Donnie and Me - I'd Trust Him With My Life!

There are always people out there that you trust - family or close friends....I have a handful that I would trust with my secrets and shenanigans...fyi, parents are not two of them.

One person that I trust is Donnie...Donnie is my hairdresser. Maybe trusting him with my life is a bit of an exaggeration - but he is the only person I will trust with one of my best qualities - my hair. He lives in New York City and works out of a salon in Chinatown. He has been cutting my hair for about 20 years. Before going to Donnie, I would only let women cut my hair....I was never comfortable with a man cutting my hair; probably the same way I feel about going to a man ob-gyn. I obviously broke out of my 'comfort zone' when it came to my hair (not with the ob-preference).

Even though I now live in Virginia and have been living here for the past six years, I will still only go to Donnie. That's a bond that I'm just not willing to break. My friends and co-workers have gotten use to the fact that Donnie is the only one allowed to take a pair of scissors to my hair. When my co-workers hear that I'm taking a day off (usually Friday) to go up to NY/NJ, they'll say, 'Haircut?' And I'll say, 'Yes.'

I will admit that I was scared of Donnie when he first started cutting my hair. In my pre-teens, I wasn't exactly 'in the know' about the stereotypes of male hairdressers...oddly enough, I think I totally knew about the stereotypes of male airline stewards. Anyway, Donnie was definitely nice - and he probably liked my hair because it was thick, shiny and 'young.' I pretty much gave him free reign to do what he wanted to do...he knew. He knew what needed to be done. As the years went on, all I needed to do was show up, say 'Help!' and he would get busy cutting my hair into something that I would be happy with. Admittedly, there are probably less than five times (in a span of 20 years, remember) in which I was not happy with what Donnie did....the last time I was upset with his cut, which was less than three years ago, I thought I had a fe-mullet - in 2006! But in about a month, it grew out into something that I totally loved. So even though I didn't LOVE what he did at the salon, he had the foresight to know what it would turn out like - and I also knew that I could go to him and say, 'Let's not go that short again - just trim this.'

Most people get their haircut once every 1-2 months. I am more of a 3-4 times a year...that works for me because it gives me a chance to visit my family and load up on my Chinatown routine (Joe's Shanghai, bubble tea, lychee sorbet, ready-made Chinese food). When I'm in the salon with Donnie, we talk about music - the good old stuff like Depeche Mode, Erasure, Pet Shop Boys - summer plans, vacations, celebrities and we sing to Madonna and Donna Summer. When Madonna's 'Confessions on a Dance Floor' came out, he would cut the Hot 97 playing over the salon speakers and throw on some Madonna and we would jam through my cut-duration.

I've learned the following things about Donnie - he's originally from Malaysia, he trained at a Vidal Sassoon salon, him and a friend used to do Michelle Yeoh's hair for shows (back in his Malaysian days), he thinks the hair-wash girls are catty, and the number-one thing I learned in my years with Donnie - DO NOT piss him off.



There was this one incident where I had an appointment with him -I can't remember if he was running behind or what but I had been waiting for over an hour after my appointment time to get my haircut- and my sister and nephew were with me. My sister was getting antsy about going home (since we had a child with us) so we basically had to have another person cut our hair in the salon. This did not make Donnie happy - and he let me know it. I felt horrible for months! I sent him cookies....apology notes...I tried to make amends by bringing him holiday treats and giving better tips. I believe he eventually forgave me but I will never forget that time. I felt wretched. I would not let my sister get her haircut with me again - she moonlighted at other salons....I think she has slowly made her way back into Donnie's good graces because she's getting her haircut with him this Saturday....lucky for her. But I will never, ever, ever let anyone else touch my hair.

I always said that if I became famous and/or went on tour for something, Donnie would be my main hair dresser - he would be my Ken Paves!

From Genius To Loser In 60 Seconds

I find it kind of fascinating how quickly my opinion of myself can change. In the office, for instance, I may be cursing myself for being an idiot - then suddenly I have miraculously finished whatever it was I set out to do. I have somehow succeeded. But the high of my success does not last long. Sometimes just mere moments later, I revert to wondering when they will figure out that I have no idea what I'm doing. One moment it is, "I know everything!!" The next, it is "I know NOTHING!!"

It is the same way with writing. If you have read my most recent posts, you probably know that I am working on writing a novel. The current draft is over 86,000 words. I guess the sheer word volume should be exciting. That's over 310 pages, double spaced, after all. That's way more than I write at work, even with my 20+ page pleadings.

As far as quality is concerned, though, that's a different story. One day, I will wake up feeling fantastic. "You're the next Helen Fielding," I'll tell myself. "You're the next Emily Giffin! Soon your book will be everywhere, from airport newsstands to the aisles at Target. Soon, you'll be selling the movie rights. And if you play your cards right, you may even get total control over casting." (in which case, Timothy Olyphant – how does your schedule look for the next three or so years?). I’ll reread the passages I’m particularly fond of, thinking to myself, “Oooh, this is good. This is funny!”

The next day, unfortunately, I am plagued by this recurring thought:

“This is total crap.”

Janitoritis

In a post awhile back, I believe I commented on "closing up shop" at the office. I had this routine, starting at 5:30 on the dot, which involved a lap around the office and a visit to the candy dish on one of our paralegals' desks (who, not so coincidentally enough, left the office each day at 5:30, leaving me to stuff my face in peace). The candy dish, while important, was not the only reason for temporarily leaving my desk. The most important reason was to leave my office unmanned so that the cleaning people could empty my trash without interruption (this was really more for me than them, though. I couldn't stand the thought of them cleaning my mess while I lazily sat there surfing the web until traffic died down).

Things got really bad, though, when I had to clean my office for the big move to Texas. I discovered that when you're in an office space for 5 years or so, you acquire an awful lot of crap. I purged a good 75% of my files to make room for the new inhabitant. And you know what that means, don't you? A lot of trash and recycling. For a good week straight, my recycling bin would be overflowing every night. I even became a "Trash Fairy" of sorts. Once my own bin was full, I'd sneak around and load up other people's recycling bins with my junk. Poor Denise by the printer suffered the worst of it. I don't think the cleaning people ever saw so much recycling coming from her. One of our conference rooms also saw a fair share. I'm sure the cleaning guy (who, by the way, is a very nice man - a little heavy handed on the cologne, but nice nonetheless) was a little like, "WTF? There's never recycling to empty in here!" (keep in mind, these are really more subtitles - I'm sure he would have thought these things in Spanish, his native tongue)).

One evening, wanting to escape the trash rounds, I headed down the elevators at 5:30 for a little walk around the block outside. One of our other secretaries, Jen, happened to be catching the elevators too - on her way home from work. As we swished through the revolving door outside, she asked if I was going to get a snack (she knew I worked past 6:00 every night). I had to admit, "Nope. I'm actually hiding from the cleaning people. I just left a lot of stuff in my recycling bin." She was shaking, she was laughing so hard. She then reported me to my boss, Wendy, who gave me an extra hard time about it when I pulled the same stunt the next day. I think she even shouted, "Chicken!" when the cleaning people came by my office and I was nowhere to be found.

Well, even though I've left the office in D.C., my cleaning person phobia is far from over. As it turns out, Shawn and I are staying at an Extended Stay in San Antonio for four months. One of the advantages of the Extended Stay, as opposed to a short-term apartment lease, is that we have cleaning service. Hooray, right? Not necessarily. Now, instead of my 5:30 routine, I am uprooted in the middle of the day, trying to find something to occupy myself for an hour or more so that I can allow them to change our sheets and towels and empty our garbage without me in their way. I had to tell Wendy all about it yesterday, because I knew she'd find it amusing.

Her response: "I think there should be a name for your condition . . ."

Janitoritis.

Finally: Operation: Burberry Closet Under Way!

One of the things that I was looking for, when house hunting, was a walk-in closet. It's every girl's dream, isn't it? To have one of those large walk-in closets that could be practically another room, where if it's shared, it contains 80% of the girl's clothes; or if it doesn't need to be shared, that's just a bonus. You see those closets on Cribs and you're just like, 'That's awesome! I want one of those.' I don't necessarily need a huge closet but a sizable one was mandatory and I actually got more than expected.

The previous owner of my house converted the smallest bedroom into her own, personal, changing room. She had one closet in the room dedicated to shoes and then a very long closet for her clothing. I have pretty much done the same - I moved my shoes and purses into one closet, on their own, and then my hanging clothes go into the very long closet. I love it because clothes aren't on the outside - they're actually within closets - and I made that room into my own private space. I purchased a small desk, a very nice chair, a bold, red ottoman and decorated it to my taste. I LOVE my room - on the house tour, it's the last room in the house to get shown.

One of the things that I had always said, while house hunting, was that I wanted to have a closet big enough that my husband could paint me a wall of the Burberry nova check plaid. (I think if I was Scottish, this signature Burberry plaid would be my family tartan.) My husband needs a challenge and this is certainly a challenge....it is a win-win situation (that's how I like to see it). Since I got this whole room to myself, we struck a bargain that he didn't have to paint everything in the nova check - but he would do one wall of nova check and the rest would stay as the base color of the nova check wall.

Incidentally, his friends think he's crazy. Wallpaper was their suggestion - but I couldn't find the exact wall paper for it. My friends are as excited as myself. Neighbors are skeptical and want to see the finished results!

We purchased the paint during the winter, eagerly anticipating the first sign of warm weather when we could open up the windows and start painting. The signs came a couple of weeks ago and the painting started last night! We got the first base coat on and since we had to paint over a light blue, we're going to try and put the second base coat on tonight and tomorrow. Then comes the hard part - the taping for the plaid. Hopefully my husband will get some of it done over the weekend, while I'm gone...but the red, the black and the white paints are all ready to go...I'm so excited.

My Burberry closet is close at hand - I will be sure to post pictures of it when he's finished.

Retail Restrooms

When I'm out running errands or on a shopping trip, I take comfort in knowing where the restrooms are. It's a little harder to know for 'old town' shopping since these places are filled with cute boutiques and shops rather than large chain stores that you can lose yourself in for hours.

There are certain large stores that I feel should have the cleanest bathrooms around - why? Because they just about stock every kind of product to clean their public restrooms. Let's take Target for instance. It's always nice to know that I can run into a Target, hang a right or a left and the restrooms are right in front of the registers or by the customer service counter. Are they always clean? Not really - but then again, I think it depends on where you are. The new ones are of course cleaner due to lack of 'traffic' - but give it a few years, and it might not be as nice as it once was. There are other Targets, in not so wonderful locations, that are just downright nasty. Eight out of ten stalls will either be clogged, unflushed or just disgusting. And I wonder...why are these bathrooms like this? Target should be the LAST store on Earth to have gross bathrooms...just go down to the house cleaning aisle and pick up some Target brand cleaning supplies. Hey - there's a great marketing ploy....clean your bathrooms with Target brand items and see if your sales go up. (Yes, I am a genius.) The overhead can't be that bad and I don't think my expectations are unreasonable.

I was in a Home Depot yesterday when I had the sudden urge to go to the restroom. Luckily, I knew where it was - I hate being in those LARGE warehouse type places and figuring out where the restrooms are and having to pull someone over to ask without them thinking that you're only in there to use the toilet. Although the tiling was very nice in the Ladies' room (not a surprise since they have it in stock), it was pretty dirty. Doesn't Home Depot stock industrial-strength cleaners in their aisles? What is up with not cleaning your restrooms with what you've got in aisle 10? Let's just say I had to settle for wiping down and double-seat covers....ick!

On to more pleasant pastures, I can always count on Nordstrom for nice restrooms. It's in department stores like these (more upscale) that they 'lounge out' the whole Ladies' room. I have found groups of women hanging out in there - just hanging out. I don't think I would ever hang out in the lounge of the Ladies' Lounge but I guess it's nice to know I can if I want. Macy's is a crap shoot. I've been in ones where they're trying to spruce up the Ladies' room to make it more lounge-y with all the products that they carry...I mean wouldn't it be nice to have Martha Stewart decorate all the restrooms with her products - you know, things that you can get from within Macy's from a specific line if you want your living room, family room, rest room to look like "this" at home? (I know, another genius idea...) At other times, I find myself holding my breath in their restrooms trying to finish my business and make my way out of there so I can breathe easy again.

We haven't even touched on dining places - but I think everyone knows that those are all hit-or-miss. If you're at upscale dining, the restrooms will most likely be very clean, very comforting and you might even have to pay an attendant to give you hand soap. If you're at a 'not so upscale' place, you're probably looking at 2-3 times a day (if that) of someone checking the restrooms (even though those spreadsheets on the doors are initialed on the hour...supposedly). There is one place in DC where it's a casual bar atmosphere where the waitresses let their ta-tas hang out. It's two levels and it's fairly large. They only have four stalls in the ONE Ladies' room to serve the whole establishment. Since I've been there, only three stalls have worked. And there's ALWAYS a line, in the evenings, trying to get in. Sinks overflow, toilets and floors are disgusting and when the sun sets, you better have a dollar to tip the soap attendant...really....it's all quite gross and unnecessary.

Maybe my youngest nephew is onto something here - he doesn't seem to like to 'do his business' in strange places....preferring the comforts of home. If I could control my bladder functions, I probably would too.