A dull week and a past life

Well, in trying to come up with anything reasonably interesting that happened this week, all I could muster was that I broke a hair clip thingie. You know what I mean. One of those things that you use to clip your out-of-control hair in after you’re twisted it into a pony tail.

Theoretically, it’s easier on your hair than an elastic band. I wear those when I work out because I’d dent my head doing the exercises with the big plastic clip in it, but they tend to strip my hair. (Yeah, I know this is boring information, but like I said, this is the most interesting thing that I could come up with this week. Bear with me.)

As it is, I haven’t had a haircut since I’ve been here, and I think since September. Combined with the damage the little elastic thing does to my hair, I really can barely get a comb through it. Except it’s so darn limp and fine, it’s a rat’s nest.

But getting a haircut here is tough. I have absolutely no language skills, and my hair is remarkably different than the locals’ locks. I cannot even convey “please weigh these potatoes,” so trying to explain “take off five inches, re-layer it and feather the bangs” isn’t going to be in my vocabulary for the next couple of years.

Which means the hair clip thingie really is a great loss. I have three others, but they are quite inferior. They came in a set of three, and one’s a really ugly green color. I use that one to clip my MP3 onto my sleeve while I work out, what since the MP3 ($25 at Wal-mart; spared no expense on that one) clip broke.

I was just trying to yank back my hair and all of a sudden, something snapped and the clip broke. And I’m sad. Not because I loved it or anything, but because it was one of the few things I have left from my time in Morocco.

I’d bought it at the souk, paying down 2 dirhams for it, which is about a quarter. I really don’t have much else from Morocco, and even less with me and that was just a little token that I could keep close. Now it’s gone.

Morocco seems like a long, long time ago. I guess it was. I turned 40 there and now I’m 45. I still remember it and miss it, but all things related to it are fading. I’ve no idea how my host mom, EC and all my kids are doing. And no way to know.

It’s a whole different world going on over there, like some kind of parallel universe. I know it’s there, but I cannot access it.

For all intents and purposes, it’s as gone as the hair clip. It makes me sad.