The DU Lounge

…you loved so much. I felt that way about my pediatric nurse practitioner career for most of the 45 years I did it. The introduction of electronic medical records ruined everything - more time taking care of the computer than of the patients and parents.

I have had the same hair stylist since 1994. We moved from the Maryland/Washington DC area to the far northwest suburbs of Chicago. At the time, I had the Dorothy Hamill wedge cut, which, as I’m sure you know, is not an easy style to create because of all the precision shaping in the back. I’d been thru 10 stylists in MD/DC before I found someone who could consistently do right. So, my main worry with moving was finding a good stylist. Luckily, I did, right away. I followed a woman into the produce section of a grocery store near our new house to ask who did her hair. The cut wasn’t a wedge, but I could tell it had been done with great precision. I’ve been going to her ever since, with 2 exceptions when she was out for surgeries. She uses 4 different tools, and then after my hair is dry, she goes back thru it looking for little strays.

That stylist opened her own salon a few years later. Like you, she books a year out and I tell people that I may not know what I’m having for dinner tonight, but I know when my hair appointments are for the next year.

She is one of the reasons my husband and I have separate checking accounts. He doesn’t need to know what I spend on my hair. I’d rather spend and be happy than go cheap and cringe every time I walk past a mirror.