My First Finnish Haircut

My poor hair.  With all the craziness of life and moving, I haven't bothered to get my hair cut in over 5 months.  So my super layered haircut has been looking very scraggly.  And I seem to have been experiencing some sort of "Marge Simpson Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder" where my hair is falling out and getting very thin.  Then add to that the day I was walking around with my very heavy laptop bag, and I hurriedly tried to switch it from one shoulder to the other and managed to yank out a fistful of my hair in the process.

All that means that I have been walking around looking like this:



Look at my pony tail on the picture in the right!  Look at how skinny and scrawny and gross that is!

I got several recommendations on hair salons, and selected the stylist who was a gay boy.  That seemed the smartest.  His rad name also helped him win the selection process: Veltsu. 

I went to visit Veltsu today.  After a few very confused moments when I walked up to the door of the salon and thought the sign said it was a tattoo parlor, he came out into the street and rescued me.  (Note: it is a tattoo parlor.  AND a hair salon.  Thank you, Finland, for always being so metal.)  Thank goodness he spoke awesome English, I was very nervous about trying to explain what I wanted via mime. 

And what did I want?  I wanted him to make me look like a cross between Nicholas Bradford from Eight is Enough and my 7-year-old self, but you know, like in a super-stylish super-Finnish way.



Good ol' Veltsu.  He was totally thorough and meticulous and spent a long time making sure everything was even and right.  We had the best time and I was able to educate him about the existence of Dollywood, and teach him new English words like "hillbilly."  And he totally delivered, hair-wise:



See!?  I am Nicholas Bradford, just like I wanted!!  It's shorter than I was ready for, but it was nasty and needed to be chopped off.  And dang if I don't look super authentically Finnish now!  And it still can be corralled in a ponytail, which was my only length requirement.  This will definitely take some getting used to, but I think I love it.  I know this because on the walk home from the salon I found myself singing the theme song from "Alice" to myself.  You know:

"There's a new girl in town
And she's looking good.
There's a fresh freckled face
In the neighborhood.

There's a new girl in town
With a brand new style.
She was just passing through,
But if things work out she's gonna stay...a while...bom bum bum bym-bummm."

We'll see how it looks tomorrow when I'm in charge of styling it.  I may be singing a different theme song.  Like maybe the theme from Garry Shandling's show, I always liked that one.