Peeking Through To The Other Side

I'm starting to think about a post-vaccine reemergence.  It's terrifying and exhilarating and aggravating.  I'm not big on change.  I got used to doing nothing, seeing no one, going nowhere.  I was firmly ensconced in the go-nowhere-world, which had ceased to feel limiting and had become a comfortable norm.

Sleep in?  Why not?  Stay in pajamas all day?  Why make more laundry by changing?  

Now, though, I am on the way to being medically cleared to reenter the world.  Masked and distanced but out there, doing the things that need to be done, starting with check ups deferred.

My eye doctor has retired.  She's a youngster and she's gone.  She left last April, with no forwarding address.  I can't even say goodbye, and after 15 years of seeing her, hearing about her son, sharing the Cuters and grandkids, she has vanished.  The store has no way to reach her - I tried her cell phone and it was disconnected said the kind clerk who directed me to her successor.

He swears the new lady doctor is nicer, kinder, and smarter than the one I loved.  She's also had both doses of the vaccine. I made an appointment for April 1st.  We shall see.  

The Audiology Clinic is closed until noon today.  My Audiologist is still listed on the website, so I am hanging onto hope that she will be there to greet me and test me and make it so my hearing aids pick up the frequencies I'm missing.  Big Cuter was insistent that my hearing was less acute this winter than it had been over the summer.  TBG and I apparently haven't noticed.  Maybe because we already know what I'm going to say?

I'm vacillating about a haircut.  It's been 14 months.  My locks brush past my shoulders and, in the back, make a serious dent in my spine, tickling my scapula when I shower and requiring a towel of their own when I dry off.  No longer am I five minutes in and out.  Bad hair days are a thing of the past; my many scrunchies and clips and grabbers coil all the offending strands into one neat and lovely pony tail. As SIR told Little Cuter, that scrunchie adds something to your face.

Still, the ends need trimming and I miss my hairdresser and the tales she tells of her daughters and her husband and their brewery.  I miss sitting in her chair as she chats and snips.  She understands my hair - every woman reading this understands what I mean, don't you?  She's a gem, as a person and as a stylist.  Her studio has moved to a less convenient location, but I'll travel for good service.  The question is - how long can I let it grow?

Regular haircuts, like eye doctor appointments and hearing check ups, marked the passage of time in Pre-Pandemica.  There have been no such markers for the last 13 months.  Is it summer or is it spring?  Only the thermometer knows for sure.  The rest of us, humans depending on events to remind us of where were are and what we are supposed to be doing, have been left in a soup of endless Thursdays, months with 70 days, alarms alerting us to the sun coming up but not much else.

This is going to take some introspection.  How much do I want to add back?  How soon?  Why?