Why I Have Fried Catfish To Thank For Hair I Love

My friend, Liz, is striking!  She’s dated famous folks. In her youth, she graced the pages of Teen Magazine. Pictures of her wedding and an accompanying write up were featured in a major bridal publication and even today, as a happily married Mom of two, men are rendered speechless in her presence. None of that really does her justice though. I think this does: Back in high school, she got a job as a hostess – AT CAPTAIN D’S!  (No, in answer to your question, they did not make her wear the polyester uniform.)

Liz is the kind of girl it would be easy to hate, if not for a few pesky little facts: 1) She’s smart as a whip. 2) She has a very strong work ethic.  3) She has a heart of gold, and 4) She is one of the funniest people I know.

I am giving a shout out to Liz today, because she is the one who first told me about Hot Heads. A couple of years ago, I mentioned to her that I needed a change. I told her that I hadn’t found a stylist I liked and that I really wanted a cute new look. She told me about Hot Heads and she recommended Barry and Diane. She told me that they were the best in town.

That was enough for me. If a girl who once talked someone into paying her to say hello to fast food seafood restaurant customers tells you where to get your hair styled, you listen.

Liz is the reason I first walked into Hot Heads. Barry and Diane are the reason I keep coming back.

From the first time Barry cut my hair, I was hooked. I didn’t know his background at that point, but it was easy to see that he was a major talent.

I have had my hair cut at a swanky salon in Buckhead in Atlanta. (Thanks, Cindy! :) I’ve had it trimmed, highlighted and straightened at a well known, very reputable salon in Altamonte Springs. I’ve had it cut and colored at a trendy salon in downtown Orlando and I have had it styled at a high end salon just off Park Avenue in Winter Park. While I was happy with the results on each of these occasions, I didn’t leave those salons with the same feeling that I had when I left Hot Heads that first time.

Though Barry was unable to make me 5’11, Asian and gorgeous, like Liz :), he accomplished something none of those other stylists were able to accomplish. He made me want to come back. I absolutely loved the cut!

I was thrilled with the color too! (Diane wasn’t doing my color then, but I was still quite happy with it. That is one of the beautiful things about Hot Heads. Everybody who works there is top notch.)

Recently I had the occasion to sit down with Barry and Diane and talk to them about their experiences in the industry and about their salon philosophy. What I discovered made me think even more of both of them and of the entire salon. I think you’re going to be fascinated by what I discovered.

Pretty Girl, Perfect Hair! :)

I dropped by Hot Heads yesterday afternoon just in time to see stylist, Jessica, putting the finishing touches on her client, Taylor’s, homecoming do.

Taylor is obviously a beautiful girl, who would’ve looked lovely no matter what hairstyle she decided on, but this look clearly suits her. It’s fun, a little edgy and the long, loose curls are just gorgeous. She must have been a vision in the blue metallic dress she was planning to wear to last night’s dance.

Special thanks to Taylor for allowing me to share these pictures. Thanks to Jessica too. Jessica, you did an awesome job!

The City (of the) Beautiful

Before I took my newborn son home from the hospital, I attended a mandatory childcare class. My fellow new Moms and I learned how to bathe our babies, how to properly diaper them (cartoon characters should face forward, tabs should be in the back), what a proper baby burp should sound like and when we were supposed to start introducing solid foods. I’m sure it was all very informative. I don’t remember much though, because of something else that was conveyed to me in that classroom.

The childcare class I attended took place less than 24 hours after my son’s birth. This is because he was born during a period of time when insurance companies could get away with booting a Mother and her baby out the door the day after a complication - free delivery.  My son was born on a Friday and we were sent home that Saturday.  In other words, he still had the scrunched up, reddish, blotchy face of a newborn who was delivered naturally when we attended the class.  My son was also on the larger side, weighing in at close to 9 lbs at the time of his birth, and he had his father’s very full lips.

Inexplicably, all the other Moms in class with me and my son that Saturday morning so long ago, were Moms of 5 lb baby girls, each of whom had been delivered via C Section several days prior. These babies were all sweet, tiny angels wrapped in pink blankets with perfect faces that looked like little rosebuds. As we sat in the circle, all beaming with pride, the other Moms and I began fawning over the babies who were not our own. “Oh, she’s just adorable.” “Look how cute she is!” “I love that little dress on her. Look at her little button nose. She’s such a beauty!”

Every baby in that room was showered with compliments. Well almost every baby was! It went something like this:

Comment about newborn #1) “Ooooo, what a cutie!”
Comment about newborn #2) “Oh, I love that little bow in her hair. She’s absolutely adorable!”
Comment about newborn #3) “Look at her gorgeous eyes and those sweet little lips. I just want to eat her up with a spoon!”
Several second intermission from the baby love fest while the other Moms took a fleeting glance at newborn number 4, my son, then averted their eyes. This was followed by an awkward silence.
Comment about newborn #5: “Isn’t she just darling? Look at those little dimples!”

My son was actually a precious baby! He was a smiley, blond haired, blue eyed, bundle of energy who charmed everyone he met. He was cute then … (See below.)

.... and, if I do say so myself, he’s a handsome young man now. (I can’t post a current picture or he’d kill me.)

The fact that he was (and is) an attractive kid didn’t change the fact that, for a brief period of time, a handful of OBVIOUSLY BLIND (!!) complete strangers deemed him “the homely looking baby” and let me know about it. It hurt my feelings and it made me mad! I told my husband that I wanted contact info for all those people, so we could arrange to meet them several months down the road at a local playground.  I wanted a recount!  I wanted to line the babies up again when the playing field was a little more level... when those rosebud baby girls were no longer reaping the beauty advantages of their C-Section deliveries.    

Today I had a flashback to that 1989 insult because today I was told that I (and approximately two million of my nearest and dearest) are considered to be physically revolting to the rest of the nation. Recently, Travel and Leisure Magazine conducted a survey evaluating 30 US cities in a number of different categories. Channel 9 reported on some of the survey’s results earlier today. In terms of attractiveness, Orlandoans ranked 22nd out of 30. That means we were in the bottom 27%. In other words, the rest of the country looked us up and down, then gave us a big fat F in the looks department. (We fared even worse – 26th! - when it came to intelligence.)

I was only upset for about an hour back in ‘89, because I was too busy enjoying my little son.  I knew my baby was CUUUUTE.  If others couldn't see that, that was their loss.

I am not going to stew about these survey results for very long either, for the same reason.  I know the stats are skewed and I know the majority of my neighbors are attractive.  I mean, we’ve got theme parks here so we have real ogres in our midst.  (Sorry, Shrek!)  We've got evil sea witches among us- sea witches who wear too much purple eye shadow.  (Not sorry, Ursula!)  We've got Cruella with her two toned hair, severe eyebrows and politically incorrect Dalmation coat.  These folks undoubtedly drug our overall evaluation down.   

Another reason I’m going to let this go is because I know that if I don’t, I might end up with frown lines or a furrowed brow. That would only make things worse. I’ve decided, instead, to channel my energies in a more constructive manner. I’ve decided to make it my mission to add five little letters to our city slogan. Instead of "The City Beautiful", I think we should shoot for “The City of the Beautiful”.

Now while I know that everyone who is reading is already drop dead gorgeous, I don’t think it would hurt to get a little proactive here.  I don't think it would hurt to stack the deck in our favor and to do what we can to take things up a notch or two before next year's survey.  To that end, I think we should all call Hot Heads 407-671-0480 post haste and book appointments. That would be the smart thing to do!  As an added bonus, doing the smart thing might rachet up our intelligence rating too.

Have a Hair Raising Evening!

In honor of the holiday, I thought I'd offer my take on a few of this year's hottest Halloween hairstyles.  I generally leave this type of thing to the professionals, but these looks are just begging for a comment. 

According to the package, this look is called "the sexy milkmaid".  I call it "If Princess Leia was Swedish and a flower child". 

If Victoria Beckman and Winter Park's Carrot Top had a love child...

 

Model to the Border Patrol Officer:  "What do you mean you think I'm smuggling something in?" 

What all the Moms with high order multiples and reality TV shows are wearing this Fall .... and what a whole lot of women in middle America are wearing this Halloween. 

I also thought I'd share my favorite personal Halloween hair moment from the last several years.  I'll let Homer explain just how fab the hair really is.  When he and Marge were on a show called, Mother Flippers, in the same vein as Wife Swap, he said the following to Marge's temporary husband, Charles:  "All right, pal. I've made a diagram of all the places on Marge you're not allowed to touch." (He then showed Charles the diagram and finished his admonition.) "Especially the hair!"

Happy Halloween! 

A sMALL Sacrifice for Great Hair!

Up until recently, if you had asked me if I had a BMF (a best mall forever), I wouldn’t have hesitated. Like most women, I have enjoyed a lot of malls in my life. One, however, had always been the apple of my eye.       

As I mentioned in the "about me" recap above, I wasn’t that thrilled about the shopping centers my parents tried to drag me to when I was in elementary school. I did love going to the mall as a toddler, though, and I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the countless hours I’ve spent at those high, holy places of merchandise procurement from my teen years forward.

When I was in pre-school, I used to go visit my Grandmother at her post in the Men’s Department of Richards in Miami Beach’s 163rd Street Mall. I just loved seeing her in her stylish dresses and tasteful pins or scarves with that tape measure draped carefully around her neck. I also remember riding the carousel just outside of that mall and sitting on my Grandpa’s lap while he, in red suit with white fur trim, shiny black boots and faux beard, fulfilled his store Santa duties.

At age 13, I got my ears pierced at Ivey’s in the old Winter Park Mall, now Winter Park Village. I also spent many an hour there reading funny cards at the Hallmark store and checking out all the latest fashions at Casual Corner, 5-7-9 and Foxmoor.

During most Augusts in the 1970s, I spent some amount of time at the Park City Center in Lancaster, PA marveling at the sheer abundance of boots, winter coats and sweaters that it had to offer. Often my favorite outfit of the new school year was purchased at that mall as an early birthday present from my Grandma.

During the 1980s, I organized Hello Kitty paraphernalia on the shelves of a Pompano Fashion Square card shop and I greeted customers and put clothes on mannequins at both the Orlando Fashion Square Mall and the Fayette Mall in Lexington, KY.

These were all mall crushes though. The mall that had my heart was always the Altamonte Mall. In fact, my relationship with it predates most of my friendships.

The Altamonte Mall doesn’t have an Anthropologie. It doesn’t have a Williams & Sonoma. It doesn’t have a Pottery Barn and it doesn’t have Saks. What it does have is a lot of history. Much of my life has unfolded in or around that Seminole County shopping mecca.

The center court of the Altamonte Mall circa 1974

I started frequenting the Altamonte Mall in 1974, the year it opened. My Dad used to come up from South Florida every other weekend to hang out with my sister, my brother and me. We usually ended up spending some part of each of those weekends at the Altamonte Mall. My favorite things to do there during that era were: 1) Get a mint chocolate chip ice cream cone at Baskin Robbins. 2) Stare at the pictures of the perfect girls on the Jordan Marsh teen board wall and wish I was one of them and 3) Try on cute outfits my mother would’ve never let me wear in a store that had actual car doors on hinges for fitting room doors.

I learned to drive in the Altamonte Mall parking lot. I hung out with friends at the Altamonte Mall Farrell’s as a teen. (See my October 14th post.) Long before the AMC 18 was ever built, I went on dates in the much smaller theater that used to be over near Sears. I worked at the Altamonte Mall in the late 80s/early 90s (as a “Personnel Manager” at what was then Maison Blanche). I ate Taco Bell at the Altamonte Mall Food Court the night before I delivered my son, in order to hasten his arrival. I shuttled a lot of kids to and from the mall over the years, specifically to and from the movie theater, and my child worked at the Altamonte Mall PAC SUN one summer when he was in high school.

A year ago, Hot Heads moved from the Altamonte Mall to the Seminole Towne Center. You would think, given the depth of the mall-patron bond I outlined above, that my allegiance would be to the mall not to the salon. You would think I’d simply start getting my hair done at that well known chain salon that’s not too far from those center court kiosks. You would be wrong. I love the Altamonte Mall, but sometimes love just isn’t enough. After all, this is my hair we’re talking about!

I’ve told the Altamonte Mall that we’ll remain friends. I even have plans to see it on Friday, as my friend, Carissa, and I will be meeting at the Barnes & Noble that afternoon. It won’t be the same though. I know it and the Altamonte Mall knows it. Sure, I’ll still carry those memories in my heart and sure I’ll always care, but if I’m able to scrounge up any money for Christmas gifts, chances are I’ll spend that money at the Seminole Towne Center after a visit to Hot Heads. If there is a birthday card to be purchased, the odds are good that it will be purchased at JerieAnne’s Hallmark near the Seminole Towne Center Dillard’s while I’m walking the mall showing off a new do.

Though this isn’t an easy break up, it is certainly amicable. After taking a gander at my newly coiffed hair this past weekend, the Altamonte Mall, took the high road and told me it understood and wanted me to be happy.

I had acquaintances in college who drove across state lines for White Castle burgers. I had an old boyfriend who drove eight hours once to see a B52s in concert in Atlanta and family lore has it that my uncle once drove from California to New Jersey for a piece of my Grandmother’s chocolate cake. (Well, there was a little more to that story, but you get the point.) If you find something you are crazy about, you do what you have to do to keep it in your life.

The Seminole Towne Center is twelve miles east of the Altamonte Mall. TWELVE MILES! I have friends who run that far before they go to work in the morning. A twelve mile drive is an infinitesimally small sacrifice to make for hair that falls the right way and for good highlights.

Below, please find a little song I penned to commemorate the important role the Altamonte Mall played in my life for so many years. (It might be more accurate to say that I just tweaked the lyrics of an existing song, Bruce Springsteen’s Fire.) It's my humble way of saying goodbye and thankyou to a mall that will always retain a place in my heart.  Anyway, without further ado… I give you:

If You Say I Won't Miss That Mall, My Friend, You're A Liar

I learned to drive my car in the mall parking lot .
I ate some ice cream there … and lots of clothes I bought.
I interviewed teens …and told ‘em they were hired
And if things went south, ooooohhh…. said they were FIRED!

It had a hold on me, right from the start
A grip so tight I couldn’t tear it apart.
Watched movies there and window shopped like a fool.
When the temp was hot …the Altamonte Mall was cool

Bakers and Anne Taylor Loft, Ulta and Bebe 
I really love those stores… love ‘em more than I can say!
Shoes, bags, jeans and makeup… so many things to desire.
This mall I’ll miss… this is making me a CRIER!

When pregnant and past due, I was real worrywart
To speed things along, I hit the food court
I ordered burritos so hot …. they made me perspire
And tacos with a sauce called… ooohh… FIRE

I found a salon I loved… a place that stole my heart
They didn’t just style hair, they were purveyors of art
They put my hair in foils and sat me under the dryer
When they took them out… ooohh, my hair looked hot as FIRE

Now I’m driving in my car, I turn on the radio
East on I-4 is the direction I go
Gotta get to Hot Heads. This root situation is dire
For a great cut and color, ooohhh… I’d walk through FIRE!

The Biggest Winner

I absolutely adore Abby from The Biggest Loser. I have been so touched by her story. What a brave and beautiful person she is! I don’t usually get so emotionally involved in shows like this, but I am rooting for this girl! She deserves all the happiness in the world and I hope she finds it!

The Hair Chair Book Club, Meeting One: Mennonite in a Little Black Dress by Rhoda Janzen

While the banter at Hot Heads is always plentiful, thought provoking and amusing, there are stretches of time when it’s a little harder to hear and participate in than usual, as a result of having a head covered in foils and of having to spend a bit of time under a high tech hair processor waiting for tastefully applied highlights to make themselves evident. When I’m faced with moments like this, I return to a pastime I have enjoyed since childhood. When I’m faced with moments like this, I reach for a book. Since I am surely not the only Hot Heads client who enjoys a good romp in the sheets (of paper) while things are heating up under the processor, I thought I might share a few of my favorite “hair chair” reads.

Though Friday’s topics du jour at the salon were spirited - We figured out how to improve the state of public education, what we might wear for Halloween and how to handle the Balloon Boy saga - I still managed to get about 40 pages read.

I finished the book I was reading at the salon, Mennonite in a Little Black Dress by Rhoda Janzen, this weekend. It occurred to me that it might be a fitting first mention for a style conscious blog’s book club, because of its nod to that wardrobe staple, the Little Black Dress, or as the fashion elite reverently and affectionately refer to it, the LBD.

One of the larger Mennonite communities in the country is in Central Pennsylvania, where my Mother grew up and where a number of my family members still live. A long time household employee in my Grandparents’ home was of Mennonite descent. I remember her as a hard working woman with a kind heart who made delicious (though unusual to my taste buds) food. I also had the opportunity to observe women of the denomination at the market in their simple, no nonsense dresses, their practical shoes and their modest head coverings when we visited the area during our childhood vacations.

One thing I never saw any of the Mennonite women wearing was a little black dress. Vogue once called Coco Chanel’s version of the LBD “Chanel’s Ford” because “like the Model T… it was simple and accessible for women of all social classes”. While that statement is largely true, the little black dress was not something that would’ve been easily accessible for a young Mennonite.

The title of this book caught my attention immediately. I simply had to hear more.

Mennonite in a Little Black Dress is a memoir and for the same reasons I enjoy hanging out at a hair salon, I love a good memoir. I just love hearing people’s stories. This one is compelling.

Elizabeth Gilbert, author of the 2006 blockbuster, Eat, Pray, Love, another of my favorites, said about Mennonite in a Little Black Dress: “This book is not just beautiful and intelligent, but also painfully – even wincingly – funny. It is rare that I literally laugh out loud while I’m reading, but Rhoda Janzen’s voice – singular, deadpan, sharp-witted, and honest – slayed me, with audible results.” She went on to declare the book, “the most delightful memoir” she’s “read in ages”. Another reviewer described it as, “A hilarious and moving memoir—in the spirit of Anne Lamott and Nora Ephron—about a woman who returns home to her close-knit Mennonite family after a personal crisis.” A true story written by a woman described as a cross between Anne Lamott and Nora Ephron and enthusiastically endorsed by Elizabeth Gilbert? I could hardly turn the pages fast enough!

Mennonite in a Little Black Dress is about a woman whose religious training subconsciously plays a role in her decision to stay in an unhealthy marriage for far longer than she should have. One can also make the case that she should’ve never entered into said marriage in the first place. It is the story of a bright woman whose life came crumbling down around her in her mid-forties after her on again off again marriage to a troubled, self absorbed, charming (when he wanted to be) terribly good looking man of Italian heritage came to a tabloid worthy end. It is a story about all of the other rotten things that happened to her at around the same time her marriage ended. Mennonite in a Little Black Dress is about Janzen’s having to depend on family and friends in a way that was both comforting and humbling during a decade when a woman is supposed to have all the answers and to be comfortably coasting into the next phase of her life. It is a tale about self discovery, healing, love, family, humor and charting a new course. It is a story I know, which is why I believe it resonated with me so profoundly.

My father was never the head of the North American Mennonite Conference for Canada and the United States, like Janzen’s was, a post she referred to as “the Mennonite equivalent of the Pope”. I never had to spend six months of my life attached to something Janzen refers to as a “pee bag” after a fluky medical mishap, which occurred mid-hysterectomy. I never had a drunk driver slam head - on into my VW Bug on a windy, snowy road leaving me with “assorted broken bones and Franken-bruises the size of my head” and my husband didn’t leave me for a man named Bob who he met on Gay.com. With those exceptions, however, I understood exactly where Janzen was coming from and I couldn’t help but want to call her up and ask her to join me for a cup of coffee.

In the first chapter, shortly after dropping the bombshell about her ex and his new love interest, Janzen made an observation about the timing of so many badly behaved men’s most egregious acts. She wondered why “husbands never seem to ditch their wives until the wives develop a varicose vein the size of a Roman aqueduct”. She asked, “if husbands must leave us for guys named Bob, why can’t they do it pre-vein, while we are young and gorgeous?” Why indeed?!!

At the book’s conclusion, there is a seventeen page Mennonite History primer. It is an interesting, well researched and, in places, rather amusing, portrait of a faith I had previously, simplistically categorized as “Amish Lite”. My point of reference was, again, my childhood Pennsylvania vacations. I knew that if there was a horse and buggy in front of us on old Route 30, we were behind an Amish family. If, on the other hand, the family in front was in a late model, no frills car and if the women in said car had what appeared to be small white mesh baskets on the back of their heads, the family was Mennonite.  There were other distinctions too. I was told, for example, that the Amish still lit their homes with candles and used wood burning stoves. While the Mennonites did have electricity, they apparently didn’t use it for frivolous things like powering stereo equipment and televisions. (Well, some Mennonite families had TVs, in fact, Janzen’s did, but it’s a good bet they weren’t watching All in The Family or any of the other things my friends and I watched during that era.)

Another thing neither denomination put much stock in – and this will be of particular interest to readers of this blog - was mirrors. That alone would’ve done me in, as one of my favorite childhood pastimes was folding, twisting and tying my nightgowns in such a way that they resembled evening gowns.  I then posed for the camera i.e. the bathroom mirror, fielded interview questions and blew kisses to my adoring fans.  Apparently Janzen, known in her family as the vainglorious one - Don't you love that word, vainglorious?  It's BIG in Mennonite circles! -felt the same way.  

One of my favorite expressions is: “Don’t throw out the baby with the bath water".  That appears to be exactly what Rhoda Janzen did, for much of her adult life. She was so eager to get away from the stifling customs, rigid expectations and embarrassing foods (her description, not mine), that she couldn’t open a beer or get into a short skirt fast enough when she went away to college. There is a lot of good that comes from being raised by stable, decent, predictable, hard working folk. She didn’t really appreciate that though, at least not at the time. Going home, in her recent time of crisis, allowed her to view her upbringing with fresh eyes, to reconsider her assumptions and to see value in what she had once disdained.

As one might expect, there is much discussion throughout the book about what Janzen thinks of God now that she’s an adult. To be honest, that part made me a little sad. I could elaborate here, but I won’t. As a Psych major and a first born child, I have a tendency to want to put up my Lucy Van Pelt (of Peanuts fame) Psychiatry booth, ask for my 5 cents and explain why I think people act the way they do. Since this doesn’t seem like the right forum for that type of in-depth discussion, I’ll refrain.

Of course theological discussions are not all there is to the book. While most of us like to stretch intellectually now and again, we generally don’t read serious works about philosophy and about how or why the universe was created when sitting in a chair at a salon outside of a department store. When sitting in a chair at the salon, we want a handsome man or two and a little relationship drama. Janzen gave it to us.

Every reader – lucky in love or not, young, old, married, single or somewhere in between – wanted one obvious question answered. Everyone wanted to know why a bright (the woman has a PhD), beautiful (check out her bio picture) woman chose to play with fire by getting involved with a bisexual atheist who, when he wasn’t rocking her world, treated her very badly. Janzen knew this and she did her best to oblige. The reason this question is of such interest is because we’ve all watched similar stories play out in our own personal lives. I know I have.

I have smart, beautiful, talented friends (and relatives) who are competent in every other area of their lives, but, who, for whatever reasons, seem incapable of making good choices when it comes to the men in their lives. I have been accused of being challenged in this area myself. (Guilty as charged.) It’s a well known phenomenon that has always puzzled those with the savvy not to marry human time bombs. People are always interested to know the reasons why women, who are not trolls and who appear to have an adequate number of working brain cells, choose such clearly unsuitable men.

Reading this book offers some more insight into that that age old question. For young girls trying to decide between that shy, honest, chess club member who will end up making six figures and who will never cheat ...and the troubled, but exciting guy, who won’t be able to keep a job, who will prove to be moody, unfaithful and unpredictable and who will rack up DUIs like they’re Publix deli numbers on the afternoon before school starts, it may prove to be a cautionary tale. For those who made the right choices, it will be a validation. For those who are in the same boat as Janzen, there will be comfort in the knowledge that they’re not alone.

I, personally, am at a place where I need to get the map back out before continuing on in my journey. I appreciated the fact that, thanks to this book, I was able to hang out with Janzen at the rest stop.

I am hereby recommending this book to anyone who:

• has ever gone out with a dirtbag
• has ever taken a road trip with relatives
• has ever been forced to wear a homemade piece of clothing, a hand me down or a clearance rounder find to a public junior high school
• has ever been embarrassed by a family member’s actions
• has ever loved the wrong guy
• has ever been asked inappropriate questions by a busybody at a dinner party.
• is currently upside down in a real estate deal
• is so obsessed with shopping that she’d consider putting her “pee bag” in an aqua patent tote and heading out to the mall (if she ever found herself in the unenviable position of being tethered to a “pee bag”)
• Has a best friend who loves her enough to encourage her to go to the mall attached to a carefully concealed“pee bag”
• has a little sister who has bailed her out of a mess
• has crazy in laws
• has a Mom, Grandmother, friend, neighbor or co-worker who wants to set her up with “a perfect guy”
• likes to contemplate life’s big questions
• appreciates simplicity in home décor
• hates raisins, and/or
• wants to spend a little time with a smart, funny, attractive, accomplished, well traveled, insightful English professor who has had a few rough breaks recently.

I’m giving this book my first ever “Hot Heads Hot Read” designation. Happy Reading! The HHG