Doing the 'do

As the mom of 3, and in particular as the mom of a mom-centric toddler, I tend not to spend a whole lot of time doing things for me. The result of this ended up looking something like this:

(In a small bit of my defense, my hair wasn't always this terrible. I'd been wearing a bandanna all day so it was gross and flat.)

My hair was boring. It was shaggy and the style that it had from my last hair cut 5 months ago was looong gone. I was resorting to pony tails, braids, and of course my handy dandy friend the bandanna.

I wanted something different from the shoulder-ish length hair I'd been sporting for a few years. I wanted something fun. I wanted something different. And I really didn't want something dyed because I'm refusing to go down that road despite the growing numbers of gray hair making an appearance on my head these days.

I spent some time perusing the Googles. I threw in phrases like "curly bob", "asymmetrical curly", and "curly undercut". I found some hairstyles that were ok, some that were outright frightening, and then some that totally rocked. In the end, the two pictures that seemed closest to what I was aiming for were these.

Awesome undercut:

Amazing Mia hair:

I ended up bringing these photos to my hairdresser and we spent some time figuring out what would be most realistic for me. Before long, she hacked off a bunch of length, got my hair washed, and started cutting pieces out. Her approach was to take bits out at a time until all the parts came together in a way that my curls wanted.

In the end, I wound up with this:

From the front. (I tried to crop out the messy house in the background but Picasa is being a jerk today.)

The short side. I love this little straggly dude that keeps hopping over.

The back. I love how it turned out!

The straight version, today.

From the back. You can see the longest point in this shot. The whole style is set as a triangle.

I'm really, really thrilled with my hair. It's fun, it's easy to do, and I can think of about 7 different ways to style it so I don't think I'll ever get bored. I was worried that the asymmetry would bug me, but it feels balanced on my body. Which is kind of amusing to me as I've had long-standing issues with right-side left-side balance. Maybe this is just off-center enough to balance out my imbalances?

One way or another, it works. Yay for hair that's not frumpy and shaggy and all sorts of boring!