Something else that's a blessing and a curse when you're retired is hair, makeup and nails. No longer do I have to get up early each morning to shower and shampoo, lotion my entire body, dry and style my hair. If I choose, I can get up late, sit around with uncombed hair and unwashed self for as long as I want. Fortunately, I don't adhere to that type of schedule very often because I think I'd soon find myself disgusting.


When I retired, I decided I was going to let my hair grow. My goal was/is to be one of those older women with a gray braid down to her ass. Now my hair is longer than it was even in my hippie days, and I'm finding the longer it grows the more it annoys. If I allow it to just flow, my neck and shoulders get hot and sweaty (I hate to sweat), plus it gets in my way, in my eyes, in my food, in what I'm drinking...it's a nuisance. If I twist it up and secure it with a clip, I think I look really old.  There's always the old pony tail standby, but someone told me having your hair in a pony tail all the time causes it to fall out. Besides, I really don't think I resemble Peggy Sue even a tiny bit these days.


I've always admired French braids, but I can barely get my hair into a regular braid and can't imagine what kind of contortions I'd have to perform to make it French. So, tomorrow, I'm going to have my hair stylist give me a permanent. I don't want spiral curls like I had about 20 years ago...I just want it to be kind of wavy. We'll see how it turns out, and if it's awful, then we'll simply cut it short. Maybe that's where I really want to go...short, easy peasy, wash and dry.


Back in the day, I used to wear makeup all the time. That included foundation, eyebrow pencil, eye shadow, rouge, mascara and lip gloss. Long before I retired, I "retired" the eye makeup. After all, when you reach a point where your eyelashes stick straight out (even if you use an eyelash curler) because your eyelids have fallen, there's no point in trying to use eye makeup. These days when I want to be "fancy," I stroke on a little eyebrow pencil, apply some lip stain and gloss and call it good.


When I retired, I also tried to give up fingernails. I've had long, painted nails since I was about 12 years old. I had a babysitter who had long beautiful red nails, and she told me she'd show me how to do mine if I stopped biting them. So, I did and began a Sunday evening ritual that lasted for more than 40 years. Each Sunday night, I would remove the previous week's polish, file, push back the cuticles and then reapply polish. This always took a minimum of two hours.


Why bother you ask. Well, I simply cannot function without fingernails. A high school typing teacher made me cut my nails so she couldn't see them over the ends of my fingers and I flunked every typing test until they grew back. Fortunately, she let me retake those tests and this was back when all typewriters were manual...I can hear some kid wondering what a manual typewriter is.


After I turned 50, my fingernails apparently decided they were far too old to cooperate any longer and began to crack and break and look totally horrible by Tuesday. Such a waste of time. Then, my son's girlfriend (eventually wife) introduced me to acrylic nails. Whooooooeeeeeeee, but was I thrilled to learn about this process. Every two weeks, you visit the nail place and walk out 30-45 minutes later with beautiful fingernails that do not break or chip and look excellent for two, sometimes even three, weeks. I spent my first retirement year without acrylic nails. My own grew out, but they were the same as they had been before acrylics...brittle and thin.  So, I returned to getting my nails done every couple of weeks.


The entire time I was growing up and older, I thought there would come a time when I could just relax and give up on any kind of physical adjustments to make myself look better. Even having an aunt who had her hair and nails professionally done once a week until she passed on in her late 80s didn't deter me from that idea.


So, it's a blessing and a curse to be able to choose how I want to look each day without outside influences. Don't want to end up looking like a really really old lady before my time, but do enjoy not having to meet any expectations beyond my own.


When you retired, did you change your personal habits? Did you get fewer haircuts, stop looking in the mirror and assessing how you look before leaving the house? Share with me...you might have some words of wisdom I'd enjoy seeing.