You know it was only a matter of time before I addressed my hair issues. The fact that I waited one week since starting this blog shows admirable restraint. My long suffering friends tolerate this personality defect in me. My friend Christo sent me a postcard once that read, "How Can I Manage My Life When I Can't Even Manage My Hair?" That about sums it up. When I'm having a good hair day, I want to swaddle my mane around my face like a mink stole. But when it's bad, I'm like Quasimodo with PMS.

I was born blonde, but around age 16 and fearing a digression into mousiness, my mother introduced me to the world of hair color. Recognize that this was the woman who was fired from her first job for giving herself a home perm in the office lunch room on her coffee break. In due course, I had sported the full spectrum of a PMS color palate on my head: brown, strawberry blonde, bright red, dark fuscia, teal blue, platinum blonde, ash blonde, copper, green (a homage to St Patrick's Day and fairly, under the influence of a few beers), gray and orange. And then there was that unfortunate jet black period. I thought it would make me look Italian, but it was more like heroin addict. A few years ago, I settled back into the mantle of blonde full time.

Then there's the issue of styles. I'm still paying hush money to my best friend, MaryCatherineFullofGrace, not to discuss the style mutations she has witnessed. Long, short, shag, pixie, crew cut, afro, bob, the Flock of Seagulls lapse...all defy description. A few years ago, I decided not to cut it for awhile to see what would happen and lo, the end result: Long, big hair. Take a man's eye out in the subway kind of big hair.

Like a child, I had to learn the basic skills of management of The Big Long Hair. Simply washing and letting dry it naturally yielded an end result reminiscent of Chaka Kahn. I turned to my stylish and beautifully tressed friends for emergency assistance.

Double D, a gorgeous South African friend of mine, always so chic and au courant, wore a sleek and impeccable bob. Over a digression about hair issues one day, she revealed the source of her finished coiffure: a flat iron. Eureka! Man created fire, the cotton gin, the wheel and now, the flat iron! It was genius. In due course, I bought one and under Double D's tutelage, I abused the hell out of it. And while my hair was flat, it was still big.

Soon after, Double D was stranded in Mexico (well, a Mexican airport) and she had an epiphany and discarded her flat iron in favor of letting her hair go natural. My heart filled with admiration over my brave friend's decision. She had lamented her hair challenges as often as I and the prospect of seeing her unadorned could serve as my impetuous to do the same. However, on the day of her big reveal, Double D's hair looked even better than before: soft, golden natural curls framing her lovely face and sky blue eyes. Son of a bitch!

My next hair mentor was The Glamazon, a sleek, stylish native New Yorker with flowing black locks cascading down her shoulders. The Glamazon counseled, "Maintenance, maintenance, maintenance. A girl has got to look good. Go to a salon and demand a blow out." What the hell was that?

I ventured into a salon and meekly demanded the service. I remember thinking, 'Jesus, please, I hope there is no waxing involved.' After suffering the humiliation of the stylist surveying my head and exclaiming, "You have a lot of hair," they set the brushes in motion, pulling large swathes of hair with the drama of a orchestra conductor and drilling in with a category-four-hurricane-strength blow dryer. When the dust settled a hour later, I had a fabulous, bouncy mane of hair. I felt like the goddamned Breck girl. I wanted throw my hair back and say coyly "This old thing? Why, I just wash it and go."

Recently, Hollaback Girl asked me, tentatively, "What..exactly..is a blow out?" and what else was there to say? Worth every penny, baby.