The Great Wig Caper of 2014

Ok, I know, I know, it's been a LONG time. My last post was LAST year for crying out loud. It's not that I was sick and tired and not writing. I was quite the opposite. I've been having more energy (one day I did sleep for like 20 hours though) and spending some QT with the baby. I'm happy to report Sam is eating cereal and veggies and fruits now in his big boy high chair! He loves it, and every day he is gets bigger and bigger. He now, at 5 months, is wearing 18 month pjs......as Bill likes to say, "He's going to make me look like a smurf some day!" We are also working on our third tooth. But he is probably the happiest baby in the world these days, and makes every day so much brighter for me. So glad he picked me to be his mommy!
Anyway, so what's been going on with me these past few days? We had Bill's family into town for a Christmas visit, which was really nice. We put the Christmas decorations away for another year and got snowed in like the rest of the Northeast for a few days. This created a bout of cabin fever for yours truly. The remedy for me when the sun came out???? WIG SHOPPING!
That's right, it was time to get some fur atop this head, and preferably have it NOT look like I skinned Cuse, our 30 lb mean-ass cat, (as much as my dad would pay for me to get Cuse made into a wig) to get it. Why did I title this blog entry the "wig caper?" Well, you see, it wasn't as simple as looking up the wig stores in Syracuse and going in for a test drive on certain models. I enlisted Katie, my best friend since our womb days, to be my wig judge. She would "yay" or "nay" whatever model I put atop my head. She has known me since literally we were in the womb, so who better to bring along for the adventure. And an adventure it was.
It couldn't be as easy as going to the place, trying on a couple and leaving with a smile on my face. No, no no, it had to be a treasure hunt. You see, Hot Cocoa's, the place that everyone in CNY literally yells when you say you need a wig, is not an easy place to get ahold of. I told Katie to meet me on the boulevard at the Hot Cocoa's I had driven by many a time. I got there first, (I need to also add that Katie is 5 months pregnant so that is a gamechanger too!) and pulled right in front. Guess what? Hot Cocoa's was a No Cocoa's. There wasn't a foam head with a wig atop it to be seen. Place was a ghost town. So I got on the old Iphone and looked on Hot Cocoa's website as Katie pulled in. Fearing she might go pregnancy rage on me (Your welcome, Mat) I found that Hot Cocoa's had a store on James Street in Eastwood. So Katie agreed (happily, crisis averted) to follow me to Eastwood (Because she has lived in this area for 36 years and still basically has no idea how to get to ShoppingTown Mall from her own house). Anyway, we high-tailed it to Eastwood. We passed by some familiar haunts from my early 20s that I would rather forget. Woodbine days are better left in the past. And we finally saw it, a bunch of heads in the window with an array of haircolors from magenta to black to blonde and dare I say, orange? It was creepy, not going to lie. We pulled in the parking lot and Katie said "Did you see there was a little slip of paper on the door?" We agreed to walk up to the store to see if it was open. Sure enough, the little slip of paper said that Hot Cocoa's opened by appointment only!
What the crap?! How hard was it going to be to get me a nice headpiece for 2014? I had already dragged a preggo lady all around the east end of town, and was getting desperate! In all actuality, Katie was in for the long haul and didn't mind when I suggested we head over to the West side of town to a shop my hairdresser had mentioned. I just had to get her there and not lose her in the process.
So we rolled up to the old Blockbuster Video store that was now a hair place and I took a deep breath. This was open, I was going to get me a wig, and I was going to like it. We walked in and there was hair everywhere, in every shade you could imagine. I told the girl in the front, with pink hair mind you, that we were interested in wigs and she smiled and said "I'll meet you in the back." When Katie and I got to the back, there were about 60 heads lined along the walls, waiting, just begging for us to try them on. Long, short, curly, frizzy, straight, bangs, no-bangs, bobs, INVERTED BOBS (that's for you Bridget!), black, highlighted, platinum, and red heads. They were all there. I had the associate explain to me the difference between all the wigs. There was human hair, but they weren't lace caps, those were on the other side of the wall, and those lace caps looked more natural to your hair line supposedly. There were more synthetic than human hair wigs. I figured what the heck, I was just going to dive in and try as many of them on as I wanted. The prices were a lot cheaper than I thought and I wanted to make it fun. When else can you get away with a "disguise" than when you are going through chemo????
As I was having the wig trying-on process explained to me and a wig cap put on, Katie was drawn to this massive curly blonde highlighted ball of craziness. I will admit that it was the closest to my normal hair color, but that is where the similarities ended. So I let her marvel at the curly ball of madness and I tried on my first dark, human hair wig. Oh, it wasn't pretty. All that shoe polish color black hair against my pastey Syracuse skin looked like death. And yes, I can say that. Katie turned away from the curly mop for about ten seconds to just shake her head "No." and we were on to the next wig. We tried on Beyoncé, Mega Venus, Viona, they all had names. I don't remember them all because I swear I tried on at least 20 of them. Some of them made me hysterically laugh and yell "Sock it to me!" while others just made me look like a mushroom head on a stick. Katie at one point called me Mrs. Brady. I tried the one on that made me look like a flapper. All the while Katie kept going back to that damn curly mop-top. Finally, I agreed to try that damn thing on. Two words, Chaka Kahn. "Get it off my head!" I shrieked.
The girls in the store happened to be former students at Fowler. So that made things ten times more interesting. "Miss Tranny be trying on wigs!" But actually they were cute and told me what worked, and what didn't. They all seemed to have a field day with the fact that I was incapable of wearing the wig cap correctly "You got it pulled all the way down your forehead, FIX IT!" and that I was totally inept at putting the wig on straight. I always looked like a hawk had tried to nest on my head when I put one on.
Finally, Katie and I agreed on two different styles. One was blond, well platinum, but that's all they had for blond and it was my old haircut. The other was a saucy brunette that harkened me back to my shoe polish black hair days of yore (AKA Minnie Driver days). We wrapped those girls up, got us a foam head and some spray to keep them looking good, and headed out the door. Katie had too much fun I think, at my expense, but she was a good sport. I thanked her and headed home with my new ladies.
At home I tried them on for Bill and Sam. Bill, bless his heart, would say I looked beautiful with a pile of poop on my head. That's just how wonderful he is as a human being, and he would mean it too. So I looked to Sam for the real reaction. Don't you know that little round-headed 5-month-old was just the judge I needed. He looked at me quizzically at first, but when I bent down and said "How does the mama look?" He smiled with his whole body! And melted my heart at the same time. So even though I went on the Great Wig Caper of 2014 with my oldest and dearest friend and wouldn't trade it for the world, I'm glad that wig or no wig, Sammy knows me and loves me just for being me. And he even loves me when I am disguised as Minnie Driver. That got the whole-body smile, as well. Blond, Brunette, or Bald.....I got this!