BEING A WOMAN AND KEEPING UP APPEARANCES

I am female. I am vain about my hair. When I was 28 I found one of those wiry gray hairs. People said to pull it out ASAP to prevent five from growing. I did not pull out the gray hair nor did I believe that five would grow. I actually liked that one wiry gray hair. I thought it made me unique.

Fast forward to my 40's. Now I am coloring my hair regularly. I have gray hairs. I go to a colorist and make sure she keeps track of my gray hairs. I no longer feel unique. My colorist said I did not have that many gray hairs. Just too many to go Au Natural.

So I became a regular salon client. I liked having different hair colors. I bounced between auburn, brunette, and low light and high lights. My hair looked great and my colorist was brilliant. It was annoying and upsetting that after being at a salon for over an hour and sitting under dryers and having an itchy scalp during coloring to discover maybe three weeks later gray roots. The game was to cut my hair so that there were few if any parts so you could not view the gray hairs.

Time moved on and one day I discovered that practically my whole head was populated with gray hairs. I had a medical condition for a prolonged period and I was certain that this caused my hair to turn gray all at once. Not many agreed with me. Most told me that I am now fifty and that is what happens when you get old.

OLD, me? There must be some mistake. 50 me? Another error. Nevertheless, I had to immediately cover those gray hairs. To me gray hair means you are old. I do not like gray hairs on my head.

I decided to become my own colorist. I was going to color my hair at home and save money and develop a skill. Rationalizing is so crazy and so much fun. I would save money. I would not develop a skill..

My first attempt was disappointing. My hair color did not look like the color on the box. It was much darker. I now learned that my hair would turn out darker. So I needed to select lighter colors. I was surprised when I chose light shades of brown and my hair still turned out dark.

My next attempt was messy. My husband told me my hair was a couple of colors. In the sun light it looked funky in a bad way. I was traumatized. I followed the coloring directions and I failed.

However, I was determined to succeed. I continued to color my hair and experiment. I learned that I had no product preference quality wise. The more expensive ones took less time and smelled better. I did not care. I could devote time to coloring my hair. The smell was unpleasant but I could deal with it.

I did learn one thing by mistake. I accidentally added conditioner to the dye and put it on my hair. It made my hair nicer and softer. Before the accident one thing I did notice, that I did not like, after I washed my hair it felt like straw. It really turned me off. I had to condition my hair with excessive amounts of conditioner.

I was on my way to being a professional amateur colorist.

I studied the hair color sales. The only hair color products I bought were on sale.

 

The other day I was at the dollar store. I actually bought a hair color product that cost a dollar. I felt very courageous when I bought that product. On the box the color was bright red streaks. It looked exciting. I was not sure what the color actually was because of the streaks. I had never seen anything like it.

Now I am using my last purchase of hair color that cost $1.00 and bought at the dollar store.

Things were going well until I ran out of hair dye to put on my hair. This never happened. Usually I have excess hair dye. I had to mush the dye into my hair since there was not enough. I was not happy but there was no turning back. This was a forty minute dye so I had 40 minutes to worry about how this would turn out.

Forty minutes passed and I was nervous. I washed out the dye and dried my hair. It is very red but not like the box. My husband said it looked nice. I showed him the box and we figured it out. This dye was not for your whole head but to streak your hair. That is why I ran out of dye.

After all was figured out it was too late. The dye was on my hair. My hair was red and I liked it.