Hair S.O.S.

I am embarressed to go out in public.

My hair is currently a disaster.

While I have never considered myself adventurous when it comes to my hair, I was willing to try something different at the salon last week. As I age and my natural hair goes more the way of dirty sand and less lemon meringue pie, I have continued to highlight it lighter and lighter. As a result, when my now natural color grows in, the contrast to my highlighted color is more dramatic, meaning I like my hair for about 3 weeks and then despise it for the next 7 weeks until I can afford to go back for more. That, and it takes somewhere in the vicinity of 7,347 foils to get it all highlighted. So really, in the name of the environment, I decided to try something different and color it instead of highlight it. The goal was still the same, to lighten it all up making me feel all shiny and new.

But, alas, I am now, as my sister calls it, buttescotch head. See exhibit A:

I feel like I: (choose one of the below)

A. Slipped in a vat of butterscotch pudding

B. Wanted to feel what it's like to be 79 years old and experimenting with box colors

C. Was feeling a particular fondness towards the American penny that day

D. Was trying to give myself a hardcore reason to stay home and not venture out in public anymore by way of embarressment

So, I called my hairdresser. Now, I have a knack for avoiding uncomfortable conversations to the extreme with people I have a relationship with, to the point where my friend Susan says usually by the end of the conversation, I've made whatever the issue is my own fault. This may be true, but when you are messing with my hair, my bravery shines through. I told her that I was really unhappy with my hair, it looked like I'd used Sun-In, and if she just stepped outside to see it in the natural light, I'm sure she'd see what I was talking about. She essentially retorted with, "Well, I thought it looked good!, and "You are trying to lift your hair so much that the orange/red family is in the path of that enlightenment" and "I am booked through Thanksgiving 2019, but if you come in, we'll find someone to help you out", and so on and so forth. She suggested therefore that I come in and see one of the other girls there who would fix me right up.

I went in, which is no small feat again with a small baby to arrange, to get it fixed. We did another entire head highlight with the intention, as I might have mentioned, of fixing it, wherein I would leave with less orange than I walked in with. Alas, this was not the result. I didn't know this for sure until I got home, because as I mentioned earlier, poor lighting, plus having to leave with a wet head to retrieve small child because you can only ask so much of your friends, and of course, you can't really see how it will look when it's all wet and pulled back in a ponytail.

In case you think I jest, and I am overly exaggerating how bad it looked, may I present Exhibit B:

Oh, and then there's this little conversation when the boys got off the bus and walked into the family room. These were the first words spoken:

Jack: "Wow, you look wierd! Are you still my mom?"
Luke: "Aargh! You look creepy!" He also refused to come near me to kiss or hug me.

I then saw it was necessary to take matters into my own hands and book an appointment with another salon. I was booked with a girl who is all of a month out of beauty school. Yikes. HOWEVER, despite having to pay another $80 to get my hair done for the THIRD time within a week, I think it looks a lot better. While she couldn't entirely erase the orange glow, she at least broke it up by working some blonde hue back in. So, ignoring the fact that you could easily use my hair for kindling now, it looks better, and that's all that matters, right? Cuz if a girl's hair looks good, she looks good, and that's it. I am a hair person and this is my motto. You don't get voted best hair in high school for nothin' now do you?

I still maintain that breakin' up is hard to do. I just hope I don't run into my former flame somewhere.

She might get suspicious that I'm foiling around on her with someone else.