The March Hair

I got my first literal taste of this time of the year last week when we took the dogs to the pooch parlor.  

It was blow-dry time for Kea.  The groomer wrapped Kea's ears with a towel, just in case the dryer noise scared her.

It did not.

Kea's tail wagged vociferously throughout the blow-dry phase. 

The busy tail told the truth:  Kea loved all the attention, and she loved the warmth of the forced air as it dried her hair.

As for me, I did not enjoy the doggie blow-dry phase.

It couldn't get over soon enough as I continued my mommy duties and caressed little Kea during the last segment of her bath.

The staff had given me a nice apron to protect my clothes from the water and suds.

There is no protection, however, for loose hair.

Loose hair likes mouths for some reason.

When one's hands, fingers and sleeves are covered with loose, wet hair, the attempt to remove the irritating invaders from landing on the lips and lodging themselves inside the mouth turns out less effective than just grinning and bearing with the hair.

Still, it's hard not to make a lame attempt at removing the nuisance.

As usual, for every hair that had already affixed itself to my lips, four or five more would join it each time I tried to wipe it away.

Oral blow drying doesn't work either.

You can blow all you want out your mouth, but that hair is just like all those dead flies that show up in the upstairs rooms every winter.  Get rid of one black corpse and several more commit suicide to take its place.

So, I stood there at the Pooch Parlor where my dog was enjoying pure Heaven, knowing that soon the my own Hellish misery would end.  I could remove my apron, dry my hands and rub the hair from my lips.

Never mind the strand that hid itself inside my mouth.  I finally located that one on the side of my tongue about halfway home and, after several attempts,  managed to remove it. 

Yup, in my experience errant hair and devilish hoses rank right up there as some of life's biggest nuisances. Throw in a twisted, uncooperative vacuum cleaner cord while we're at it.  

Can't tell you how many times this winter my Dyson cord has wiped out the entire row of boots and slippers on the platform around our wood stove.

The garden hoses have yet to test my patience for the year.  

That's always a summer project as they hook themselves to tree roots or knot themselves up like a pretzel while I'm on my morning watering rounds.

No, this time of year is the hair-hating season.

My own hair drives me nuts whenever I'm outside cuz we've had so much wind lately.  If I don't wear a hat or nail it down with 45 barettes, it's in my mouth or attacking my eyes.

The hair that really gets to me (literally), though, is shedding horse hair.

Yesterday's lovely sunny weather brought out the first round of springtime shedding for Lily and Lefty.  So, I grabbed the rubber curry comb and spent about half an hour apiece on each horse. 

Of course, the wind blew, and, of course, depending on which side of the horse I stood, the hair blew with it, many times landing on my face and all over my clothes with all-out vengeance.

There was a lot of spitting going on in the barnyard and the round pen yesterday.

And, along with that, there was a lot of brushing going on----not just on horses.

This is the time of year when every grooming session for a horse is followed up with another grooming session for the human cuz all that hair has to go somewhere. Why not on Marianne?

Devious hair strands don't get much satisfaction from simply wafting through the air and floating off to the neighbor's place. 

It's so much more fun dive-bombing into Marianne's mouth and watching her try to spit you out cuz her gloves are so covered with your buddies there's no way she's gonna pick you out.

And, so it goes.  

Hair season is upon us, but so is the rain.  

Weatherman Tom Sherry promised us SEVEN days of wet, wet, wet this time.

The only consolation is that I'll have to find something other irritant to drive me nuts, and I know that twisted up vacuum cleaner cord is downstairs, just sittin', waitin' and grinnin'.