I’m going through a permanent bad hair day.  I went to my haircutter in the period when we thought Covid was gone and we were fully vaccinated.  But the chairs were close together, they weren’t asking people to wear masks and they weren’t asking vaccination status.  I was uncomfortable and I’m not willing to go back until Covid is actually gone, if it ever is. 

I have been trimming the front of my hair but had no way to even the back.  It had become very straggly.  A friend was over when I happened to mention that. She said she could cut my hair.  I was happy to have her do so. I thought she would just trim the straggly hairs in back.  But she herself has very short hair and obviously likes that.  She kept cutting and cutting.  Now my hair is driving me crazy.  It was very kind of  her to offer, but it was my fault for accepting.  Now my hair is so short it’s driving me crazy.  I can’t braid it as I do at night to protect it while I sleep.  I can’t pin up to keep it out of the bathwater.  I can’t pin it up to keep bugs out while I work in the garden.  It will be way too short for a year and every day, I don’t know what to do with it except hate my hair. All my life I’ve liked having long or longish black hair

I’m reading Natalie Haynes and enjoying it very much.  One of the tasks in my adult life has been taking stories, history, myths, whatever and finding the women in it who have been overlooked, ignored, pilloried.  So this is perfect for me. 

We haven’t had such a great harvest of pumpkins   and winter squash in perhaps ten years.  We didn’t get many butternuts, which is disappointing, but we have plenty of NE pie pumpkins and blue prince pumpkins.  I them out for the first time this year and found them superior in resistance to bugs and disease, tasty and very pretty.  We’ve gotten many sunshines and kabochka squashes and I’ve already made squash twice and plan to cook another tonight. 

The gods of tech are punishing us for some tech crime.  First we could not get cable.  I spent two days trying to get through to a human being and finally a Comcast agent in the Philippines got me an appointment with a guy who fixed it.  Then our roku died.  We weren’t able to revive it. We were still trying when I was watching Jeopardy Tuesday evening when I heard a loud CRACK and the TV died.  We went to Best Buy, picked out a set Wednesday, but it turns out they have to get it and then it will be two and a half weeks – into November if it really happens then – to actually get the set here and have it set up.  Supply chain woes are getting very real.  Jockey was out of boxer shorts.  Amazon can’t get Arnica bath salts.  The supermarketsn are out of stacks of graham crackers. etc etc.  We can’t find a reasonably sized turkey for 7 or 8 people.

I am a bit worried about my oldest cat Mingus.  Very suddenly he is beginning to show his age.  He has eye trouble but has always been almost hyperactive. Now, he is sleeping much more.   Last night, however, he and Willow wrestled for at least 20 minues, all over my bed. . Willow has been getting bolder all the time, with occasional setbacks.  One of the spoken phrases she has learned is “that’s it,” something I say when I’ve given enough treats or need to stop petting her.

I am beginning to pot the herbs I’ll try to bring through winter inside – rosemary, chives, bay tree  for instance and also select tender ornamentals like a gorgeous fuchsia that has bloomed all summer into fall.  Sometimes in spite of my best potting efforts, the plants simply don’t want to be uprooted and put in a container.

But I’m very hopeful and besides, they’d die outside in the first frost.