May 16th

For the love of God, where did the last ten days go? This is a good thing right? As we say in the Navy, if I sleep 12 hours a day, cruise is only 3 months long. I can extend that principle to say that if I day dream and completely zone out all day PLUS sleep 12 hours a day, I can whittle this baby down to about 12 minutes. The bad news is that 12 hours of sleep all on one day is a pipe dream.

Today was a huge milestone. We passed with flying colors. The girls in my office say that's because I've lowered my standards to the point where shit just doesn't matter any more. That may be entirely true, however, we still passed the milestone. It's the official "First Haircut" day. This is always one of the most tenuous days when you're new on a ship (or military facility - in this case paradise but the tension is the same). The problem it's the proverbial box o' chocolates.

You pray that 1) this person is a woman, 2) they recongnize that I AM in fact a woman as well (it pains me to say that this is not always the case... As a 16 year old, I might buy it but damn! I'm pushing 40 with wrinkles and...like no 5 o'clock shadow. What on earth do I need! Even with ear rings in I get called sir. Really this is exasperating!) and 3) they speaka da englais.

Even when they speaka da englais, you don't know if JUST A LITTLE OFF THE BACK AND OVER THE EARS gets translated to "Please shave my head with a #1 and make it snappy!" The last haircut I got at Camp Smith in Hawaii was before Iron Man. You need to look good for the race photos after all. That was in September. I didn't get another haircut until February. The Filipino woman who Naired my head didn't under stand that a "little off the sides" meant...you know...a little off the sides and not Marine Corps regulation high and tight.

My husband says the solution is fake boobs. I'm a keep-it-real kind of girl. For some reason, I feel that communication is the problem and not the fact that I am slender and have short hair. This is a catch 22 by the way. Short hair begets more short hair.

So we passed hair cut day. I walked into the beauty salon (they call it that by the way - I don't know if "Master Cuts" translates at all in Arabic. If it did, it would something like the worm writing above and then I don't think anyone would know that it was in fact a beauty salon. It would come out like some high pitched warble that could mean anything from "Your sister has warts!" to "My lebnah has mold on it.")

Filipino-woman cut my hair without incident and the world is all good. So despite the sand storm in which we ran our Armistice Day 5K (and so begins the Arifjan T-shirt collection) and being in charge of an office that is about to explode, all is right with the world. Thank God for Hawaiian coffee and good hair cuts :) Aloha until next time.