January 31, 2014.

I feel a little bit like Scarlett O’Hara, after making a gown from the green velvet drapery hung in the great room at Tara, right before she went to visit that scoundrel and traitor, Rhett Butler, in jail.

Remember…I said a little bit.

From Gone with the Wind, Chapter 34:

Scarlett puts on her new green dress and goes to visit Rhett in jail. He is impressed by how prosperous she looks when everyone else is dressed in rags. She tells him falsely that everything at Tara is fine, that she has made money by selling cotton, and that she has come to Atlanta to get some more dresses made so that she can attend balls. She pretends to be distressed about his plight, claiming that she would die if he were hanged. He is moved by her apparent care for him and kisses her hands, but as he does so, he notices that they are rough and calloused.

The jig was up when Rhett reached out to take Scarlett’s hands in his. Having felt the callouses, he knew she was lying to him about her current state of affairs. I don’t have callouses from working in the cotton fields, but my hands are more like sandpaper than skin, and my fingers, cracked and split from the extremely dry and cold Wisconsin winter.

Youtube clip from Gone with the Wind.

And that’s why I find myself sitting now at The Panache Academy of Beauty for a basic manicure. Jen, my student trainee, is more than a bit nervous I realize from her trembling hands.  I have to remind myself to breathe every few minutes and to unclench...my...jaw.  “You’re the first client of mine that I’ve made bleed,” she says apologetically. “Your cuticles are really tough.”  The cost of the manicure today is $5 and that old adage does apply, You do get what you pay for.  She’s a student in a 14-month beauty school program and I realize that everyone has to start somewhere, so I tip her 40 percent and leave.

After a cappuccino and a quick post earlier this morning, I had started my day at Total Design hair salon. My grays are extremely tenacious and my hair grows incredibly fast, so to maintain the somewhat fleeting illusion of youth, I went in for a quick color. All this personal maintenance is a prelude to traveling in a few days to my Alma Mater, where I will be surrounded by colleagues – old and new - as a member of the panel of judges for the 71^st annual POYi.

Goodbye, gray.

 After sitting under the dryer to speed the transfer of the color to my grays, I was reclined at the washbowl for a quick rinse and a shampoo.  There were three other clients in the chairs. One talking about some sort of family gathering where everyone was to “bring a dish to pass.” Another, talking about the Super Bowl…well, the commercials during the Super Bowl. Saying that she was thinking about taping the whole event so that she could watch the commercials later, as if that whole game thing was just a nuisance. The woman in the last chair was talking about a text her daughter got from a man. (I’m not certain what the relationship of the daughter to the man was…) The text demanded that she come over immediately to have sex or he was going to text another woman. The “sex on demand” text was followed by a photograph of him, she explained…”stark naked.”

There’s enough material in salons every day to write a book, trust me. And honestly, truth is often stranger than fiction.