she bang

I love Kansas to death. You know I do. I have literally celebrated the state's birthday by dancing on bars to 'Carry on, My Wayward Son.' While on an entirely different continent. [Kansas Day was Sunday, IN CASE anyone was wondering. Which you all should have been.] For me, there is simply no place in the world more beautiful or pure.

But I'd be lying to you if I said I wasn't just a little bit bored here. I'm taking as many shifts as I can at work, telling myself that every dollar I make is another dollar towards my next transatlantic flight. [Although, in all honesty, about half of that is going towards the epic summer wardrobe I'm working on. Pics to come on my tumblr.]

On Friday, I finally saw 500 Days of Summer. I didn't think it was that great, but something about the movie did nag at me. It was Zooey Deschanel. I'm not even sure how to explain this, and I know some of you are probably way ahead of me already so I'm just going to say it: I needed Zooey Deschanel fringe. I don't even like Zooey Deschanel.

I've done things like this before. In fact, since I studied abroad in Spain and met my hair genius friend JaNae, I have been the only person permitted to trim my bangs. I found my limit though, when I tried to trim the rest of my hair, with disastrous results. The question was, were bold, heavy bangs beyond my expertise?

My friend Girl Kyle successfully talked me out of it for a couple of nights. "You want something low-maintenance," she told me over skype. "They'll stick to your forehead all summer in Italy."

"Now's the time to be bold!" I countered. "They'll grow out by June!"

By two a.m. last night, I could resist no longer. I loaded a picture of my ideal fringe on my laptop, dampened my hair, and started hacking away with a pair of dull nail scissors. The sight of my long, black hair in the sink was more than a little nauseating, so I ignored it and kept snipping away.

When the dust cleared, the full realization of what I'd just done bitch-slapped me across my newly framed cheekbones. I was hyperventilating juuuuuuust a little bit when I took the picture to the left.

Too anxious to clean the hair out of the sink, I gave up and went to bed.

Have you ever seen Arrested Development? One of the episodes where Michael says, "I've made a huge mistake?" I'm absolutely serious when I tell you that phrase was the first thought in my head when I opened my eyes the next morning. My stomach tied itself into a neat little knot. Of course, when I finally bit the bullet and looked in the mirror, there were some bumpy bits and some sticky-out bits from where I'd slept on it. This was going to be harder than I thought.

But you know what? I spent some quality time with the curling iron, went crazy with the makeup, and threw on a couple of the pieces from the aforementioned summer wardrobe. It was 65 degrees outside and I had a screen deck to myself. And I decided that I love this hair.

I swear I'm not an Oompa Loompa.