The summer before I left for college, I was seventeen years old and I decided that I was going to dye my hair. I’d soon be leaving home, going to a new place where no one would know me, and I wanted to reinvent myself. Nobody at college would know that the real me was a socially awkward, ugly, fat, unpopular nerd — or at least that was how I thought of myself (and I was convinced that the entire world was intensely watching and judging me, pointing and laughing and hating me. Ah, how tiny our worlds are when we’re teenagers).

I wanted my new mature college friends to think I was cool and funny and outgoing. Maybe even a little new wave (or “goth” as it was starting to be called). And changing my hair color was step one of my grand plan to be somebody else. Looking different might make me feel different, and I’d be able to act accordingly.

The question was: red, or black? I loved red hair, had always wanted red hair, was secretly in love with a boy who had red hair. But black… that would be intense. Dramatic. I’d get noticed, and I’d definitely be seen as “one of those Cure fans,” which I was. But with my natural curly blond hair and nearly six-foot stature, I was about as far from a waifish black-clad eyeliner-wearing Goth chick as one could be.

I tried out black hair once with a can of nonpermanent Halloween hairspray paint. As you can see from the blond traces in this photo, I needed far more than the one can that I had. This was my Robert Smith costume. I actually went out in public dressed like this, wearing a black turtleneck and black bodysuit with suspender-style straps and stirrup leggings. Seriously. It was the ’80s. I guess I was trying to pretend I didn’t care what people thought of me when actually it was all I could think about. I do give myself credit for having the balls to try it, though.

In the end, I was too chickenshit to put permanent black dye on my hair, so I went with red.

I have had various shades of red hair for the past seventeen years, ranging from light strawberry blonde to dark coppery auburn. A couple years ago, I got highlights for the first time and have been getting those ever since. Actually, that’s not entirely true. Sometime in the late ’90s or early ’00s, Kathryn helped me attempt to give myself highlights. I guess we did something wrong because they didn’t take, except on the shaved part of the back of my head where we just slapped all the extra lightening cream just for grins.

As of yesterday, I have chocolate brown hair with light blond streaks. This is a first for me. I’ve been leaning towards brown for about a year now, and my red shades have been getting darker in the interim.

I’m extremely happy with it. I think that dark brown looks natural on me, which is not surprising considering that I look a lot like my mom, who has dark brown hair.

I don’t color my hair for attention anymore (thank god I grew out of that stage). And it’s not really to cover up the gray, of which there is more and more every time I look. In fact, I wouldn’t mind the gray showing through. I just don’t like my natural dull dark blond. I suppose at some point I’ll quit coloring my hair. I’m not sure that I want to be 70 years old with a dye job. We’ll see how it goes, I guess.

Here is my new hair, when it’s dried. Nice, isn’t it?! I’m very very happy with it.

I straightened my hair this weekend, after years of natural curl. It was beginning to take up too much space, and it’s in that “inbetween” stage of growing out where it’s neither short enough to be cute nor long enough to be cute. It’s medium enough to be a giant frizzy mess. I go through phases where I’ll straighten it regularly, and then I won’t do it for years.

So, by “straighten” I mean I put a non-lye chemical relaxer on it. What I’ve done in the past is buy a home perm kit, and instead of putting my hair in rollers, I’d just brush it straight for the whole length of the processing time. And those tend to work okay, leaving my hair less tightly curled. But this time I wanted a more radical change, something that would really make it straight (or at least as straight as my hair can get), so I bought a relaxer meant for black peoples’ hair. I’ve used them before, and while they are kind of harsh on my hair texture, they really do the trick. So I went ahead with it, and although it does kind of feel like straw now, if I condition it heavily for a couple of weeks and use hot oil treatments, I think it will be fine.

In the photo below, it’s still damp. When it dries it will get bigger and fluffier.

so check it out, i decided, for the second time in my life, to try to color my own hair plus do highlights at the same time. i now understand why professionals get big bucks to do this kind of work. they’re paid to wrangle caustic chemicals and tinfoil so you don’t have to. and if you think it’s tough to do it on so-called “normal” hair, imagine trying to do it on one metric ton of curly poodle hair that won’t stand still or lie flat on the tinfoil for you.

in case you weren’t aware of this amazing but true fact, my hair magnetically repels tinfoil via its natural magical properties (i’m 1/4 elf on my mother’s side) and so that was hard to control what with my hair flinging the tinfoil to the four winds every time i wasn’t looking. not to mention, with all the red dye stains on the ceiling and walls from tinfoil splatters, it’ll take me weeks of scrubbing for it to come out and i’m sure the next owners of this house, when they use archaeological tools to carefully remove the different layers of paint, will think that someone was murdered in the bathroom and suddenly legends will be born about me.

there is nothing like having someone else rub your head, or brush your hair, or wash your hair. i rub doc’s head a lot because of his headaches, and i just love it when he does it to me in return. unfortunately my hair is so thick and tangly i fear that it’s difficult to effectively run his fingers through it, which may make for a less effective head-rubbing session (yet another reason to shave my head and acquire new hair!). my favorite part of getting a haircut is the all-too-brief shampoo phase. frankly, i’d pay extra for another 5 minutes of lathering. it’s luxury!

last night something popped into my head that i hadn’t thought of in years. i was thinking of brittney with her sprained arm that she’s not supposed to move, and how it must be difficult do to simple things like washing her hair. then i thought that it would be easier to wash her hair in the sink than in the shower, and easier still to have someone else wash it in the sink for her. which made me remember how mom used to wash my hair in the sink.

i don’t remember why she would do that, rather than me just doing it myself in the shower or bathtub, but maybe this was when i was too young to do it myself. she would spread a bath towel on the kitchen counter, and i would climb up there and lay down with my neck hanging off the curve of the stainless steel of the sink. i can still remember the distinctive smell of the stainless steel, warm water, and shampoo mingled together

i have not thought about that in years. it’s funny how smells are sometimes the things we remember best, and very often the triggers for long-buried memories.

I have shaved my entire head and acquired new hair:

What do you think? Is it me?

I’m finally getting off my butt and writing some more stories. I’ve been so tired lately, and I haven’t felt like doing much of anything. I’m glad that I was productive last week and sold some paintings. I think that I’m going to try to donate some paintings or other “artistic goods” to charities for fund raisers or raffles or what have you. That would allow me my selfish “me-time” to continue my creative pursuits, but would also allow me to do something for my community at the same time. I’d like to volunteer, but it’s just a question of giving up the time that I could be spending doing something creative.

I don’t even know if places would want a donation like that. I guess I’ll have to look into it.

I promise that I will post the Halloween party pictures sooooooon! It’s a lot of work to go through all the photos, throw out the bad ones, crop and color correct the good ones, and get them all online. There’s well over 200 photos, so please be patient!

I’m coloring my hair, so I have to get up in about 15 minutes to check it and rinse out the smelly goop. Maybe I’ll see next time if Andrew can cut me a deal and color it for me. I’m pretty proficient at it, but it might be nice to have a professional do it once in a while.

Here’s a story from more recent days than the stories I’ve been telling lately — probably from about three years ago:

We were living in the rent house on Ridgelea Street by Love Field. This house was built in 1946, and nothing at all was standard size (windows for miniblinds, shower head threads, doorframes, etc.). The kitchen cabinets went all the way to the ceiling, and the top shelf was waaaaay up high so that even I, at 5 feet 11 inches, had trouble reaching it.

Anyway, I was making dinner and reached up to this tippy top shelf to get the spare blade for my food processor, and I lost my grip. The blade fell off the shelf and was headed straight for my head, and my natural reaction was to grab for it to keep it away from my face. Well, it being a BLADE and all, this didn’t turn out so well. It sliced into the fleshy pad of my left thumb, nice and deep.

I ran into the bathroom to try to stop the bleeding, and was running my thumb under the cold water faucet when I made the mistake of looking at the wound. It was deep, allright, and spouting blood everywhere. So I fainted. Luckily, my dear sweet Doc was standing next to me and caught me before I fell all the way to the floor. I came to within seconds, and he sat me down on the toilet seat lid next to the sink, and had me hold my hand over the sink but NOT LOOK, so he could try to bandage it up or determine if I needed stitches.

He was trying to get the bleeding stopped, and I was trying to relax, so I leaned back a little and took some deep breaths, but I had forgotten about the lit candle on the back of the toilet seat — and my hair caught fire.

It didn’t burn too much before we noticed my head crackling and smoking, and luckily a few whacks with my hand were all it took to put it out.

So when I tell this story, I call it The Day I Sliced Open My Thumb, Passed Out, and Set My Hair On Fire, All Within Five Minutes. You think YOU had a bad day?!