I'll be saving a lot on shampoo for a while...

I've been growing my hair out for a loooooong time now, with the intention of donating it, and I finally got up the nerve to chop it all off last night. Initially, I planned to donate it to Locks of Love, mostly because that was the only hair donation program I'd ever heard of. But I went with the Pantene Beautiful Lengths program instead. I forget how I first heard of the Pantene program, but I liked it initially because they only require 8" instead of 10". Then I researched it and learned that they donate all their wigs for free to cancer patients. What's not to love about that?

You can find out more about the Pantene program here.

So, you want to see pictures, right?

Of course, I had to take a couple "before" pictures. I only wanted one of the back of my head, but Tony insisted on a front shot too, so that's why you get me making this "Do I HAVE to?" face.

This one of the back of my head really made me go "Whoa." I don't often get a straight-on view of the back of my head like that. My hair was really long!

When I got to the salon, I told the lady that I wanted to donate my hair, and pulled a hair elastic and Ziploc bag out of my purse. She was a little weird about it at first... seemed kind of nervous or something. And she kept asking me if I was sure I had enough, which annoyed me a little. Like I'm really going to hack off that much hair without checking to make sure it's long enough first.

Anyway, once we got past that, she was great. I was a little surprised how long it took for her just to cut off the ponytail. I figured it would be a quick snip-snip and she'd be done, but she actually had to spend a couple minutes sawing away at it, coming at it from both sides, before she finally got it off. I know my hair is thick (and she commented on that too), but I didn't expect it to be quite that troublesome. It was amusing.

So this is what I ended up with, to donate. I put an extra elastic on it, just to make sure it all stayed together, because if it's not in an elastic, they can't use it. I printed out the donation instructions online, and saw that they put a little "ruler" along the right edge of the page (which you can't really see in this pic, but oh well). All in all, I actually ended up with 10" to donate. So even if the ends are a little too scraggly for them to be able to use, there's definitely still a solid 8" there.

And, now, the moment you've been waiting for... the "after" pics. I waited until today to take these, after my hair had been washed, dried, and straightened. First, the back view...

And the front...

And a closer-up view. (Ari gave me that flower and insisted that I put it in my hair.)

And of course, the big question is... do I like the new 'do? It's OK. I don't hate it... I think it's just that it's SO different, so I'm not quite sure what I think of it. I mean, I knew it was going to be really short, but seeing it in reality was a bit jarring. It will grow. And, more importantly, I donated all that excess hair to a good cause... so I can't really be too sad about it, can I?

I went to the post office this morning, and mailed my hair. Because I knew if I didn't do it right away, I'd likely forget, which would defeat the entire purpose.

No going back now... :)