Sweet Sort of Surrender

Thirty-six hours before the anticipated end of the week-long heat wave, and our well pump shot the bed. We had a new well pump ordered from Amazon five minutes after the Big Guy announced that the old one couldn’t sustain any more surgeries, but we still had over day without running water in 90+ degree heat. After living off grid for 10 years and a 200-year-old tinderbox of a farmhouse for five years before that, i’m usually OK with roughing it. As long as the woodstove in the water work, I’m good. Today I was not good. Something about not showering in miserable heat makes every follicle on my head itch, and 24 hours before the end of the heat wave, I waved the white flag.For as long as I can remember I’ve had a fantasy about having long hair. I have a secret suspicion that being able to put everything into a ponytail is actually easier, but I had other reasons for wanting it really long. When I was younger, like a lot of girls, I liked fashion magazines, and for every thousand models with long flowing hair, there were .1 % with short hair like mine. Short hair might’ve been easier, but society sent a lot of signals that  it’s not quite as feminine or attractive.The longest I’ve ever managed to get it is to my shoulders, but it always feels like it’s in the in between won’t stay out of your face stage and ends up on the salon floor. I started another run at the brass ring of pretty hair in the winter, reasoning that because I work at home, it doesn’t matter how I look while it’s growing out. Summer heat is a great leveler, however. Just like losing weight, it always ends up being a matter of how you feel and not how you look.So 22 hours before the anticipated end of the heat wave, I walked out of the salon feeling less like I’d surrendered and more like I’d given up a ghost that was too damn itchy anyway.