thoughts from a december hair appointment

While feeding the baby in the back room this morning, I hear the “ding-dong” of my Outlook alarm telling me that I had an appointment in 15 minutes. An appointment for what? I thought my hair appointment was at 2:30 pm . . . wrong, 8:30 am. So I try to hurry Lucy along (which is impossible because she’s the slowest eater in the whole world), throw on some clothes, and run out the door. . . no make-up, no babysitter. My hair lady’s going to hate me. I booked this appointment in July, that’s how busy she gets. Oh well, I’ll tell her we can skip styling my hair so she doesn’t get backed up, I’m just desperate for a trim and color. And I’ll just have to suffer through staring at my bare face and puffy eyes sans make-up in the mirror for an hour and a half. Sigh.

Anyhow, while under the heat lamp to set the color, I pick up the holiday issue of Vogue to look at their 250 gift ideas (I love gift idea lists, btw. Have you seen the one at Purl or in Blueprint?) Vogue, I will let you know, does not have the “for him, for her, for mom, for baby” to-give lists as most do, oh no, I think they have the “I want” lists all for the viewer/reader. Stuff that you would only ask Santa for if you still believed in helper elves slaving away in a factory in the North Pole with no other motivation than to make you happy and a Santa unfettered by budgets and a free trade society which uses a monetary exchange system like the rest of us. There are $2500 bags and $700 slippers and design label everything. I bet 1% of Vogue readers actually get or give this stuff under the tree, most of us just like looking at the pretty pictures and dreaming. They did have a “Hostess Gifts for Under $100” list which made me laugh because the hostess gifts I gave out this weekend were from the Dollar Spot at Target.

But before I got to the gift list, I flipped right to an editorial by a Kristina Stewart Ward about her conflicted life as a Mormon and fashion/style/society magazine editor. Apparently, the two don’t usually go together. It was well-written and very interesting. She started by saying how guilty she feels for hiring a nanny (baby number 2 of 2 is on the way, she says); good Mormons don’t hire nannies. I was impressed with how she represented and presented her beliefs and her choices without seeming to worry what it might do to her career and reputation. . . maybe she knows her amazing career and solid reputation are owed to her Mormon upbringing and humble background. Well, go Kristina for making yourself known to us and not being too shy to publish to the world what you believe and how you make it work in the real world. If you call $2500 bags and $700 slippers the real world, that is. . .