I haven't had my hair cut since Covid. 

It's a big mass of not-quite-straight but not-really-curly coarse reddish mop. I admit, it's inappropriate for a woman my age to have her hair long below her shoulderblades, but there it is. Around the house, and often when I'm outside, I twist it up into what would be a man bun, if I happened to be a man. 

I've always brushed it out every day, but somehow, over the last month or so, it has developed a massive mat in the back which I cannot deal with. I've known I'm going to have to get help with it, and I was given the name and number of a woman who makes house calls to do hair. I can't abide salons.

So I call her up, and she's coping with her father’s death, which is ongoing. She didn't actually sound devastated – he's 97, he's got to go sometime, she said. The doctor said he would die this morning, but he's hanging on!

I told her it wasn't an emergency. What else could I say?