My new hair

In preparation for next week's upcoming hair loss, I did two things today. I bought my wig and multiple accessories, and I chopped my hair, as shown in the photos above. Surreal. Traumatic.

I haven't had super short hair since the fifth grade. When I look back at the pictures, I think it's darling, but at the time I swore I'd never forgive my mother for cutting off my long locks. I went to school the next day and asked my best friend how it looked and she said, "It looks....easy to manage." Another friend was even less subtle: "What did you do to your hair???!!" 10-year-old girls just automatically think longer is better.

I figure when it starts falling out on Tuesday or Wednesday, it will be better if we are talking short clumps of hair rather than long ones. Tom is shaving his head Tuesday night and invites anyone who is man enough to join him to come on over and join in! 8:00 here at the Carmack household. If you've ever wanted a good excuse to try it, this is it. No one will fault you when you tell them about your brave, inspiring friend who is battling cancer. And the timing could not be better--we will all have the perfect April Fool's Day joke.

So I went in and told my fabulous hairstylist we'd better go as short as we possibly dare, and try to make it as cute as we possibly can. I knew I wouldn't LOVE it no matter what, but I think she did a good job. The idea was to give myself hope that in several months when the hair comes back enough to look like it could actually be a woman's hairstyle, maybe there would be something I could do with it. To see that I can look decent with really short hair. And I think I do. Just not as decent as I looked this morning with my other hair.

If you disagree with me, let me make this perfectly clear: LIE THROUGH YOUR TEETH. Tell me that you think I am adorable. This is the ONE circumstance in my life when if my hair looks hideous, I DO NOT WANT TO KNOW. It is only going to last for about six days and then believe me, I am going to look a whole lot worse.

Really, the thing I want more than anything is for my husband to think I am still pretty, hair or no hair. Fortunately, he tends to have a rather radical and inaccurate perception of my appearance. He says there is nothing that could possibly make me not look beautiful. When I gave birth to our first child I about killed him for posting very unattractive hospital pictures of me on our web site. He removed them immediately and gave a simple, unbelievable apology, "It just didn't occur to me because you always look beautiful." Hopefully, he will be blind enough to deem me a gorgeous bald woman and smart enough to be sure there are no pictures of my bald head available for public viewing.

Depending on how I handle the whole ordeal of the hair coming out on its own, I may shave my head next week too. Any way you look at it, a couple of weeks from now there won't be any left.

The wig shop has been a surprisingly pleasant experience. Bizarre but pleasant. The women in there are wonderful. My mom came with me the first time and I expected it to be like trying on Halloween costumes, but actually the wigs really are very well-made. I expected to find one wig I could live with, but I actually narrowed it down to five wigs that all would have been pretty good. I then decided to bring Tom back to help me choose which one.

I am glad I did that. I know he would have been supportive no matter what, but this way I got to choose the one that I knew he liked the best. It wasn't the one I would have guessed. All of the wigs I'd chosen were similar to my old classic bob hairstyle, but they varied in color. A couple of them were very close to my natural hair color, and I expected him to prefer one of those. I am one of those rare women who has never colored my hair at all, and my husband has expressed concern over the idea that I plan to when it goes more gray. As it turned out, he thought that the wigs which were really close to my color looked like I was trying too hard to match my real hair but something was off. The one we chose has a lot of auburn highlights and he was surprised to find that he really liked how it looked and it goes well with my skin tone. He said that instead of thinking, "What's different about her hair?" people will think, "Oh, she changed her hair," but in a good way. So I killed two birds with one stone--found a decent wig and discovered that some day I'll look cute when I highlight my hair, and my man won't throw a fit.

Friends of mine who've experienced this say that you get the wig so you have it and it makes you feel better, but it's hot and itchy and you don't end up wearing it much. The lady who helped me today, though, said she never left home without it. I guess we will see how I end up feeling about the whole thing. I also bought one of these topless wigs that you wear under a hat, which is longer in length, so that will be kind of fun. I got a number of hats in addition to my mom's supply of hats and scarves to add to what I already have. So I think it will be a fashion adventure. Until then, I have a few days to play around with a short hairdo in hopes of convincing myself that I will be able to deal with that for many months in my future.