Backyard trim

I've had my hair cut in a salon only a handful of times. The kitchen, now that's where business is done. I can remember the times I've spent training my eyes on my mother's tchotchke-clad walls easily. Her accosting me to stay still even though I had bits of hair in my nose, in my eyes and wedged between the cutting cape and my irritated neck. Only once has anyone besides my sister Kara and my mother cut my hair, and it was a disaster.

I was still living in College Station, waiting tables at Kerri's Stacked Enchiladas. I was poor (waiting tables does that to you) and one of my closest friends was also the spawn of a hairdresser. Her mom cut her hair, and it was cute enough, so I decided that just getting my bangs trimmed would be safe. So my friend and I stopped into the salon where her mother worked just for a sec or two and I left so incredibly upset, though I couldn't tell my friend because I didn't want to seem ungrateful for the butcher job her mom did on my hair. I swore after that that I would never again get my hair cut by anyone besides my mother or my sister.

Fast forward to 2007 -- I hadn't had a hair cut since February when my sister Kara came to visit, so I asked my mother to bring her scissors when she came up last weekend. My hair had become an unmanageable mop, my bangs were beginning to graze my lips and I had 3-inch long split ends. These are the perils of swearing off salons. But Sunday, just hours before my parents and I were to leave for brunch and their departure, my mother set up a station of sorts in the back yard on our deck and went to work on my tresses. The birds were singing and it was a rather pleasant summer morning, so I'd have to say that it was one of the more enjoyable hair cuts I've had. Maybe more salons should be outdoors...