Lately I’ve been feeling like I have a major case of The Frumpiness. I’m not sure why, I’ve just been feeling sort of… blah. Very boring suburban mom-ish. Which, well, I AM a suburban mom, so I don’t know why it bothers me, but it does. Maybe it’s because I spend almost every day in a hoodie and jeans. I sort of miss having an office job (or fancy events) to dress up for.

Also, when Cate and I fly to Mississippi next week, we’re going to be meeting up with a few girls from high school, who I’ve reconnected with via the Miracle That Is Facebook. It’s not a bad thing, I’m actually kind of excited about it. But I feel like I need to look cute and make a good impression since I haven’t seen any of them in about fifteen years or so. Maybe it’s because in high school, I was sort of a non-entity; I only had a couple of friends, I didn’t date at all, I wasn’t involved in any extracurricular activities. Basically, because I was fat, I tried to be as invisible as possible. So I’d like to show that I’m cute and sassy and fun and all that good stuff.

Really, I’m sure that our get-together will be fine. After all, we’ve all grown up since high school. One girl who used to be head cheerleader is now a lawyer working for the state attorney general’s office. I’d say it’s a safe bet that she isn’t the same person she was 15 years ago either, right? And we all have little girls around the same age, so it should be a lot of fun. I’m just being unnecessarily neurotic.

But anyway, back to the issue of The Frump: I recently found out that one of my neighbors is a hairdresser. I wouldn’t have booked an appointment with her, because what if she sucked, and then trying to explain why I never went back to her would be super-awkward. But she did my next-door neighbor’s hair, and she looked fantastic, so I thought what the heck, and I asked for her card.

Today I went to her salon and got a haircut and an eyebrow wax. It’s kind of amazing how something so simple can make me feel so much better about myself. Seriously, I feel about a hundred times less frumpy now than I did this morning.

You can’t really tell in that picture since Cate is obscuring half of my head, but I think my haircut is basically “The Rachel,” just a little bit longer. I like it a lot so far, although the real test will be to see how it looks when I have to style it myself later.

So, yay! I have groomed eyebrows and a new haircut, which cost less than half what it cost me to get the exact same thing done in Washington, and I’m feeling pretty cute for the first time in a long time.

Cate says, “Just don’t go thinking you’re the cutest one in the house, lady, cuz you ain’t.”