My Shampoo Hurdle

I'm slowly coming clean.

I really, really struggle with hair products.
See, I have this really annoying straight, fine hair... but I have a lot of it!
So, when I use stuff meant for "thin" hair, my hair usually reacts by either turning too big or too dry.
Same goes for when I use products meant for "oily" hair (since, you know, my hair shows grease really easily).
So, I end up spending a lot of time on a hair see-saw... Hair looking too flat and greasy? Buy something to add volume!  Great, now my hair is Southern Beauty Pageant big...and still a bit greasy... Buy something to fight oil! ....Aaand now my hair is dry and flat and splitting.... BUY SOMETHING TO REPAIR IT! ...and now my hair is oily again.  Dammit.  Part of me is very, very thankful I usually wear a bandana to hold my hair back at work, so I don't have to worry about bad hair days... another part of me would desperately like to go back to when I sported a Rachel Maddow that simultaneously got me hit on by a lot more ladies and got me the occasional hate glare from blue haired biddies... Life was so much simpler then... if it was a little on the greasy side, nobody noticed... they just thought I got a little carried away with my pomade. (Joke's on them: I don't like adding extra products to the mix because... well... why complicate an already complicated matter?)  On the other hand, I decided when my dad died to grow out my hair before I get married... more as a sort of arbitrary way to make sure I wasn't just using a new domestic relationship as a cure for my grief than anything else...so for better or worse, I'm stuck with long tresses. (On the plus side, I did a little research, and if I can stand keeping my hair long as long as I'll need to in order to do so, I could sell it for several hundreds of dollars, although honey-brown hair isn't in as high demand as, say, dark black or blond hair)

So, as part of my adventure into saving money and trying to live a more sustainable life, I tried out making my own shampoo.  I hate the term "homemade" because in my mind, that implies "made from scratch," and let me tell you right now: I have no patience for soapmaking.  None whatsoever. Instead I rely, for all of my DIY cleaning and personal care products, on Dr. Bronner's liquid castille soap (I prefer the almond scented, since it lends itself to being used by itself or in combination with essential oils) as the base for just about everything... except my laundry/dish soap... then I use their bar soap.  Anyway, I found a recipe and tweaked it just a bit for my particular hair situation... Here's the base recipe:

1/4 cup distilled water
1/4 cup liquid castille soap
1/2 teaspoon jojoba oil
5 drops choice of essential oil

Mix thoroughly in bottle.  Shake again before using.  Use as any other shampoo.

For my own recipe, I substituted almond oil for jojoba oil, and used about 1 full tablespoon, because I've found castille soap to be excessively drying for my hair. My essential oil of choice was Geranium oil, partly because I just like the combination of Geranium and almond (I use a mix of almond oil, shea butter, and geranium oil as a body butter.  It's pretty divine.) and partly because I read various sources which suggest Geranium oil is good for fine hair and for promoting hair growth.  So, I set to my mixing, then, when I took my evening shower, took it for a test drive.
 The lather was promising, and the scent was, as expected, pretty divine. It rinsed out easily, leaving my wet hair feeling smooth, but disconcertingly "squeaky."  This normally doesn't bode well for my hair, as it usually results in dry, straw-like hair. However, once it air-dried, I found it to be soft, supple, shiny, and although not as full as I would prefer, not terribly flat.  I'm sure if I were to put it in curlers, it would come out looking quite beautiful.  My partner agreed with my quality assessment (I seem to be constantly using him for informal, single-blind trials) so, we'll see how this goes.  Maybe my days on the Hair See-Saw are over.

I'm not betting on it though.

Living on a Prayer

Today, I laid down and cried.
I'd just come home from a pretty stressful day at work... the type of shift when you know, from the moment you walk through the door, that it's just going to be one of those days.  We had a pretty busy lunch rush, and had some contractors come into the store, in the midst of the rush, to move the door chime in the kitchen.  Well, they were different guys than the ones who had been doing the tinkering, and so they needed their hands held by our general manager, so I was left in charge, with two spot-on workers (one of whom, however, was a delivery driver, so he couldn't stay in the store for the duration of the rush) and one slow and inexperienced worker in my charge.  We did the best we could, but I'm still new enough to management that I was definitely feeling the heat and praying our GM would come and relieve me of my post through the end of lunch.  We got through it, but by the end of the rush, we had cleaned out almost all of our prep and desperately needed to get it done so that we didn't start running out of product.  Plus, we still had a food order to put away, cleaning to do, stocking, and all the other minute details that customers never notice until they're not done.  So, I was a little stressed, to say the least. 
My allergies have been acting up for about a week now, so my throat has been getting dry much more easily and I can't project as well when I'm trying  to communicate on the line... plus, my nose has been alternating between being painfully dry and runny beyond control.  It's seasonal allergies, so I know I'm safe to work, but it's very hard to work with food and the public with a bum upper-respiratory system.  Work I must though, seeing as I took off Monday to regain my voice, which had been cracking and squeaking at work on Sunday, and I was scared to death I'd lose my voice if I pushed it much farther.  Monday wasn't a paid sick day.  Folks in restaurants don't get paid sick days.  Those are for people with salaries.  Nope, as hourly workers, a "sick day" translates directly to hours of work that must be made up later in the week, or else that's money lost.  After all the deductions in my paycheck for income tax witholding, Social Security (which I will probably never see), Medicare (ditto.), Payroll taxes, and so on, my real wage is a little under $7/hour.  That's actually an improvement.  I used to make $6.50 an hour in real wages.  (Bear in mind, I do get about half of the money held from each of my paychecks back as part of my tax refund, but that's little comfort on payday)  So, if I miss an 8 hour work day, that's about $50.  If I were sick enough to need to see a doctor, that's another $40 just to be seen.  Throw medication in there and you can see where the expenses add up fast.
I've been supporting both myself and my partner, who was let go from his job after his mother died at the end of last April.  He's had some work, but precious little.  The security company he's been working for has not been getting as many contracts as they used to, mostly due to poor management, and that means fewer chances for him to work.  He's been putting in all the applications he can, but he hasn't had a single interview.  He's a good worker, and takes direction well, but he doesn't have a lot of work experience because he's young and, like was my case, his parents didn't want him working while he was going to school, and he went to college because everybody told him that was the smartest, most reasonable thing he could do, even if it meant taking on a hundred thousand dollars in student loan debt.
Luckily, we don't have that much debt.  In fact, compared to the national average, our debts are fairly small.  Between the two of us, we have less than $50K in student loan debt, and less than $2,000 in credit card debt.  If we both were working full time at minimum wage, between the two of us, we could make $27K annually after taxes.  Based on our present living conditions and our fairly bare-bones budget ($1,200 per month), that would leave $12K annually we could allot to paying down our debts.  As it stands, come August, we're going to be moving into a new apartment and paying 40% less rent, and since it's a smaller apartment, the utilities should be lower as well.  The problem is getting to August.  Now, if we could find someone to sublease our current apartment, get some friends and boxes together to help us move, and so on, we could, conceivably, move earlier, but we live in a college town, and spring is the wrong damn time to be looking for someone to take on your apartment.  The point is, we're in a bad way financially, but not because we've been irresponsible.  We did everything we were told to do.  We went to college.  We got jobs.  We lived frugally.  We don't smoke.  We don't drink. I cut his hair myself, every month, in our laundry room.  I stopped getting mine cut after I got all of it cut to the same length.  The only frivolities we spend money on are condoms and the occasional trip to McDonalds.  We haven't been to the movies in over three months (and then, it was because we were both working full time and it had been six months since the last time we'd gone).  We keep our thermostat set low in the winter and don't even use the A/C in the summer.  If we buy anything new, it's usually from Goodwill.  If a new video game comes out that we would like to play, we trade in as many games as we can to get it (or at least bring the price down low enough that we can just skip some other luxury... like maybe cut the meat out of one of our meals), and I have an Etsy shop and a Fiverr page to try and nickel and dime a little extra cash here and there.  I've taken great care to plan our meals so that they're as filling an nutritious as possible for about $100 a month.  I started withdrawing funds from my Kiva account, which I started putting $20/month into my Freshman year. As loans in the third world get repaid, I get a little bit more to eek out a living.  We still live better than many people in many parts of the world, and for that I am very, very thankful.  We've been lucky that, in spite of my working with the public, I managed to dodge the flu this year.  I give credit for that to my making sure I get enough sleep and my very, very careful management of our diets. 
Nonetheless, I'm scared.  The grace period on both of my credit cards is over, and I have one (thankfully, small) private student loan for which payments are due beginning next month.  I'm still waiting to find out about my general student loan repayments, but in the meantime, forbearance is a blessing.  Has my own credit been destroyed?  Yeah, at least for a while. Everything is in my name, so my partner's record is clean. Like I said, once my partner can find work, even if it's minimum wage, we will be fine.  I don't want to get handouts.  I don't want food stamps or welfare.  We don't have kids.  We're young.  We have strong backs and sharp minds and if someone will set us to work for what the federal government deemed was a fair wage in the 1990s, we want to earn our keep... and we don't want that aid, not because we don't believe it should be there, but because we recognize that funds are limited, and we would rather the money be there for people who need it more than us... people who aren't physically or mentally capable of work... people who have kids... people who have elderly family they take care of.  We just have us.
If I'd never gone to a four year college, I wouldn't have this debt hanging over me.  If I'd started working in food service at the ground floor and ascended at the rate I have in the last three years, I'd probably be looking into higher levels of management by now... but I wouldn't have met the love of my life.  If  I hadn't been willing to cover both of us, I wouldn't have had him to come home to.  He may not be able to work much, but he's good to me.  He washes and massages my feet when I come home from work.  He started learning to cook so I wouldn't have to after having cooked all day for complete strangers.  He soothes me when I'm stressed and contentedly listens when I rant about things and people that frustrate me.  I would not be able to throw myself into my job like I do without his emotional support.
Today, I laid down and I cried.  I curled up on our bed and I wept.  My partner came in and asked me what was wrong, and I told him.  Like a deluge, all my fears and insecurities about our state of being leapt from my tongue.  I told him how I felt like a failure.  How I was so ashamed that I couldn't make payments.  How every little moment of luxury I'd allowed myself to enjoy-- the $20 meal at a Mexican restaurant a month earlier, the trip home to visit my mother, the $1 wine cooler I'd had.  My engagement ring, which we'd purchased when he and I were both working full time (A simple topaz and diamond ring that cost $100)-- every one weighed on my heart as a waste, even though they raised my spirits so much.  I told him I was so tired of my first thought in the morning and my last thought at night being about money... that I knew God would provide, but how I desperately hoped He would provide just a little more.  That part of me, a quiet, small part, couldn't bear the thought of the precipice upon which we stood and would rather die than endure potentially falling off that precipice. 
Then it came: his quiet, calm offer: to walk away.  By my own admission, he was the source of my present financial state.  If the only one I had to shelter, feed, clothe, and cure was myself, my wages could do that.  If, when our lease was up, he just moved in with his family and I lived by myself or with roommates, my wages would be more than enough for my existence to be maintained.
I almost couldn't believe my ears, and without a moment's hesitation, came my response:  No.  I need him.  The only effect would be moving the burden of providing for him to somebody else, which just is not an option in my mind... and anyway, I'd already committed to our spending our lives together, maybe not officially.  Maybe not legally or in the eyes of our families and community, but in my heart,  have already ceased to imagine a life without him.  Eventually, either by the sweat of my brow or by his, we will come out of this darkness.  When we do, when we will be stronger for the battles we've fought now. 
I don't think we'll ever be rich, and in my heart, I never want to be financially wealthy.  I don't want seven mansions and a yacht.  I don't want to have buildings named after me.  I don't want to be on the cover of magazines... not because I don't have ambition, but because those ambitions are not what would bring my heart joy.  I want enough money that I can live without fear of losing the roof over my head.  I want enough money that I can support a family.  I don't want excess.  I just want enough.  Anything beyond that is frivolity.  Anything beyond that is for God.  I would not live in abject poverty, but I would not live with more than I need. 
The last time I spoke with my father before he died, he told me: life is not stuff.  His greatest joy was the thought of retiring and having enough money that he and my mother could live out their last days in their home, and that he could garden all day, every day, whenever it was warm enough, and show his eventual grandchildren how to tell when a rosebush needs pine mulch.  This would be possible with enough money, but not that much. He told me that I would probably work, all my life, making somebody else rich... but that wasn't the point.  The point was that my labors would, in all hope, give me the ability to live in comfort, if I had the wisdom to appreciate what I had.
And what do I have?
Not much.  In all truth, I don't own anything.  I have things, but none of them are valuable enough to count for anything, not financially.  The roof over my head is not mine.  The clothes on my back were almost all used by someone else before I got them.  I am, at all times, one very bad day away from losing everything I do have... but I have a partner.  I have a partner who loves me and who wants, desperately, to see me happy... who would rather walk out of my life than have his temporary dependence on me cost my happiness.  With him, I have the hope of one day having a comfortable family.  Yes, we are financially poor, but we are, in essence, the living personification of a crappy Bon Jovi song.  Someday, things will change. 

The Sandwich Bandit

When I was just-barely twenty one, I began working for a popular, internationally known and franchised sandwich shop.  The particular one I worked in was also, conveniently, located inside a grocery store that, while being one of the most profitable companies in the history of that mattering, is also known for its more ridiculous patrons.  So, it only made sense that occasionally, bizarre things happened.  Mostly those bizarre things involved silly outfits and the occasional creeper commenting on how well an employee made a sandwich and then asking for that employee's phone number.  However, this one is special to me, because it also illustrates an important lesson in dealing with "the public."
It was a fairly normal evening at the sandwich shop.  I was still, more or less, a trainee, learning the ropes on night shift.  We closed fairly late compared to a lot of other restaurants in the conservative Southern college town I called home.  I was just draining the tea urns so that they could be scrubbed-out for the next day when a most curious individual graced our threshold.  Had she been standing, she would have stood at around six feet tall, but instead, she rode one of the store's complimentary mobility assistance devices, a noble grey steed that hummed cheerily at her behest.  Her voluminous backside spilled over the sides of the ample seat of her steed and her contact-enhanced amber eyes glared wildly in contrast with her ebony skin.  Her ears and eyebrows were bedazzled with long rows of metal studs while a chrome ring hung from her nose like a bull.  I turned to greet her with a, "Welcome," and "How may I help you?"
"I ordered two of your full size meatball subs earlier, and they weren't fresh," the woman declared.
I apologized, and asked her if she would like to speak to my shift leader.  I fetched my coworker from the kitchen, where she was doing dishes, and on the way back to the dining room, explained the situation.  When we arrived back at the front of the store, my coworker calmly asked the woman what her complaint was.
Again, the woman declared, "I ordered two of your full size meatball subs earlier, and they weren't fresh."  My coworker apologized, and asked if the woman had the receipt from the transaction so she could issue a refund.
The woman sat back and lowered her chin slightly for a moment before raising it defiantly and declaring, with a scowl, "No, my niece was the one who got the sandwiches for me.  Can't you just make me fresh sandwiches?"
My coworker and I looked at each other warily.  The number one issue at our store was food cost.  The owner of our store, an investor who owned most of the locations of this particular franchise within a 50 mile radius, had a laser focus on his bottom line, and so, we were always being chided by our manager for placing one too many tomato slices on a sandwich or not spreading-out the lettuce more.  To that end, the notion of making two sandwiches, ostensibly for free, was out of the question, even if it was what the customer wanted.  We would try to call our manager, we told the woman, and while my coworker manned the phone, I set myself to continue cleaning the store, partly so we would not fall behind and have to stay in the store later than necessary after close, but also to escape the death glares of the woman riding the Rascal.
Minutes passed like hours, not in the least because every 60 seconds or so, the woman on the Rascal inquired, with increasing anger, "Ain't you got your manager on the phone yet?" to which I would reply, "My shift leader is in the back on the phone with her right now."  The woman began to pace atop her glorious steed, making figure eights in the dining room, and all the while glaring at me as though she were mere moments from rising up and shanking me with her car keys.
Finally, my coworker emerged from the office, walked up to the woman, and declared, in the way all service workers do when explaining a policy they know will displease a customer, "I'm sorry, but unless you have the sandwiches from earlier and a receipt, there's nothing we can do but apologize."
The woman's nostrils flared, and her knuckles whitened around the steering wheel of her steed. Her lips pursed before she declared, "You're both useless," before speeding out of the store.

The whole situation had been fairly bizarre, but we concluded that odds were, she was probably trying to just get a pair of free sandwiches.  I posted on facebook about the strange encounter, but thereafter we closed the store like any other night.

A few days later, I was visiting a friend of mine who worked in another store of the same type in our town.  I told him about what happened.
"What did she look like," my friend asked.  I told him, and he began laughing.  Curious, I asked him what was so funny.
"Oh, that's the Sandwich Bandit," he said, "She tries to pull that story every time she sees someone who looks new... it's always meatball sandwiches, always purchased by her niece, and always more than one.  She's tried it on me a few times, and always when we're busy, hoping I'll just give her food to avoid a scene.  She probably won't come back though.  Like I said, she only tries it with new people, so you should be fine now."

Two weeks later, as I was cleaning the sandwich line and refilling bins of vegetables, I was surprised to see, gliding over the threshold, none other than the Sandwich Bandit.  I greeted her as I would any other customer, hoping she was just in to get food and pay for it like any other customer.  She glared at me, her nostrils flaring, and declared, "I sent my niece in earlier to get three full size meatball sandwiches--"
"You can stop there ma'am. Let me guess, they weren't fresh?"
"No. They weren't."
I smiled, "Well, ma'am, do you have a receipt?"
"No."
"Do you have the sandwiches?"
"No."
"Well then, ma'am, just like we told you when you came in two weeks ago and it was two sandwiches--"
"I couldn't have come in here two weeks ago.  I was out of town."
"Ma'am, if you want, I could go get my phone, pull up facebook, and show you exactly which day you came in.  I posted about it on facebook so my friends would know our refund policy."
I could feel the burning contempt the Sandwich Bandit felt for me at that very moment.  It filled the air.  Sharply, she snapped, "Let me go get my niece."  Then, slowly she backed out of the store, glaring at me all the while, her Rascal beeping like an eighteen wheeler.

She never came back.