I'm curious how often this has happened to the rest of you married men: You are enjoying a quiet Saturday afternoon with your wife, when without warning she stops what she's doing, grabs the car keys and zooms off to the hairdresser. Is that normal? Was this covered in premarital counseling? Is it an unpredictable phenomenon, or does it have anything to do with the comb and scissors that are still in my hand?
It all started with our new composting system. My family recently moved in with Queena's sister, who I decided needs a compost bin. So for the last two or three days, I have spent most of my free time browsing the web for compost bins and general composting advice. The bin, which will be ready in a few days, is going to be beautiful . . . while the advice has been both colorful and entertaining. Everybody seems to have a secret ingredient for making the perfect compost. Kelp. Urine. Human hair.
Yes, human hair. While we want to stay away from most animal products, like meat, bones, and dairy, human hair is said to be one of the most abundant sources of nitrogen around. Or maybe carbon -- I don't remember. It's something important for good soil.
I can only guess these were the thoughts running through my subconscious as I was deciding how short to cut Queena's bangs about an hour ago today. It's our quarterly Mutual Haircut Day (she cuts my hair, then I cut hers), and I think I was hoping for my own haircut to yield more clippings than it did. Then it was Queena's turn, and suddenly here I was with some nice sharp scissors, and there in front of me was a beautiful head chock-full of nitrogen.
I insist these were not my conscious thoughts. My intentions were only to try something a little different on Queena's hair, and somehow I got the cool diagonal bangs an inch or two shorter than I meant to. That's not always bad, unless you're planning on two-and-a-half-inch bangs. My dear wife, who usually trusts me with her life, drew the line when it came to her hair. All the hair I got from her was this . . .
. . . after which she panicked and forbade me to continue cutting. Now she's out there getting some "professional" to finish the job, who will probably throw the hair clippings in the trash, completely unaware of the lost compost potential. And I am at home, hoping against hope that there's a professional out there who's good enough to fix my poor wife's hair.
It's a good-sized city, with a population close to that of Boston. I don't know if that bit of information helps you -- for me it's limited, because I've never been to Boston.
Kuching also gets about four times as much rain as Boston. Less snow, though.
