Mullet Repeat Finito

Saturday I had a "Dress Rehearsal" for Sunday's concert. Now, I have a theatre background (you can tell because I spell it 'theatre', not 'theater'), and so I assume "Dress Rehearsal" means you dress as you will for the performance. I asked a cellist what the dress was. I was told, "whatever you want on Saturday, Sunday is all black." Glad I asked. After the dress rehearsal, we were given a run down on what was and was not acceptable in the way of black clothing. Since short skirts and cleavage was out of the question, I had to go shopping. Brevard is not a mecca of plus sized clothing, but I didn't really have time to go much farther, so I parked in the Walmart parking lot, tried hard to avoid Walmart and went into a store called "CATO jr/misses/plus". Sounds like my store.

The /plus section was very small considering the size of women they are catering too. There was very little in the way of black clothing, which, also considering the market, was surprising. I thought all fat women wear black to disguise their girth when standing in front of a black wall. Now that I think about it, I've heard recently that camouflage is the new black. Do you think I could get away with camouflage for the concert?

I left a black wake in the dressing room, but had little success. I'm sure they thought I must be attending a funeral. I grit my teeth and headed for Walmart. I interrupted the fitting room lady and the stock girl's important discussion of some sort. The shirt was acceptable and, in perfect Walmart fashion, priced at $11. I decided to pop into Belk's next door just to see. In the year I've lived here, I had ventured into neither Cato nor Belk. I was feeling adventurous. I found another workable shirt on the 30% off rack. Unfortunately, it was still $35. I live at camp. I wear T-shirts, jeans and sweats almost exclusively. I feel that $35 for a shirt on sale is a bit much. I'm cheap. I admit it. I bought it. And a couple other things. So now I'm nearly $100 into my shopping foray. This is one of the reasons I dislike shopping so much. I always spend more than I intend to on things that aren't quite what I wanted in the first place.

I also needed a haircut. As my husband later asked, why exactly I had chosen to get my hair cut the day before a concert, I don't really know. Other than the rare fact that didn't have my kids and it was daytime. Did I mention I was feeling adventurous? Did I mention I'm cheap? So, conveniently sharing the strip mall with CATO jr/misses/plus was Smartcuts, home of the $8 haircut. Have I really sunk so low? My husband gets his hair cut here. Admittedly, I had my hair cut there the last time--and I liked it a lot more than the last place I'd gone and paid four times as much. So, in I went. $8 does not buy consistency. I asked for some long bangs, layers and a bit off the overall length. I got a femullet--the female mullet.

After she took the first hack at my bangs, I realized the term "long bangs" was meaningless. In an attempt to lessen the fierceness of the femullet, I asked her to take a bit more off the back. It does seem fitting that recently my parents, in honor of their 40th anniversary, sent out some then and now pics. One of the classic "thens" was a family picture with mine and my brother's dueling mullets. If I can get my dad to email me the pic, I'll post it.

I called Matt on the way home. "Just to warn you, I got a haircut, and I'm afraid I have a mullet." This was probably the first time in my life I actually considered desperately trying to find someone to fix my bad haircut. Instead, I finally laughed and talked myself into chalking it up to the usual "it'll grow out" mantra. Besides, I figured during the concert, no one would notice my hair. They'd all be checking out my short skirt and cleavage . . .

By the way, the concert came off fairly well. I faked the parts I couldn't quite play. I had some nice friends from camp come and cheer me on. I didn't embarrass myself too greatly and had a good time.

The lowlights: my hair (I managed to make it look decent--I almost like it in fact) and the fact that after my husband dropped me off at the concert hall, a nice elderly couple attending the concert politely backed their Kia into our minivan. That'll give me something to worry about for the next few weeks.