Caught in the Shampoo Matrix

Right now I have ten bottles of eight different kinds of shampoo.

I loved one called Aussie Custard Apple and five years ago found a dozen bottles in a dollar store - bonanza! Little did I know that it was being phased out. I've watered them down, mixed them with other (lesser) Aussie shampoos, but the Custard Apples are, sigh, almost gone. Only two bottles left.

I bought some online from London that's supposed to be the new update on Custard Apple, but it has conditioner in it, which I don't use because it turns my head into a streaming mess of greasy pasta.

But I thought I'd try this anyway because I was desperate. It's okay, but not the Custard Apple of old, plus it's $20 including shipping for a small bottle!

Then last summer washing my hair at my son Aaron's apartment, I stumbled into the Matrix.

Mmmm, shiny smooth sleek-looking hair! The problem is, regular stores that you can walk into and take things off the shelf and bring them home in special reusable tote-bags don't seem to carry it, so I have to order Matrix Sleek Look in the orange bottle on the internet.

Which I have done. But it's spendy, too - twenty bucks for the size seen above, 13.5 oz. So I did some research and found another source that sells the 33.8 oz. size for $15 each! I ordered two, thinking I'd be set for a good long time. (The trendy sunglasses are for scale purposes.) Imagine my shock when what comes is a huge box of two bottles of the dreaded CONDITIONER!

I looked at my internet order, and it APPEARS that, yes, it was my mistake, although I have a hard time believing it. Okay, fine, fine, I decide to keep the two monster bottles instead of sending them back - HUGE HASSLE! - because Frank says he'll use them, eventually. (His hair doesn't have the slimy pasta problem, although it does tangle easily.)

Here is Frank after using the new Matrix conditioner, which makes his hair soft and curly and in general brings out the best in him:

So, back to the internet site, Buy.com, whereupon I order one 33 oz. shampoo. SHAMPOO.

Imagine my shock when this comes a few days later:

A tiny box stuffed with styrofoam peanuts and otherwise empty, no wait, at the bottom a tiny bottle of Matrix shampoo: 1.7 ounces!

A teeny-tiny baby of a bottle! A miniature. A joke!

Sick at heart, I contact Buy.com and they tell me to contact the seller directly who says, "Terribly sorry for this, would you like to setup for an exchange as this wasn't intentional at all." I am so reassured and happy that they didn't INTENTIONALLY send me a bottle that is FIVE PERCENT as big as the one I ORDERED. He promises to send me a label so I can ship the offending bit of orange plastic back, and he will, of course, send me the real thing. That was a week ago - as of this moment, no label, no shampoo.

To add insult to injury, I vacuumed the living room and somehow the box flipped over right in front of the vacuum fan so a MILLION PEANUTS magically flew into every crevice and corner!

I'm a new-age Goldilocks, stuck in the shampoo MATRIX!

Update:  I was refunded my purchase from Perfume Worldwide (don't buy from them!) yet had no new supply of shampoo until we went to Montauk where I found a jackpot at White's which has everything you could ever want (barring maybe wine and hardware).  As Andrew said, we could live there.  

PS:  Matrix shampoo is super spendy!  I use it every other time, or as Aaron said, for special occasions.
PSS:  Since this post was made, every store in my neighborhood has turned up with Matrix shampoo.  Within three blocks I have two - TWO - sources.  I must use this power only for good.

Last Days of Spring Break

Last day in Duluth, and the weather couldn't be better! In the forties with sheets of rain and huge winds! Loving it!!!

...when the winds of November come early (in April)...

Sherry is bundled up and staring moodily, probably because she's had a hard morning in the hot tub. It's placed in the open air on the roof of the hotel, and with the bitter winds, the water has to be actually hot, which it wasn't, plus people at a HUD convention in the next room were staring.

Surfing bird:
And the trashmen. Note the nasty beer cans in amongst the lake litter. Why can't people JUST PICK UP AFTER THEMSELVES? Sher and I usually bring a plastic bag along for just such occurrences, but today we forgot.

There's a thriving surf scene in Duluth - today a surfer waits hopefully for the wild waves (note preceding video) to get a little more rideable.

Get your (almost) live 2 minute Superior wave experience here! (Here's what the surfers are worried about.)

Now we are leaving the hills and cliffs of Duluth, sadly. I love the ocean, easily reachable from where I live in Brooklyn, in fact, Kingsborough where I teach is on the ocean, but there is something about Lake Superior impossible to find anywhere else. The clarity of the water, the moods from absolute stillness where the horizon and sky merge as one, to what we see today...the colors, the refractive clearness of the air - what's a little bad weather now and then? Okay, a lot of bad weather, long, cold winters, ice on the steep streets, interminably slow springs...but then there are those three days of beautiful summer weather! Come on!

I don't think of this as bad weather, to paraphrase Tyra Banks: it's fierce. I grew up here, it's in my blood.

On through the saturated fields and woods of North Central Wisconsin:
I've never seen such a wet spring, all the land in the Midwest full up with water, flooding everywhere. The farmers are no doubt getting a little frantic to get on their John Deeres and Allis Chalmers and get out into the fields. Well I remember my farming days of mud and manure and constant worry over the next natural (or otherwise) disaster. Will the cows get hit by lightning? Will it rain on our hay? Will the tractor fall apart? All these things of course did happen. And so many, many more...Even my brother's normally dry back yard is currently a wetland.
Back on the plane, rising over the city they call the Mini-Apple, here seen in the mist:and home again, home again where the weather is still gloomy and wet.

Here is the Big One, lurking moodily on the horizon:

And through a scrim of spring trees:

I've gone from bridge to bridge, Duluth Aerial with its ups and downs...

And the one in Brooklyn, for sale...