A Hair-raising Tale

Last night - Good Friday, at 6.30pm the circuit breaker tripped and all the power points in the house went down. I was talking to a friend on the phone at the time and the phone is the kind that plugs into the power, so the call dropped. The lamp went out too so I knew the problem was the power and not the phone.

Investigation revealed that the power wasn't coming back on any time soon. The teens and I (hubster was working till 9pm) systematically unplugged every item in the house and discovered than the trip meter wasn't coming back on. The fuse was intact. There was a small brown mark on the front of the trip meter but I didn't know it that had been there before. We had reached the extent of my problem solving knowledge.

I wanted to google it to find out what else I could do, but naturally the internet was also down. Teen 3 resolved that issue by logging onto the neighbour's internet. She baby sits for them and they have given her the key to their internet. They are away for the long weekend bit it meant that I could look up power issues.

I discovered that the next step was to call an electrician.

It was by this time 8pm on a public holiday and calling out any service was going to be very expensive.

I decided that if we didn't open the fridge or freezer it should be ok till we could get it sorted today (Saturday) when it wasn't a public holiday.  We hadn't eaten either. Dinner ended up being peanut butter and honey sandwiches since that wasn't refrigerated or requiring electricity to prepare.

Hubster arrived home at 10pm. He checked and confirmed that we had done everything possible. He also confirmed that the circuit breaker was burnt out. The small brown spot on the front WAS significant after all. I noted to myself that it might be a good idea if I do familiarise myself with these things so that if it appears different I will KNOW that it is different and not just wonder.

Now between 6.30pm and bed time my darling daughters had their life line cut... or so they thought. The internet was off. What to do with several hours of evening???

Teen 3 decided that her solution to her boredom was a haircut
at 9.30pm
done by herself
to herself
in the bathroom looking in the mirror
!!!

When I was showering at 9.15pm and preparing for bed she came into the bathroom and asked me how much trouble she would get into if she were to cut her own hair. (yes the girls regularly invade my privacy)
My response was that it is her hair and if she cuts it herself then it is her issue and she won't get into any trouble... and that she has to live with the results.

I then went to bed with my book.

It seems that teen 3 had decided this was fair enough and she was going to apply scissors to her hair.  Teen 2 watched in horror and tried to encourage caution. No such thing!  Our girl was going in with gusto and total abandon to all but the thrill of cutting ... and cutting and cutting it seems.

Are you braced for the results?

 long and short

 uneven

even a little scary

 here's the other side

 and the close up of the cute curls

yes that is a patch of scalp showing

and the front with her sweet, swirly second crown near the hair-line.

It wasn't obvious before 'cause our girl has never had her hair this short.

She came in to show me after she had done it last night. she was very excited and pleased with herself.
She told me that she had been thinking about going short for a while and that since her face is the same shape as mine, she figured that it would look good since my hair looks good short. I told her that if she wanted it short she only had to say so.

Then she confessed that not having internet access was just the prompt she needed and decided that it had to happen immediately.

This morning after the electrician had arrived to replace the circuit breaker (very long story where our property manager tried over a dozen electricians trying to find one who was available), teen 3 approached me with a cute smile and a somewhat coy expression saying, "Mummy, will you please fix my hair?"
As a parent of a 16 year old, any sentence that starts with, "Mummy" and is accompanied by the head on the side and sweet smiles is automatically an indicator that something is wanted, usually something fairly big.

I was relieved that it was only a request to 'fix' her hair. That I can do. I have been cutting her hair since she finally decided, at age three, to grow some hair.

So here is the result of my "fixing". I must say that she didn't leave me much to work with.

The big Ta-Da

 some bits I could 'fix' and will have to just grow back

 like the spots where she almost scalped herself

Yes, honey it is very short.

But at least it's neat, and cute... and it will grow back.