From Russia, with love.

I was so happy because my eyebrows had finally grown back. Oh they grew back in full force. Even though my natural hair color is red, my brows have always been a really light blonde. So luckily it was difficult to tell how manly and unshapely they looked.

Example of conventionally feminine brows

Example of conventionally masculine brows

They were so far from the shape that I wanted (not quite so unruly as the second picture above) that I decided I just need to get them waxed. I’ve gotten some bad brow waxes in the past but there is one place in the same shopping center as the restaurant that I’ve worked that I remembered getting a great wax. Even though I had to drive a distance to get there and it is a splurge for me to get my eyebrows waxed at all, I felt sure it would be worth it. The person would do such a good job that I would have no trouble maintaining them on my own. The woman who waxed my brows was not surprisingly someone different than the time before, since it had been so long since I had been to this place. I found out quickly that she is from Russia. We chatted about that and I showed off my horribly embarrassing pronunciation of some Russian words to her. I was worried right away because she didn’t ask me anything about what I wanted my brows to look like; she just went to work while she chatted away in a semi-thick accent. I told myself she was so confident and so good at her job that she knew what she was doing. She seemed kind of pushy and bossy so I didn’t want to interrupt. She tinted my brows without even asking what sort of color I would like them to be. I still didn’t say anything. When she was done, instead of having me inspect her work up close in a mirror with the bright overhead light they use, I had to stand at a bit of a distance and check them out in a regular mirror in the dark of the room (I suppose the dark room is meant to make it spa-like and relaxing). Once again I didn’t say anything and at this point, what I ended up with is my fault. I paid and then went out to my car and checked her work in a close mirror in the good sunlight. This will sound ridiculous to many, but I just started crying. The left brow just looked like a light blonde comma over my eye. Too thin and no arch at all like the picture above of the ideal way to shape an eyebrow. The right brow was more of a brown-blonde color and was waxed significantly farther out from my nose than the left. It is also a different shape, though still not a good shape. Below is a picture of the disaster. If I look awful even in the cropped close-up, it’s because I’d been crying like a 15-year-old girl.

awful

 Yes, I can fix it with makeup and try to get the brows back to the same color with lemon juice and sunshine, but I didn’t expect to drive out and pay to have my brows done only to have to try to fix them on my own.

I apologize that my first lengthy post in a while is me ranting about my eyebrows. I do have other news. The other hair on my head has been growing back quickly also:

Can't see the brow unevenness from the side!

I’ll be even more excited when it gets long enough that my scalp doesn’t show through. I was told it wouldn’t grow back like my natural hair initially (curly and red). For now it’s straight and blonde. I would be ok if it stayed straight and blonde though. :-)

 

For the time being, the blog’s name (Adventures in Cancer) stays. It was hard to know what to make of everything Dr. Gore said when I talked to him about the CT scan results. He still seems concerned about possible cancer in my abdominal lining and intestinal lining. So the journey continues for now. Who knows when it will finally end?

3^rd date tomorrow. Hope it goes as well as the first two. :-D