Adventures in Hair Color

When will I learn?

OK, so... I got my hair cut on Friday. Nice cut. Nothing too flashy, but definitely workable. I couldn't afford to get the color refreshed, however, so I decided to do it myself at home. I have done this in the past with good results using a Loreal color and highlight kit. No sweat. This time, I decided to go a shade darker, in deference to the season, and I chose a different brand of hair color.

Mistake Number 1.

When I had rinsed the color out and pulled the towel off my head, my hair was MAGENTA.

Let me say that again.

MA.GEN.TA.

AAAAAGH! I dried it, hoping the color would be less purple when dry, but when I stepped out of the bathroom, Grayson looked up and said "Purple?"

So I grabbed my keys and rushed to Walgreens, where I purchased the same Loreal brand I had used before, with notable success. I ran back home and quickly colored my hair a second time.

Now my hair was the color of old dried blood. Completely devoid of any depth or highlight. But at least it wasn't Magenta. B came for dinner and said "Hm."

"Hm." is not good.

So I got out the highlight kit that came with the second color kit and proceeded to put in highlights. Here a highlight, there a highlight. Oh what the hell, I smeared highlighter all over my head.

Mistake Number 2.

This time the product is a sort of dark Bonnie Raitt look. Deep auburn with red highlights. In other words, I am an unintentional redhead.

It's not bad, really. Not horrifying. But not at all what I had in mind. How did I get purple and red out of a brown hair color kit? I would color it again, (a nice safe deep brown, with no hint of red anywhere in sight)... but I'm afraid coloring your hair four times in a weekend could add up to baldness or something worse than magenta as a final product, so I have opted to play it safe for a couple of weeks and see what it mellows into.

In the meantime, I surprise myself every time I look in the mirror.

A Feast

My birthday dinner last night was FABULOUS!! My folks went to the farmers market and got fresh black eyed peas, little yellow squash, new potatos and okra, and my mom made cornbread and cut up some sweet onions and vine-ripened tomatos. Yuuuummm.

And to finish it all up... Apricot Fried Pies.

Nuff said.

Cosmic Rain

I have been a little off balance lately. Seems like my perceptions of reality don't always match up with those of others, and I wonder if I'm just having an off month or if I'm receiving cosmic messages to take a good hard look at myself and maybe change my ways. Over the past few weeks there have been a number of incidences – some small, others larger – of my actions or words being completely misconstrued or misinterpreted... or else I'm failing to see clearly my own behavior. It's giving me a bit of existential displacement, and I'm feeling like pulling in under my rock for a while to let the wave of whatever it is wash over me.

I had a major miscommunication with my book group: some of my dearest friends. After a couple of years of being part of the group, I finally decided to step out. The other members are 10 to 20 years my junior, and all with infants or pregnant. Over the past several months, the group's conversation has naturally gravitated away from general topics into the tight specific circles of early motherhood. I don't blame them. It's only natural, and exciting for them in their stage of life. For me, it was a bit painful, specially in light of the catastrophic changes in my own life over the past year. One of the major things I've noticed that has changed for me has been, sadly, this unshakable sense of bitterness and doubt. It applies mostly (not surprisingly) to relationships, but bleeds over into everything. My whole life view has dimmed somewhat. I find I have become, to some extent, a Bitter Old Broad. I don't particularly relish this, and I don't mean to embrace it as a way of life. But I recognize it for what it is – if you'll pardon the metaphorical stretch – the unavoidable cold breath of experience frosting the pumpkin of my youthful optimism. I began to feel further and further removed. So I decided to quit. I did it by an email announcement to the group via facebook and, to make a long story short... it was not particularly well received. The group read it as cold and heartless. I was just trying to get it over with without a need for a lot of discussion. Fireworks ensued. The ashes are still falling.

Then there are the minor intrigues and miscommunications at work. Minor but persistent. I don't recall this happening before... and I don't think anything I'm doing has changed. But in light of all the other miscommunications surrounding me, I have to wonder. Have I become someone I don't even know? Am I functioning in an alternate universe? Some sort of quantum place where my conscious mind is doing and saying one thing and the rest of me is behaving completely differently?

These are existential questions for 3:30 a.m, which is the time I've been waking up lately to ponder them. This morning I was up at 3, my mind spinning over all the possible ways I was mismanaging my interpersonal relationships, my finances, my health and probably the future of my son. I gave up on sleep and sat up until 4:30 before I finally felt it was safe to come back to bed. Consequently, I'm a bit groggy this morning.

That's a lot of information, but I do feel as if it's time for me to pull in a bit and seek out new directions. Maybe I'm getting cosmic messages from the universe that I need to change the direction I'm going or I'm going to wind up where I'm headed... wherever that is.

In the meantime, it rains. It rains. And rains. And rains. So at least my cosmic interior matches my exterior. Hopefully the skies will clear in both realms soon.