Marriage Lessons and Drastic Haircuts

My husband and I had an experience recently that taught us something about our marriage:

There are things we each do well.

We need to stick to those things. Other tasks should be... well, left to the professionals.

Case in point. About two months ago, my hair looked like this:

FYI, I'm the one on the left. The lovely lady in yellow is a childhood friend; we grew up down the street from each other.

This is a photo my hubby took about an hour ago. As in, what I look like now:

And yes, if you're wondering, purple is my favorite color, although these are two of about three purple shirts I own.

And also yes, there is about a 12-inch difference in the lengths of my hair in those photos. I bet you're wondering why!

Well, I've been wanting to cut my hair for a while. It's been literally a decade since I cut off more than an inch or two, and I wanted it shorter.

About six inches shorter.

My loving husband offered to help me out. I'm cheap frugal, you see, and pay for a haircut about once a year, if that. I trim my bangs myself, I learned to layer my hair myself, and my mom has help me cut length off the long portion before. I figured Joshua knows how to use scissors, he was confident he could do it, no problem, right?

I did not take into consideration the fact that he is a man. And as a man, he is perfectly capable of buzzing his own hair, but he doesn't have to make sure his hair turns out an even length when he does that. It's all just buzzed off, basically. Nor does he have any experience whatsoever cutting female, long, hair.

I didn't think about that.

So he gathered my hair into a ponytail and cut. And, well, it was about six inches shorter than I'd been planning. And not quite evenly cut.

In the interest of full disclosure, I'll tell you I was a baby. I cried a little. Then he said, "But you look so sexy! It's adorable! I love it!"

And I sniffed and looked in the mirror and asked in a small voice, "Do you really mean it?"

Of course he did. He doesn't just say that sort of thing.

So the next morning I called the nicest salon in town and made an emergency appointment, and the girl did a great job evening things out, and I've gotten the most fantastic reactions since yesterday afternoon.

I've never done anything like this before, other than the eight inches I cut off when I was twelve for Locks of Love. (No, I didn't donate this time, unfortunately... I wasn't planning on cutting off enough TO donate!)

But I definitely learned some things from this. One, never let my husband near my hair with scissors again. Two, take life in stride. Things don't always go the way we plan, but sometimes they end up going a better direction. Three, don't take myself so seriously. Loosen up. Live a little. Let your hair down. Or cut it, anyway.

And plus, we have a hilarious story for our kids one day.