED, high pressure car-pusher."  The other salesman just kept having us sign papers, and I wondered if inside his head he was screaming, "SHUT UP!  SHUUUUUUT UUUUUUP!!!!"  So anyway, he tells us an extremely long story about how he'd had everything he'd ever wanted, and lost it all.  Everything.  His wife, his job, his home, all of his money, and more...  Then, in the end, after countless, outrageous twists and turns, he got it all back, right down to the same honkin' big house and furniture!  There were so many details which humanly seemed impossible!  Then he said, "I'm telling you this to let you know that God can give you back everything that you've lost."  ......  I almost fell out of the chair.  I was so hoping I wouldn't fall out of the chair because that would have been excessively awkward.  I didn't say a word about what had happened to us because I was unable to speak, but I left that night believing that God really sent that man to tell me that.  So Cherry Pie and I left the dealership and headed home, and I began to cope a little better.  I knew I'd never live in Campobello, SC again, and I knew my Daddy who'd recently passed, wasn't coming back, but it reminded me that God was in control of what we have and what we don't have, and there's always a reason for the haves and don't haves, and I really didn't need to worry about what I don't have.  There.

Months have passed now, and we're all very slowly retracting those claws from the ceiling.  Our SC house sold the very first day it was on the market, before we'd even reached NJ, so there'd be no running back home, no matter what we found when we got here.  The church is warm and friendly and the people LAUGH a lot!  That was the first thing that impressed us.  I've realized that NJ isn't near as bad as people say it is.  I'm not sure why some people dislike it.  I kinda enjoy it.  People are really LOUD and fun here. And here, my odd humor isn't usually met with blank stares, or concerned looks.  Maybe if NJ would change the traffic laws so you could make left turns people would enjoy it more.  I know I would.  I learned how to pull out into heavy traffic recently, and someone showed Cherry Pie and me their tall finger.  I've heard that happens very often here so I'm thinking that's the state hand symbol, kinda like state trees or state flowers or something.  I guess that's their way of saying NJ is #1?  I don't let it bother me though because I can expressively stick my tongue out, right back at them. Then I try to figure out where I'm going.   Cherry Pie and I get lost pretty often, but somehow we always find our way to where we're supposed to be... sometimes with the help of OnStar or frantic phone calls to the husband.
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So this is Cherry Pie.  I think she's cute. Her candy apple red paint has little sparklies in it.  She has a sun-roof and beige leather interior.  And did you know that I don't have to pump gas in NJ?  All gas stations have nice Arab men who do it for you, like I guess it's a law up here.  Awesome law.

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The inside of Cherry Pie.

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Ok, one last pic of SC beautifulness.  This is how those juicy, delicious peaches begin.  I miss 'em!!!