I knew the iPad would be a great toy for me, but I had no idea all
the ways it would change my life. I certainly never expected that it would
have such an impact on my hair.
As I approach my 70th birthday, in 2 months, I have come to the
realization that you expect parts of the body to slow down, but there are signs of aging
that I never really expected. For one thing, my typing speed has probably been cut
in half, partly due to the numb fingers on my right hand that nobody seems to be able to
do anything about and partly because though at one time I could type 135 words per minute
with few-to-no errors, now I sometimes make 3 errors in one word, if it's a long word.
At first it was annoying, now I just accept it and am glad that I don't have a kind
of condition (yet) which would prevent me from being able to type at all.
Another aging thing that I have discovered over the years is that my
hair has changed. For so long, my haircuts at Supercuts always went the same way.
They'd ask how I want it cut, I'd give them some vague instruction and laugh that
my hair always does what it wants to do anyway due to the wave in it, they start cutting
and midway through the cut invariably the cutter comments on what nice, thick hair I have.
A few years ago, I began to wonder if I was losing my hair. Oh,
it didn't fall out in clumps, but there always seemed to be more hair in the drain after a
shower than I remembered before and it seemed that the hair on top of my head was not as
thick as it used to be.
At the same time, the cutters stopped telling me what great hair I
had and last time someone actually asked me if I wanted some product that would give it
more oomph.
Who knew I'd been oomphless all these years?
The last few cuts didn't suit me either. My hair was still
doing what it wanted, but it wasn't what I wanted any more. I seemed to be
developing cowlicks where I'd never had them before. Fortunately, I'm not
particularly vain (for good reason), so I've just gone with however I can make it look OK
so I can go out in public and not scare the horses.
But then I got the iPad. I knew that I would love playing with
an iPad, but I didn't realize how it could do about 80% of what I do on the desktop.
I can't write my journal on it because I use software that can't be installed.
And there are some other things that are better/easier to do on the desktop, but
pretty much for all other intents and purposes, the iPad, especially now that it has a
great keyboard, is my computer of choice.
It means that I can do all of the stuff I normally do on the desktop
from the comfort of my recliner, instead of sitting on a hard chair at my desk.
At night, as I have often said, I start the sleep cycle on the couch
in the living room, but wake up at some point and move to the recliner, where I finish out
the night--or not, depending on whether my body has decided to have insomnia or not.
Because I know I will be waking up at the end of my sleep night in
the recliner, I keep the iPad on the table next to the recliner. It means that I can
do all the normal things in the morning--check e-mail on both Google and my DCN account,
check "That's My Answer," check Facebok and Twitter, see what the day's
headlines are, etc., all with barely any perceptible movement on my part, so that dogs
don't realize I'm awake and aren't immediatly there demanding food.
But
THAT means that my head rests on the recliner for hours on end as I work on the iPad and
by the time I get up, my hair has settled into a day's style that somewhat resembles
Einstein's on a bad day.
It stands up, it flies off in odd directions, and the back looks like
a rat's nest. I try to smooth it down with water on a brush and that works until the
hair dries and then it starts to creep off in its own direction again.
The only thing that really helps is to wash it, but that
only lasts until I sit in the recliner with the iPad again and begin to work once more.
I truly never realized that iPad Hair would be a problem adding the
new gadget to my life, but it certainly seems to be. However, the trade-off in the
convenience of being able to use the iPad in the warm family room while the dogs don't
know I'm awake seems a reasonable one to make.
We will be starting the new year with our friends from the old Davis Comic Opera Company, as we have done every year for the past five or six years. We rarely see any of these people throughout the year, unless there is a funeral to attend, so I am looking forward to having home made soup, maybe playing the name game, but mostly laughing and getting caught up. At midnight we will have our champagne, kiss everybody, and head home, and probably be asleep by 12:30 a.m.
Thanks again to Richard and Jennipurr for another year of Holidailies! I look forward to participating again next year!
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