It’s 4 a.m. and I can’t sleep, so I riffle through a women’s magazine. This usually leads to buying unsuitable clothes, or beauty products to which I’m allergic. Tonight I have circled everything I want, and will not, I promise myself, order anything till 4 p.m., when I’ve had time to think about it. And since I’m looking only at practical items, I’m not that vested in it.

Here’s what I want: the Hestan NanoBond Titanium Stainless-Steel 10-Piece Cookware Set, until I notice the price is $1,999.99. I gasp. My pans are from Target, and the price was perhaps, what, $99? I feel a major trip to Target coming on, because I want to replace a pizza pan I’ve been scraping bits of crust off for a year. But have you noticed that you can’t get out of Target without shopping off-list?

I don’t need to shop, so I contemplate my nonexistent beauty regimen. I recently read Nora Johnson’s humor column, “On Maintenance,” in I Feel Bad about My Neck, and was astounded by the amount of time she spent at the hair salon. Can you believe she spent 80 hours a year having her hair done twice a week, and four hours every six weeks having her hair dyed? And then she got addicted to blond highlights, which took much more time, she says, but she cagily does not reveal how much longer..

Ephron must have been the saint of hairdressing: I go out of my mind if I spend more than half an hour getting my hair cut. I used to get my hair cut at Hair Ph.D., and I loved their sense of humor, and chose them for their name. We had highbrow discussions of The Amazing Race. We hated Rob and Amber, who cheated like mad.

Although I do not have my hair “done” anymore, I have strong feelings on hair- do’s and -don’ts. Unless you’re insanely fond of hanging around with aluminum foil in your hair, get only the minimum done at the salon.  We are not Nora Ephron who doubtless met with Hollywood producers, and was required to adhere to a higher standard. We, on the other hand, are going to the grocery store to buy soy milk. .  The other harried shoppers are not looking at our hair; they’re looking for goat cheese or Kalamata olives.

And what about dyeing hair? That is a whole different culture. In early middle age, I dyed my hair, sometimes brunette, and finally blond, because aging is difficult, and it seemed more dramatic to be blond, and the eye naturally goes to the blond hair, or so I gathered from an article in a women’s magazine. Yes, I followed those slavishly!  But I stopped dyeing my hair when we moved to a house without a shower.  Some stalwart souls probably dye their hair in the bathtub but not I. No, my hair is natural now, as is that of most of my friends and relatives.

My hair-dyeing friends were appalled, though. “You should keep dyeing your hair!”

Actually, I think I looked cute with my graying hair in old pictures, and wouldn’t I just love to have my hair look like that again? 

 Of course cute is relative.  What’s cute now is trying to restrain my hair with a barrette or a headband in a high wind.  On good hair days, this keeps it out of my eyes.  On bad hair days, the hair does what it wants.

Later, I tell my husband I am contemplating dyeing my hair blond. He says it’s already blond, which is not true of course but he’s sweet, and it will save me a trip to a beauty salon. Like all the other tragically hip women of a certain age, I am now committed to the natural look.