My mother has a love-hate relationship with her hairdressers. She loves
to get her hair done, but sooner or later – usually within 2 years – she
is unhappy with the work they do and then she is off to find another salon and
another hairstylist.
It’s not like she looks through the phonebook and goes through the list
of salons in her area. She gets recommendations from everywhere she goes. While
at church this past summer she saw someone in the congregation whose haircut
she liked. So, she actually went up to the woman to ask her the name of the
salon and hairstylist she went to.
I started going to my hairstylist, Lori at Salon Cusato in
Hamilton, in 1990. I was married then, she was fresh out of cosmetology school,
and we just really hit it off. I have followed her to four different
salons since she started her career, and we sure have been through a lot
together!
We have shared perms (which she told me not to do, but I insisted),
long hair, short hair, my divorce, the loss of her Dad, her marriage, and birth
of her son. You can see a few of my hair styles over the years in my “Celebrating
My Anniversary” post from back in September. Lori is certainly someone I can
rely on and has come to be a part of my rituals.
Rituals. That’s a funny term isn't it? A ritual is defined by Merriam Webster
as “always done in a particular situation and in the same way each time.”
When I think about going to the same hairdresser for 25 years as a
ritual, I wonder if I am so OCD that I have the same rituals for other things
and can’t break out of them.
None of my friends would ever
call me spontaneous – I definitely am a planner and like routine. When I was
married to a police officer it used to make him crazy that I would do the same
things each and every day at the same time. For example, during the week I
would run the same route every morning. I think he thought it was boring.
Similarly, I go to the gym at the same time every day, use the same dry
cleaner, I visit Bennie the shoe guy almost weekly, I bring in bagels for our
Senior Leadership meeting every Wednesday from the same bagel shop, and my
parents and I sit in the same seats every week at the same church service we
have been attending for over 45 years.
There is so much of my work day and life in general that I have no control
over. These routines that I have help me keep structure, and my sanity, in my
busy world. They are the few things that I can actually control.
Do you have a routine that you
follow consistently? Or do you like to experiment and try spice it up? I’d love
to hear your thoughts in the comments below!
