Would-be Wayfarer

Sometimes when something is hugely popular, I avoid it. Not sure why that is (but I suspect it has its roots in the unfortunate incident of my reading The Celestine Prophecy .) Anyway, I resisted Eat, Pray, Love for a really long time, then finally broke down and got my copy after a close friend and I started a cozy two-person book club and chose EPL because it was about a woman's journey of self-discovery, which was something we had been discussing. Anyway, the book is lovely, and I consumed it with the same relish that the author would consume a pizza in Naples. Elizabeth Gilbert meets the world as a friend, which I found endearing and instructional. She is witty and charming and, at moments, self-deprecating and unflinchingly honest; I found it impossible not to like her. And, while I learned a lot about Liz Gilbert and the world from reading this book, I also learned a thing or two about myself (and I didn't even have to scrub floors for five hours a day in India to do so...

I'm lucky enough to have two careers that I love, but because both writing and medicine are exacting professions, sometimes it's hard to focus on anything but those two things. Other parts of life tend to fall by the wayside...like raking the leaves in my yard (thank goodness I have big privacy fences or my neighbors would be appalled!). So the subject of my hair came up recently. I have wavy hair that's quite prone to Helter Skelter moments. My hair is, in fact, an excellent example of the scientific principle that things tend toward entropy. Anyway, a few weeks back, I noticed that I'd been wearing headbands almost daily. I thought in exasperation: Who am I? Alice about to enter Wonderland? (Sighing heavily.) I am not a little girl. Not for a long time. And call me crazy, but I'm of the opinion that headbanded hair isn't really a look that a grown woman should sport much outside her own castle, er townhouse. So I made the appointment with a certain amount of ...