Rapunzel, Rapunzel, Please Let Down Your Cares: The Hairy Truth About Happiness

Fabulous Felt Strawberry Banana Orange Barrette

Top: Express, Marshalls

Skirt: ELLE, Kohl's

Shoes: Betseyville, Macy's

Bag: Modcloth

Sunglasses: Michaels

Modern life moves at warp speed.  Pressures bombard us from every direction, smartphones and smarter screens only adding to the struggle.  (Although, to be fair, there's nothing easy about the old school practice of hacking a chicken to bits as opposed to, say, picking up some Perdue.  Ah, the good old days!)  That's why people say "keep calm and carry on," or "I'm going to my happy place."  I can't hear that last one without thinking of the end of Happy Gilmore when Adam Sandler daydreams about his grandmother hitting the jackpot, Chubbs alive and playing the piano, and a lingerie-clad Julie Bowen serving up pitchers of beer -- all meditations that help him win the big tournament.  My happy places are The Tote Trove, anywhere the husband is, and inside a good book.  Also, any of my favorite stores, although I've recently been making an effort to rely on those particular havens less often.  Not that I don't still love shopping -- let's not get crazy now!  But I'm trying to do the most I can with what I've got -- a goal, it seems, that applies to much more than stretching one's bead supply.

In this spirit of simplicity, I have only one piece to post this week.  And while I'm on the subject, I think I'll stop calling them "pieces."  It's so pretentious, like I'm hammering gold instead of cutting felt.  No, this week's craft is most certainly a "barrette" - a lovely, nostalgic, and very French word that evokes memories of allowance splurges on adornments for long, undyed hair.  In other words, the hallmark of less tress-stressed times.  Maybe that's one of the reasons I've clung to my girlish-meets-sister wives 'do for more than a decade -- it reminds me of when life was simple.  That, and more sophisticated hair care can be a real bitch.  (Yep, I used the b-word.  Because sometimes keeping calm and carrying on means sprinkling a little salt on your soup.)  

Nevertheless  . . . I'm considering cutting my mane.  Because I suspect that there really is something therapeutic about getting rid of all that dead weight.  Haircuts are no stranger to women in transition.  "The Big Bang Theory's" Kaley Cuoco cut her hair to skullcap proportions shortly after getting married -- and before getting divorced -- in real life.  And when Scarlett (Clare Bowen) lost her mom on "Nashville," she chopped her waist-length locks to an ear-skimming pixie.  But perhaps it was Sheryl Crow who, albeit breaking free of the coiffure coterie, said (er, sang) it best with her all-purpose and all-powerful mantra: "a change will do you good."

    

On a lighter note, briefer strands will be an even better canvas for showcasing -- what else? -- barrettes.

Heart and Humor Meet in (ABC's) The Middle

Last fall, when the new sitcom The Middle was introduced to ABC's Wednesday night line-up, I didn't like it at all. The show centered around the Hecks, a middle-class, middle American family planted firmly and unpretentiously in Indiana. You had Mike, the straight-talking quarry manager dad (Scrubs's Neil Flynn); Frankie, a frazzled used car saleswoman-slash-supermom (Patricia Heaton, Everybody Loves Raymond); Axl, their popular football playing teenage son; Sue, their awkward preteen daughter who gets cut from every team she tries out for; and Brick, their brilliant but socially hopeless second grader. Weekly plots focused on all the icky little details of work and home life: paying bills on time, shopping for suspect meat at the discount grocery store, getting the kids to do their homework, squeezing in family dinners, shopping for anniversary present carpet remnants, trying not to be late for work, etc. To be honest, it depressed me. So I stopped watching, clicking over to the vapid but more cheerful (and now cancelled) Gary Unmarried on CBS until it was time for the upper middle-class glamor of Modern Family to dazzle me as far away from reality as was possible.

Things went on like this until mid-season last year when I decided to give The Middle another chance. And you know what? I started to feel ashamed of my prematurely snobby dismissal. I started to, well, like it. Because behind all the tedium, the Hecks had something that most sitcom families didn't: heart. Their struggles became more funny than bleak, probably because they rang true. I especially liked Brick, endeared by his kooky, too-cerebral-for-his-own-good differentness and the way he repeated the things he said out loud in whispers. Before long, The Middle had eclipsed Modern Family for the top spot in my Wednesday night TV-viewing affections.

I still watch and enjoy Modern Family. But sometimes its big, perfect houses seem kind of cold compared to the Hecks's lived-in rancher with the unfinished basement and lime green living room. Similarly, "Modern Family's" three couples seem to be strained by tensions that remain unresolved even after plots are sewn up. Although Mike and Frankie Heck squabble over the usual who's-going-to-drive-the-kids-to-practice sort of issues, they never seem to resent each other as lingeringly as Phil and Claire Dunphy. Interestingly, Claire (Julie Bowen) sometimes reminds me of the high-strung stay-at-home mom that Heaton used to play on Raymond. Although considerably poorer and more heavily burdened, Heaton's character on The Middle appears happier and more grounded. Of course, that could just be because her mother-in-law isn't lurking across the street . . .