Day 1:
If I didn’t know better … and if the bottle of hair dye was still not on my bathroom counter … I’d think I had leprosy. Seriously. How hard is it to dye one’s hair without also getting splotches of color on their forearms … neck … shoulder … forehead … and somehow – upper thigh? I am a mess and have 10 minutes left to go before I can wash myself off. Good thing it’s cold out … I can wear long sleeves. But how to cover up this nice drip line down my face?!
I’ve been dying my hair for years now. More so in the last 5 or so years … and always an in-home version (I’m not a salon gal). I mean, for $8 I get a totally new look, spotted arms, and a surprise ending cuz the color stated on the box is NEVER the color I get! I started off with a rich ruby, then a garnet and then moved on to more red tones … Autumn Blaze, Auburn Dream, Red Red Head. But, with my fair skin and extra 35 lbs I’d gained after my husband (Tim) died – it was not such a great look! AND, I cut my quasi above shoulder length hair to an almost Peter Pan pixie style (a moment of GREAT weakness which must have included an extra glass of peach wine, major grief, and a spare pair of sharp scissors at 1am one morning) – which really did not help in the hair department/category of looking good/decent/ok. Sigh.
In any case – I have had MANY colors. For a long time I wanted purple … not Violet Haze or Lavendar Locks … but deep, true, eggplant purple. I (luckily?) could not find it – well, without stripping all color out of my hair and then redying. No thanks – not THAT desperate for purple hair!
I’m not sure people know my original color – except if they saw me yesterday when the brown was giving way more to the silver strands and blahness than I could take. So – here I am, once again, armed with a box of the flavor of the month (or in this case the color of the month) and we’ll see what we get!
My hair is porous and baby fine. And what I have on my head is also very, very thin (my mom did ask me once – I think at the Thanksgiving dinner table – if I was going BALD). Lovely. Thanks Mom. But, it’s nice to have ONE THING on my body that is thin … too bad it’s my hair … and not my thighs! Or calves. Or upper arms. Whatever.
Years ago when I first came to Denver I had a crazy notion to perm my hair. Let’s just say that Little Orphan Annie was not a good look for me! It was god-awful. REALLY, really bad. And even though I cannot carry a tune (in or out of the shower) I could have landed a part in the Broadway musical hit HAIR with all the poodle-poofiness going on on my head!
So – after that attempt one would think I would have left well enough alone. Noooo – slow learner. I permed my hair several more times – always with the same result. Tight little fuzzy poodle curls with shoulder length hair is NOT a good look. I was never asked – but I’m sure there were a few people who wondered if I’d been electrocuted! Finally I came to my senses – some decades later – and now only dye my hair. And in really lovely colors!
And, as I was saying, I have been several colors: garnet, ruby, chestnut, maple, dark ash, hickory. I finally decided to stay away from the gems and trees and went with the darker brown tones … more “natural”. So, one day I tried Deep Black Brown thinking it would be subtle and pretty.
That morning after coloring my hair DBB my neighbor advised me not to take any apples from old women. Nice. Yep – I had turned myself into Snow White. Deep Black Brown was Ultra Utter Black Hole-Depths of Nothingness-Snow White Black on me. Great. Another failure.
So … time’s up! I’m off to wash off my leprosy splotches (I’ve been known to use an SOS pad before as this is not the first time!) … and see what hair color I come up with today! It’s supposed to be Darkest Brown – Sweet Cola. I’ll keep you posted.