Prom

Sweetness is going to the junior prom with her boyfriend in a couple of weeks. I missed both of my proms for a variety of reasons: A) no one asked me; B) the popular music of the late 80's was not good - Paula Abdul, Mariah Carey, Whitney Houston and lots of miscellaneous crappy dance music - I was a purist and I could not subject my precious ears to that kind of filth; C) I was deeply submerged in teen angst and the prom just seemed like something a tragic figure such as myself should avoid; D) I was grunge before that word existed, and as a low maintenance kind of woman, the thought of prettying myself up for a prom was alien to me.

Sweetness is not at all angsty, she has no music standards*, she loves prettying herself up, and of course, she has a boyfriend who asked her to the prom. We've already taken care of the gown (Sweetness and one of her best friends made her dress), the shoes, and the jewelry (a gift from her boyfriend), and now I'm told we must make a hair, manicure and pedicure appointment, and we must make them 2 weeks ago, because there are no appointments available now.

Yes, that's right - I could not find a single hairdresser within the Greater Hartford region who has an opening. This leaves me with the terrifying option of doing it myself. I only recently learned how to make a braid. When Monkey requests pigtails, it usually looks like they were made by an intoxicated person who is missing some fingers. I have one good hair trick, and that is a bun held in place with 2 pencils. I don't think Sweetness will want that for the prom. Still, I'm a firm believer that I can learn how to do anything, so I started practicing last night. I told Sweetness her head is mine for the next two weeks, and I'm going to practice making her hair beautiful every night until the prom.

*I shouldn't say *no* standards, but she is blissfully unaware of any music that exists outside the realm of original cast recordings of various musicals, themes from her favorite movies, oldies, and classical recordings, particularly anything played by Yo-Yo Ma (Sweetness is a cellist). And she doesn't care passionately about the music she does like. She gets this from Loki, who is a recovering Styx {shudder} fan.