The Beauty Shop

I had an appointment yesterday for highlights and a haircut. Normally, I look forward to this time as "me time." Two full hours of nothing but gossip and magazines. I love it. But because I'm such a wonderful, loving wife, I decided to take pity on my poor husband and, instead of leaving him with all three children, I took one with me. I took Reese because, as the middle child, she never gets to be the one. I never spend any alone time with her and I thought this was a great time for us to have some mother-daughter bonding. I made her promise that she would be on her best behavior the entire time. I threatened that I would bring her home if she whined, threw fits, or didn't mind me. We filled her "pack-pack" with books, DVD's and the DVD player, and we were off. We stopped and got snacks on the way. She was ready. Here she is, settling into the chair next to mine.


After changing her mind 412 times about which movie to watch, she decided on Dora. No, make that Word World. No, Monsters Inc. No, Dora is good. Ok, we're watching Dora. I expected to have at least 30 minutes of peace as Betty went to work foiling my hair. Reese had all the expected questions at first. "What is she doing in your hair, Momma?" "What is that stuff?" "It's bee-custy!" Then, she changed her mind about movies. And dropped the DVD player on the floor. And nearly sent poor Betty flying across the floor, trying to catch the DVD player before it hit the ground. She missed. I
I took the DVD player away and told her she had to sit and read books. She read all three in about 15 seconds. And she was bored. I had to keep getting up and picking things up off of the floor, which made the foil take an hour instead of the usual 30 minutes.
Then it was time for me to sit under the dryer. It was quiet over in the corner, and I set Reese up next to me with Dora again. She was happy. For three minutes until the battery died in the DVD player.
I turned off the dryer, got up, went out into the store part of the salon and picked out some nail polish. I then went back to the dryer, turned it on, and gave Reese a mani-pedi. That took care of 4 minutes. She spun in circles in front of me, drying her nails, for a while. A good song came on the radio and she danced for all the salon patrons, making some smile and some look at her like "Why is that child at the salon? Can't her mother find a babysitter for one hour?" No, her mother can't.
I handed Reese the bag of chocolate covered pretzels and let her go to work. This kept her busy for a while. I also realized that removing her shoes and telling her to put them back on wastes alot of time, too.
Somehow, we made it. I was in the chair, ready for a haircut when Reese had to go potty for the 27th time. I don't know how the other people felt about her going in there, but I found it quite hilarious that she would go in, sit on the potty forever, yelling that she was "going tee-tee!" or "I going poopy!" She would yell at me that she was done, I would go in and she would tell me she wanted to be by herself. It was probably very aggravating to Betty, who just wanted to cut my hair and get me out of there, but I did get a giggle out of her.
The final straw was halfway through my blow dry. Reese was, as usual, on the potty yelling. The yelling stops and I hear the potty flush. Assuming she was done, Betty and I, as well as the 5 other people near us, turn to make sure she's coming out ok. Oh, she came out. Nude. She was holding her panties, which were full of skids, and saying "Momma, deez yucky. I don't like 'em!"
I feel certain that the next time I go in there (without children) there will be a sign on the wall. PLEASE DO NOT BRING CHILDREN INTO SALON.