Do not let all those woo-woo photos of Maria cuddling animals fool you, she is a woman of steel. She knows what she wants and gets what she wants. She will take a book right out of my hands if she wants to read, and looked stunned and hurt when I complained.

She has taken my socks, underwear, pants and shirts countless times for her quilts or hanging pieces. Just a few months ago, she eyed the jeans I was wearing and asked if I really needed them. I am wearing them, I said, somewhat hopelessly. The pants, or much of them, are now in California gracing a quilt.

Maria has a long history of conflict with hair cutters, she cannot seem to find one who will cut her hair in the short and even way she wants. She shocked me awhile back asking if I would agree to trim it, and I gulped and agreed. This was a little scary.

Maria dresses in a very individualist way, but she has strong ideas about how she looks and wants to look, and there could be big trouble of I messed up, I have never cut anyone’s hair in my own life, let along a hot-tempered German-Sicilian with a ruthless streak.

It went well, and today, she asked me to do it again. We went outside in the yard, and she put a towel over her shoulders.  What Maria has always wanted, I think, was to trim the hair along the sides and back and leave the rest alone. I also needed to neaten and even things up a bit along the back.

So using a special hair scissors (from Amazon) and a comb, I trimmed the hair evenly across the back and trimmed up the sides. It was strange how comfortable I felt, as if I had been doing this for years.

I was not in the least bit nervous – maybe a little – but I did rub my Ganesh necklace from India, he makes things so smoothly, and is the remover of obstacles.

I was clear and confident about what I wanted to do and what she wanted me to do. The trick is to just take the plunge and go in small steps, you can’t mess up too badly. Although a lot of haircutters have, at least in Maria’s demanding outlook.

I love trying things I have never done before, keeps the mind growing.

It took about 10 minutes, and when I waited outside (so I could run to the pasture, she wouldn’t yell at me in front of the donkeys) and she came out quickly and gave me a big smoochy kiss. “It looks great,” she said, “perfect. Why won’t the hair cutters do this?”

I don’t know, but I am alive and intact to tell the tale. Perhaps something for me to think about when I can’t get a book contract.