Pandemic haircuts

Cutting hair when you can’t get a haircut.

“I need a haircut,” he says. “Dad, can you cut my hair?”

COVID-19 closed all the hair places down. I was assigned hair cutting duties since I am a cutter, of sorts, but not of the hair cutting kind. If you need a tree cut, I’m your man. Hair though? That’s hard with a chainsaw.

Ever since the pandemic started we’ve all had to do things differently. I hate it when my hair gets in my eyes, and I use that basic measure to determine when to get a cut. My wife and I have three sons, 4, 6 and 8 years old, and our 6-year-old has decided that what works for Dad is good enough to work for him.

“Look, it’s in my eyes Dad,” he pulls his hair down in front of his eyes.

“Oh man,” I say, “how do you see with that mop on your head?”

“Ya, I know. Can you cut it?” he says, dropping the mop and giving me a look.

“Ok, sure,” I say. My personal philosophy toward the hacking of hair is: if I mess it up bad enough, we can just shave it off. And after you shave it off it’s gonna grow back. Why not give it a go?

“Dad. Hair.” he says again.

“Right, let’s go upstairs then and see what we can do,” I reply.

Here’s what we need to cut hair: an electric razor, 13 weird-looking clippy-type guards, a second razor with 5 different cutting attachments, 5 additional weird-looking clippy-type guards, a comb, 3 pairs of scissors, and an extension cord to reach the tub.

“Ok, get in the tub,” I point to the tub. He jumps in.

What happens next is my best attempt at copying what I’ve seen done about 137 times at various hair places. We agree on one of the electric razors and a clippy-type guard. I start at the bottom and run the thing up along the side of the head, pulling up right where the skull starts to curve to flat. I won’t go past the curvy point unless I’m doing a shave job and Mom has made it very clear that a shave job is only to be done as a last resort, so I’m being careful. I go around all the sides and stop at his face.

“How’s it feeling?” I ask. Always make sure the customer is comfortable.

“Good,” he says. “But I’m a bit itchy.”

Ah. I had him strip to his underwear to save getting hair on his clothes so now there’s hair all over his shoulders and down his back. “Hold on,” I say.

I grab the small hand broom thing from one of the razor kits and start brushing away the hair on his shoulders.

“Ouch,” he says.

“That hurts?” I ask.

“Ya,” he replies as I’m jamming the thing into my arm to test it out. Ouch. That hurts.

“Ok, I’ll be more careful,” I say.

The next step is to get the hair wet. I’m not 100% sure why but the hair place does it, so we do it, too. “Time to get your hair a bit wet,” I say and grab a handful of water from the sink on the other side of the room. I kind of slap it down on his head and pet him like a dog to spread the water out. He picks up what I’m trying to do and starts running one hand through his hair, back and forth and back and forth, to help soak his mop.

“Looks good,” I say, “now I’m going to take some off the top with the scissors.”

“Ok,” he says. I’ve gotta give him credit, he’s brave.

The top proves harder to manage than I expect. I’m trying to grab bunches of wet hair with the fingers of my left hand and cut with the scissors in my right. The problem is that the wet hair is sticking to his head. Then I remember that the hair people usually have a comb, too.

“I need a comb,” I wipe my forehead and start looking through a colorful basket on the back of the toilet with a hairbrush and about 45 moisturizing-type spritzing things in it.

“Dad, there’s a comb in the razor bag,” he says.

“Razor bag?” I raise my right eyebrow. “Where…?”

“The black thing,” he points somewhere.

“This thing?” I grab a plastic case with 12 weird-looking clippy-type guards in it.

“Ya,” he says.

The case is open, so I rummage around in it and see a thick black comb. “Here,” I lift the comb up to the light to make sure it is what it is.

“How did you know there was a comb in there?” I ask.

“I saw it,” he says.

“Smart boy,” I say, moving back to the tub to get back to it.

The comb seems to help. I’ve got the scissors on my right hand, hooked to my pointer finger and thumb; these fingers are also holding the comb. I find the comb works well to scoop up the wet hair up to my left hand which can then pinch the clump kind of like I’m holding a hard shell taco. I pull up a bit with the left to keep the hair off the skull and do a juggling-type move with my right hand, rolling the comb into my palm with my pinky and ring fingers and cutting the hair with the scissors on my pointer finger and thumb. Snip.

I work my way around his scalp, trying to cut the hair the height of the pinky finger, the ring finger and the middle finger on my left hand all stacked up. Keeping the scissors from cutting my own fingers or his head takes up all my focus. Soon, I decide to ditch the “three finger measure” method for the “ballpark measure” method.

We’re about an hour in at this point and there’s no going back. The hair is drying out and I find that the dry hair is easier to work with. I’m not sure why the hair people get your hair wet before cutting it, maybe they like a challenge.

I go over the whole head with my left hand ballparking everything to make sure it’s the same length. Small snips here, small nips there.

“We’re looking good,” I say. No obvious chunks are missing and there’s no blood or tears which means we’re winning.

Time to move onto the bangs. These are super easy.

“Ok, close your eyes, I’m going to do the front,” I say.

“Ok, Dad,” he replies.

I take the hair over his forehead with my left hand. Put the comb down with my right and make sure I’ve got the scissors on tight. This close to eyes you’ve really gotta watch out. Holding the scissors vertically I make little stabbing-type cuts, back and forth and back and forth, all the way across his forehead, grabbing new clumps of hair with my left hand as I go. The little stabs back and forth give the finished hair an uneven, messy kind of appearance. I think of this as the “trendy look.”

Another way of cutting bangs is to cut them in a straight line right across the forehead. I think of this as the “robot look” which is pretty healthy but not what we go with today.

“Right, looking good, eh?” I ask.

“Ya, Dad, but I’m itchy,” he swipes a gob of hair off his shoulder. “Can you do that blower thing?” he asks.

“Blower thing?” I reply. “What blower thing?”

“You know, the one Mom has,” he says.

“A hair dryer?” I ask.

“Ya…” he answers.

I stand up, wipe the obvious hair off my legs and open the bathroom door. There’s a blow dryer on the bed so I grab it and bring it back into the bathroom.

“This?” I ask.

“Ya,” he says.

“Good idea,” I plug in the blower thing, point, and shoot blasting all the hair right off of him.

“Ok, almost done. Hold on tight and don’t move,” I say.

We’re nearly home free now, just gotta clean up the edges. I trade the first electric razor for the second electric razor and switch the cutting attachment over to the one that looks like a little mini razor head. I triple check the instructions to make sure this is the one that doesn’t cut skin when you touch it. I found out the difference in cutting heads the hard way, one time I got a bit too close with the wrong one. Don’t want to make that mistake again.

The key to cleaning the edges out is to keep part of your hand anchored to the head. You can slowly and carefully trace the outside edge of the hair to give it a clean look. Hair over the ears is my second big indicator of needing a haircut, so I make sure to carve those ears out real well. You’ve gotta be careful going up over the ear though, it’s really easy to get carried away, cut in too high too deep and then end up needing to throw away all your hard work by salvaging with a shave job.

I restrain myself and the back of his head cleans up pretty nicely.

“Well, what do you think?” I ask.

“It looks good,” he replies.

“Now,” I say, “you want to cut mine?”

“Ok,” he says.

We agree on one of the electric razors and a weird-looking clippy-type guard. I strip to my underwear to save getting hair on my clothes and get in the tub beside him and kind of hunker down a bit.

“Here’s how you turn it on,” I say, pointing to the sliding black switch on the side. “Make sure you don’t push really hard because you could pop the guard off and cut me. Look, try popping this thing off,” I say, pointing to the black guard.

He tries to pull the guard off and can’t. I find that a bit comforting and hope it means he’s less likely to snap the guard off and dig the razor directly into my head.

He turns the razor on BZZZZZZZZ and starts making little baby bird pecks with it.

“No, not like that. Like this,” I say, making a longer smoother motion with my hand.

“Ok,” he says.

I try to keep as low as I can sitting in the bathtub so he can cut wherever he wants. It doesn’t really matter what he does, since he’s giving me a shave job. He might as well have some fun with it, you know?

BZZZZZZZZ, the razor echoes off the bathroom walls, surrounding us.

Hair falls like snow all around me. I’m looking at the bottom of the tub, hunkered down. All I can see are his tiny, little feet shuffling back and forth and back and forth, working to get the best angle. The hair is sticking all over his feet which makes them look like a hairy man’s feet but shrunk down to 6-year-old size. These are the feet he’s going to have when he’s grown, when he’s a man.

I’m warm and cold. We’re slow dancing in a bathtub during a pandemic that shut the whole world down. Me with my boy and his hairy little man feet. Maybe he’ll have kids, when he fills his feet. I wonder what he’ll be like. How often will I see him? These feet, they’ll change the world. Hairy little man feet that could be anything, that could do anything. He keeps shuffling, back and forth and back and forth. I think he’s humming.

BZZZZZZZZ, the vibrations are like music, filling us.

I don’t know what the future will bring. It’s big and it’s scary. I know there will be love and laughter, pain and tears. For some reason, a chill creeps over me. My stomach pushes itself up it into my throat. Lots of people are dying right now. What if he doesn’t make it? What if I’m not there?

Not now. I’m losing myself. People are always dying. People are always living, too. These things are life. I can decide which road to take, so I choose the path that brings me back to slow dance with my son.

Presents. The razor. The bathtub. My son. My self. The dance. The pandemic. Time.

Here, together. Both of us in the bathtub, both of us in our underwear. The razor singing. His hairy little feet dancing. And I am remembering to never forget our pandemic haircuts. This might be the closest we ever get in our whole entire lives.

Carrot juice

I changed today

but nobody saw it.

One of those “AH-HA” type moments

vibrating along the wires.

You might have kids, but you’re not a father.

You might have a wife, but you’re not a husband.

Not until you act like one.

So, how do you act?

Do you stay at work, consumed with opportunity?

Do you get angry and yell, or give time and teach?

These things, these things that you do, you do it to yourself

you do.

Don’t you?

A teammate quits.

Can you blame him?

No.

It’s your own damn fault. Too busy measuring, planning, scheming.

You think it’s all fine, as long as the bus is travelling down the road

Forget the fact that the wheels came off awhile ago

and you can’t stop

and there are babies in the road ahead.

“WHO LEAVES THEIR BABIES IN THE ROAD?” you scream.

You did.

Too focused on that carrot

you chase

every day.

You’re going to run the babies over. And lose them all.

Don’t change for the better.

Change for the present.

Hurt or injured

There’s a question I ask

when I see him fall

Something that separates

me from them all.

“Is he hurt or injured?”

I ask myself

and the answer I give

is a guide to my help.

 

If he’s hurt, he’s ok, though a little bruised up

Some tears and a Band-Aid

And he cheers right up

So I won’t jump in

and make a show of it all

I hang right back

and let him make the call.

His life’s not in danger,

so some space he will get

To think his things over

and choose his upset.

 

If he’s injured, he’s down and out for the count

And I’ll come a running, and probably shout,

“HOLY SHIT, WHAT DID YOU DO THAT FOR?”

Then roar to the truck and throw open the door.

The hospital knows when they see us there,

to jump us to the front of line up in chairs.

And call for a doctor and at least one nurse

And to start making arrangements for some kind of hearse.

 

Life is tough and you’re going to lose

if you get hurt and need to stop for a bruise.

And you’ll also lose out on life if you wait

when you’re injured and pounding on Heaven’s gate.

 

 

Could be

I chased it around town

And, to my surprise

Caught it quite easily

They tell you it’s supposed to be hard

That you have to bleed and sacfrice and hurt

And chase, and chase, and chase and chase

So I did

And got tired and sick and lonely

So I quit

I threw it all away

And went for a walk

And found it

It was quite sunny, unusually warm for the morning

I picked up a coffee

I walked

Not fast

Not slow

Just walked

And there it was, at the end of a beautiful morning

Sitting on a bench beside the water

So I sat beside it

Here’s what I found

 

Could be

You could be one on someone’s wall

A pinnacle of yourself

Adored

You could be the one they call on and ask

Esteemed

You could be a friend

Trusted, loved

You could be beautiful

A pinnacle of yourself

Your unique you

You could smile

And share your beauty with people who aren’t your friends yet

Could be

Growing, asking, questioning, learning

Or

You could keep it all inside

You could miss it all

And die alone and bitter and sad

You could

Could be happy

 

Are you?

 

For Sale: Open top child cage (crib) and mattress

I apologize for the blurry first photo, one of them got out and bit my leg when I was shooting. It hurt, I screamed, the photo blurred. There was no time to try again.

For sale is one open top child cage, known to new parents as a “crib.” Survivors, aka “experienced parents,” know the term “crib” to be inaccurate. This open top cage helps to restrict their movements for periods of time. This is extremely valuable at bedtime, preventing them from clawing, scratching, biting you while you try to sleep. You won’t sleep, of course, because of the noise, but you can use this to help get a minimal amount of rest.

The separation afforded by this unit comes in handy for discipline, the thing you pretend/hope will eventually teach them how to behave. It won’t work, of course, but we all have to pretend.

Our cage is in good condition. There are some bite marks which is to be expected. The stickers have been clawed off, for the most part. It’s made of sturdy wood and has the strength necessary to hold when they slam their bodies against it with brutal, savage force.

The cage comes with a mattress. With the mattress, you can feel comfortable knowing when they fall asleep they should be comfortable enough to stay asleep for at least an hour at a time. That’s the best you can hope for, just get used to it. I recommend training yourself to take microsleeps when you’re on the toilet. It’s the only place you’ll be able to get away. You’ll probably find yourself in the bathroom with no recollection of how you got there, not even having to actually poo. If this happens, make sure you flush your fake poo and turn the tap on to simulate hand washing. 7 minutes is all you get. Then take a deep breath and head back out.

We are selling because our youngest can now escape at will. We investigated closed top cage models but there concerns over the legality of these designs. The price is firm at $93 as this is the price of the first hour we were quoted by the therapist, to teach us how to deal with our child’s increased – and our decreased – freedom. Let’s be honest, my wife and I won’t make it in to see the therapist. We will probably fall asleep holding hands and crying in the waiting room with other survivors and miss our names getting are called.

If you are having a baby, prepare yourself. If you know someone who is pregnant, help them by sharing this with them. Actually, don’t share this with them. Buy this for them. They will need a cage. Trust me.

God help us all.

Forking around

30 ideas on how to improve a table fork

  1. Elongate the fork handle and add a spoon to the opposite end.
  2. Narrow the outer edge of each of the outside fork tines to make cutting your food easier.
  3. Add a carabiner to the end of the fork to clip it to things (like your work bag) so it doesn’t get lost/left behind for lunches.
  4. Make the head of the fork detachable and create an assortment of compatible utensil ends for the handle, ie. knife attachment, razor attachment, whisk attachment, shoe horn attachment, pencil attachment, screwdriver attachments.
  5. Make the end of the fork handle a flat screwdriver to pry and open stuff.
  6. Forkbells. Make forks with weight added to them so you can work out while eating.
  7. Create a set of forks that can combine into a wicked robot-like transformer.
  8. Make the fork handle a ruler/straight edge.
  9. Instead of making the fork tines all the same length, make the one on the right the longest and shorten each one until you get the shortest one on the left. This would give you more tine to plate contact for better raking/collecting of food. “Eat with less effort.”
  10. Make a fork out of material that smells funny to help prevent overeating.
  11. Make a fork an unappetizing color to help prevent overeating.
  12. Add a really thick handle a to fork for use with winter gloves.
  13. Forklight.
  14. Make the handle end a cuttable key and have your forks cut to match the locks of your house, car and any other key you tend to lose or misplace.
  15. Heated forks to add to your culinary experience.
  16. Forks signed by popular chefs.
  17. Designer forks. The fork is the new watch. Diamonds, gold, jewels. Refuse to eat with “common” cutlery found in restaurants or neighbor’s houses.
  18. Smart Cutlery. Connected to the Internet. Measure the calories in each mouthful as you go. Set warnings for calorie, fat, carb, etc intake. Weighs and records each mouthful. Connects to Smart Fork app to measure and track eating habits, diets, etc. Tracks all online. Relays data to smartphone/watch.
  19. The fork handle is an Apple TV remote. When your kids lose the damn Apple TV remote again you have a spare.
  20. Enlarge the fork tines and handle and use materials for the fork that allow it to be strummed and played as an instrument.
  21. Wearable cutlery. Fork fashion.
  22. Forkhammer.
  23. A fork that randomly emits a farting noise at some point during the meal.
  24. Forkcorder. A fork that records meal conversations and allows for playbacks to determine who said what.
  25. A fork that tastes like salt but isn’t actually salt so you don’t have to add salt to your meals. “The healthier way to eat.”
  26. Forks with a temperature gauge in them. Never burn your mouth again.
  27. A fork with a small parachute in the handle that is triggered when the fork reaches a certain speed. Prevent your 3-year-old from beaning you/your dog/the wall/your four-year-old when he or she throws their fork during the nightly dinner tantrum.
  28. Edible forks instead of disposable forks to reduce waste when camping.
  29. Black forks.
  30. Forktober. The 13th month.

Screened

I can still trade it back

I can’t see my dreams past all these screens

The bright shiny things catch my eye

And I follow them up to the sky

While my time drips down through the cracks

Bits of life I can’t get back

 

Where did I go?

 

The waste piles up as I chase more

Another gadget another chore

My land is full of this waste

Yet I spin on with breakneck haste

To a future that’s never there

Full of broken promises and lost prayers

 

What doesn’t matter anymore?

 

I stop the urgent pressing need

And look around at what I see

I focus hard on what is there

Pulling back to see the bare

Plastic bits and glass and rubber

Have replaced our love for one another

 

I realize

That as long as I’m still breathing

I can change

And trade plasticglassrubbergadgetchores

and screens

Back

for all my dreams

I held love

I don’t have to be that Dad

your tiny fingers danced in the dark
I held your foot in the palm of my hand
body curled up in mine
I stayed still
I held my breath
and listened

I look back now
and see Us there
warm bottle
rocking chair
slowly swaying into sleep

I think of the all times we fought
the things we said
the Beings we’re not
biting, scratching, clawing mad
I don’t have to be that Dad
the future not yet set in stone
a lesson learned before we’ve grown

your tiny fingers dancing in the dark
I hold your foot in the palm of my hand
body curled up in mine
I stay still
I hold my breath
and I promise not to forget
to bite my breath
and listen

Heart 1

 

Originally posted here.

Old Man Strength

Don’t take shortcuts.

I like lifting heavy things.

The gym, you can find me there.

Lots of weight.

Every day.

Warm up. Push weight. Cool down.

Eat. Consume.

Warm up. Push weight. Cool down.

The rhythm builds strength.

 

Old man strength. That’s what I call it. That’s what I want. The fathers, they have this ridiculous strength. They can lift more weight. They can outwrestle. Outlast. I work hard and hope

Warm up. Push weight. Cool down.

I’ll get it.

Warm up. Push weight. Cool down.

Eat. Consume.

Warm up. Push weight. Cool down.

 

Don’t take shortcuts.

 

I like lifting heavy things.

The home, you can find me there.

Lots of weight.

Every day.

Dirty diapers. Do dishes. Bedtime.

Feed. Give.

Dirty diapers. Do dishes. Bedtime.

The rhythm builds strength.

 

Fatherhood, that’s what I call it. I do the things that need to be done. I don’t like doing all of them, necessarily. But my disliking is subordinate to the strength of my purpose.

 

I must lift more weight. Survive. Work hard and hope

Dirty diapers. Do dishes. Bedtime.

I’ll make it.

Dirty diapers. Do dishes. Bedtime.

Feed. Give.

Dirty diapers. Do dishes. Bedtime.

 

There are no shortcuts.

Warm up. Push weight. Cool down.

Lots of weight.

Dirty diapers. Do dishes. Bedtime.

Every day.

Giving yields the greatest gains.

I am the strength of my purpose.