I would like you to meet my hair stylist

For those of you who are moving to a new country there a few things that you need to find almost immediately so that your world doesn't come crashing down around you. First one is find your local Starbucks. Usually this isn't hard to find, if you stand on any street corner for any length of time one will pop up within days of your arrival. And by standing on the street corner you will most likely get some change since you will have not bathed and people will feel sorry for you. You will get more money if you have dog, but you will get the most money if you have a circus troop of dancing lemmings, but that is a whole other story that I don't want to get into since it makes me upset.

So far hopefully you have found a Starbucks and now are hyped up on a triple shot dry non fat latte with two equals. In the eighties we found that getting a gram of coke worked about the same, but hey that was 20 years ago and things are different now. If you are hanging at a Tim Hortons I believe that would be a "double double" I think personally saying "double squared" would be funnier but, ya don't make fun of Tim Hortons up here or the queen. Now you can be a queen who hangs at Tim Hortons, but don't make fun of "THE QUEEN". All right now that we got that straightened out (unless you are a queen and then we don't want you straightened out OK?)

Once you are settled you need to find yourself a hair stylist - please do not refer to them as "hair dressers" cause they have scissors. Same way that you aren't supposed to call Flight Attendents Airline Stewardess. Cause they have the serving cart and you won't get peanuts or some how when your drink is served to you the plane will hit a pocket of turbulence and your drink with ice will be in your lap. Do you all understand these people have POWER. So mind your p's and q's - personally I think we should be watching out for the X, Y's and Z's since they seem kind of like a gang and could totally take out the LMNOP's cause they are a bunch of babies.

Right, off track again, so back to the hair stylist. My hair stylist is named Tara. That's it just "Tara". I get totally confused if it sounds like Tara in Gone with The Wind Tara, or just Tara. Since I can't ever remember (I have a few memories issues from the eighties OK? Just get off my back about it) I call her "T" . And that is one of the first lessons you need to learn if you are looking for a stylist is they have to be totally cool. As in she only uses her frigging first name. Like Cher or Charo or Fabio (who has great hair by the way) or Bugs or Toto, see these are all big name recognition people and so she has to be totally hip right? But I wouldn't go to Fabio for a haircut since he hasn't changed his hair since the 80's.

Of course there is that whole issue about restraining orders and if you had her last name and she gave you a totally shitty haircut you could like drive by and throw eggs and call her a hair dresser. I prefer to think that she is over the top cool.

There are other things you need to look for when you choose a hair stylist. This is a partial list and I am sure you can add more.

1. If she has like a lot of blood around her station, bad sign
2. Really this is most important - if she has a mullet - really not good - scary
3. If she uses her scissors in a stabbing motion, run
4. If her favorite film is Fatal Attraction, don't let her play with your rabbit or lemming
5. If she has just come back from some hair stylist fashion show and wants to try a "new cut " on you, politely say no that you don't think your friends would appreciate you looking like a peacock.
6. Oh yeah and most important thing you need in a stylist is - she has to be
   thinner
   cuter
   and have nicer hair
   so you can really want to be like her really bad, but no you will never be as cute as she is so you will probably hate her a bit, but that it totally OK because see your relationship with your hair stylist is truly a love hate relationship. I mean if she had less teeth then you, her hair looked like a nest for hibernating lemmings and she wasn't cute, I mean why would you go to her? But you know what the cool revenge is? See they have to be cute and they have to stand on their feet all day, but to be totally cool they have to wear like the latest fashions which include incredibly painful high heel shoes, so I mean of course that is one thing that makes me feel better.

Soon after moving to Regina I went to "only first name cool Tara" and well see here is the picture.

See what I mean? Like without a doubt someone you would love to hate. Am I right? Not hate like if I saw her on the street I would spit at her and say a pox on you and your family. But more of a friendly hate, like hey do you want to have a cup of coffee and then order it for her and ask for them to put in cream instead of non fat milk in her latte kind of hate.

Warning, this is most important, never ever let on that you may feel like this, since if you ever do, you might here an "oops, I am so sorry" and the back of your head looks like it was attacked by lemmings with really sharp teeth and there ain't a damn thing you can do but you know cut the tip in half or something really harsh.

So those are my helpful tips on how to find and maintain a relationship with your stylist.