William and Kate, I Just Can't Wait!

Because of the Presidents’ Day holiday and the resulting mail draught, I don’t yet have my royal wedding invitation in hand. I’m not going to let that minor technicality keep me from starting my trip preparations, however.

I’ve watched Four Weddings and a Funeral and I’ve read my fair share of fashion magazines. I know even garden variety British weddings involve dashing gentleman in morning coats, adorable children and hats that are so fabulous and over the top, they make their Kentucky Derby cousins look darn near puritanical in comparison.

Throw Elton John, the Eton and St Andrews school chums and that cheeky Princess Anne in the mix, and well, there’s just no telling what might happen. I can hardly wait!

All I have to do is close my eyes and I’m already there… giving Camilla the look I’ve wanted to give her since the early 90s, sitting across the table from Kate’s charming late 40s uncle who, because he will be so taken with my fetching mane, will give up his place near the queen to come chat me up in his darling English accent and eating food fit for… well, fit for a would be king.

Designers have been sending me frocks they want me to wear for weeks now and my craft room is bursting at the seams, what with all the tulle, feathers, ribbons and flowers I’ve been accumulating in my attempt to keep pace with the big name European milliners. All I have left to do is make a late April appointment at Hot Heads 407-671-0480 and retrieve my passport and I’ll be good to go.

Romance is in the air and perhaps that coveted ivory parchment envelope will be in my mailbox. Maybe it will be in yours as well. Hope to see you in London or at Hot Heads several days prior. Have a great week!

The HHG

Not Missin' The Chill, Phil!

February 17, 2011

Phil
Gobbler’s Knob
Punxsutawney, PA 15767

Dear Phil,

As all of my closest friends know, I was in kind of a weird place recently. It seemed like I had been in a black hole for far too long. One day seemed just like the next. Same old, same old… In a lot of ways, I felt like a shadow of my former self. It seemed like a part of me was missing and I was searching high and low to find it. I was scared. My heart felt like it was frozen. Can you relate? I think you can.

As you recall, you assured me that my dark days and bleak nights were almost over. I wanted to believe you, but I’ll be honest, I just didn’t. I figured you were like all the others…. just one more guy promising things he couldn’t or wouldn’t deliver. Sure the idea of a cutie like yourself bringing a little heat into my world – and soon - was an appealing thought, but experience had taught me to keep my guard up.

I can’t tell you how happy I am that I was wrong. Today was a Katrina and the Waves kind of a day. I really did feel like I was walking on sunshine. You put a smile back on my face. You made me feel hopeful about the future. Things do seem better and brighter and there is a new spring in my step.

Thank you from the bottom of my heart!

Hugs and Kisses,

The HHG

On Tuesday I wore a coat to work and I slept that night in plaid, flannel PJs. Tomorrow? Well, that's another day entirely! It is supposed to get up to 81 here tomorrow and according to the Weather Channel, it will be sunny with zero chance of precipitation. OMG am I happy about this! I feel a beach day coming on. I feel a great weekend coming up! I feel thrilled that Winter's over! Phil, dude, you’re the man!

You didn’t think I was really down, did you? Me? The eternal optimist? I think not! Spring doesn’t always get here as soon as I want it to, but it always gets here. I know that. I hold onto that and when it does come, nobody is happier about it than I am. Welcome back warm weather! Welcome back happy times! Welcome back blond highlights!

In the depth of winter, I finally* learned that within me there lay an invincible summer. ~ Albert Camus

*Actually, I didn’t finally learn it. I’ve always known it. Hope that’s how you feel too!

Celebrate Spring with a fun new do! Hot Heads 407-671-0480

Happy Valentine's Day!

Dear Hot Heads,

For bringing color into my world...

For making me feel like a million bucks...

For showering me with attention....

For always being there for me....

Happy Valentine's Day!

XXOO,

The HHG

My Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Fire Engine Red Bikini

Yesterday on The Today Show, during a segment on looking great over 40, Susan St. James Ebersol and a fashion correspondent whose name escapes me, made a reference to a Leonard Cohen song called, Ring the Bells that Still Can Ring. I hadn’t heard it before, but I love the concept, so I immediately went to my computer and looked it up. Here’s the chorus:

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in.
Ring the bells that still can ring

This past Summer, I spent close to a week in the Cayman Islands, and as you might imagine, it was fabulous. One of my closest college friends lives there so I spent five glorious days with her and some of her best island friends at a wonderful little condo between The Ritz and The Westin on Seven Mile Beach during her big birthday weekend blowout. We spent part of almost every day on chase lounges sipping champagne, watching the sparkling green water and talking about life.

All of us are about the same age – somewhere between Lordy, Lordy, Look Who’s 40 and 50 and Fabulous. Though one or two of the women, my close friend included, are in amazingly great shape for their ages, a couple of the women are not. They don't look bad, mind you. In fact, they’re down right beautiful. They just wouldn’t have made the pages of Self or Fitness.

I couldn’t help but notice that I was the only one of us not wearing a bikini. Neither could they.

By mid-Summer, the hard work I had put into my pre-high school reunion food & exercise program, aka Operation Get My Groove Back, had paid off and I was back in low single digits and in the best shape I had been in years. Still, I felt the need to cover up.

I had been raised on the concept of less is more, or in this case, more (fabric) is more. I had been raised to show some decorum. I had grown up in the church where modesty is a virtue. A complete magazine junkie, I had spent countless hours comparing my body to Christie’s and Elle’s and Heidi’s and Paulina’s. I bought into the whole “women of a certain age” shouldn’t….. (fill in the blank).

One of the more outspoken women in the bunch, had some rather amusing things to say about all this and about the "uptight" American women they see on their beaches every weekend. The message I got that day was this: “You’ve got a beautiful figure. Embrace it. Show it off. Be proud of it and don’t let anyone make you feel like you’re less than you are.”

Of course that’s much easier said than done, like so many things in life. While I’m a relatively confident girl, I believed what one of my oldest – as in we’ve been friends forever, not as in she has a birthday decades before my own – dearest friends said recently, “Nobody over 40, with the possible exception of Jennifer Aniston, needs to be in a bikini. “ Well, guess what? I wore a bikini the rest of that trip and I came home and did the same thing over at New Smyrna Beach. Not only that, shortly after my last birthday, I did something I’ve wanted to do for years. I stood up on a surfboard for the first time in my life.

I tell you this because yesterday, I made my biggest, boldest fashion purchase in years. I stumbled upon a clearance rounder that housed a handful of last season’s bathing suits on it. One of them: an OP, fire engine red, string bikini came home with me. (Think the Phoebe Cates suit in Fast Times at Ridgemont High.) Just knowing it was in my possession made me smile the rest of the day.

Got an e-mail from another of my best childhood friends this morning. This past weekend, she went into a small town, Northern California restaurant. Most of the other women our age were wearing their warm and toasty and ever so practical cableknit sweaters. She, on the other hand, was decked out in a sparkeling silver stunner of a dress and boots. Since I know she can pull that look off, I can only imagine the reaction at the other tables. I trust that drinks were spilled, heads were turned and hearts were racing.

Perhaps we’re both going through a mid-life crisis ….or perhaps we’re just looking at ourselves with new eyes. Perhaps we’re both realizing that, darn it, we do still have it going on and we don’t have to buy into other people’s notions of what this time in our lives is supposed to be like.

Guess it’s time to get back to Hot Heads. A sassy new outlook on life and a fire engine red bikini demand a certain do and I know just where to get it.

See you at the beach. I’m counting the days. Hot Heads 407-671-0480

When It's OK To Be Late For A Very Important Date

I stumbled upon a quote I just have to share. I kind of hope no one I know reads this post, though, because my sharing it won’t go over well with anyone in my world. I’m going to do it anyway ...... for you. (You’re welcome!)

If a girl looks swell when she meets you, who gives a damn if she’s late? Nobody! ~ JD Salinger

Of course, this quote isn’t exactly accurate. Regardless of how you look or what the circumstances, your female friends WILL care if you keep them waiting. I can tell you that with certainty.

They won't let you off the hook if you have a finch that dies suddenly requiring you to stop what you were doing and lay it to rest. They won't be moved by the fact that a crazy woman parked behind you at the grocery store refusing to move her car until you took your cart back inside. They won't consider the fact that you had to return to the house to change one shoe because you accidentally left wearing a mismatched pair a valid reason for keeping them waiting. Even if you are waylayed by a flaming wire swinging across I-4 (because an Osprey's nest on the top of an electric pole had been hit by lightening), they will be looking at their watches and shaking their heads in displeasure when you finally arrive. It doesn't matter how cute you look. The girls in your life are not going to cut you any slack if you’re not where you’re supposed to be when you’re supposed to be there.

The men in your life, on the other hand? If you look fetching enough, there is almost no limit to what they’ll let slide.

So…. Want to get away with something outrageous… or at least get away with keeping the guy in an your life in an extended holding pattern? Take your looks up a notch. Hot Heads 407-671-0480.

Wishing You a Beautiful 2011

I had plans to post a (hopefully) amusing essay today about some of my hair resolutions :) for 2011. I heard some pretty sad news this afternoon, though, and that post just doesn’t “feel” right to me now. What I’m going to put out there instead is this: Life is short. Let the people who matter in your life know that they do.

I want to share this too…. There is absolutely nothing wrong with trying to look good and with caring about hair and fashion. In fact, I’m a big proponent of doing just that, which is part of the reason my car automatically pulls of I-4 at exit 101. When you get to the end of your life, however, what really matters is what you look like on the inside. I think so anyway. Wishing you a beautiful 2011. I wish you great hair, but I also wish you health, happiness and peace of mind and heart. Happy New Year!

Turning Back The Clock

One of the main reasons I go to Hot Heads is to turn back the clock. I walk into the salon a woman of a certain age. I walk out decades younger. (Well, part of me does. The rest of me struggles to catch up with creams and glosses, clothing and exercise equipment.)

Tonight I won't be employing any of these products or methods. Tonight I'll be using a chair and my finger tip. Don't forget that Daylight Savings Time ends tomorrow (Sun) at 2:00 am. I feel younger already! :)