My Hair

I have a love/hate relationship with my hair. At one time it was my glory. Truly. I have gobs of it and when I was younger the color is what is known in Victorian novels as "titian." I was extremely vain about it, and damn it all, I had a right to be. At various points in my life I grew it so long that I could sit on it.

As I stare at fifty-five this year, my hair is now the bane of my existence. Mostly because it grows like a frigging weed (always has), and it is now starting go grey. Which in and of itself isn't that much of a tragedy, however, when you already have "spunky" hair, grey hair, which in and of itself is spunky enough (a nice way of saying porcine-like), grey spunky-squared hair is a BITCH.

I must keep it short because the grey has a mind of its own, and if it's any longer than two inches I start looking like a one of the witches from Macbeth. Not a look I want to cultivate.

Unfortunately, whenever I feel blue or insecure or just fidgety I think, wow, that grey is depressing. I should do something about it. You'd think I would learn. The first time I felt this way I had a biggish book event looming, and two nights before I got a case of the wibbles and dyed it. Sigh. Because I have WAY TOO MUCH HAIR, and I didn't cover it nearly enough. I ended up looking calico. That mottling on cats is adorable. On me, not so much.  I should have gone to a salon and had them cover it up with something, anything, but I didn't. I asked my daughter to help me apply another coat. Two hands are better than one, right? I ended up with muted calico. Needless to say I wore a beret to that event. In the middle of a northern California fall day. The temp was maybe 85 degrees at seven at night.

But it doesn't stop there. I did it again, the NIGHT BEFORE another event, thinking it was just that particular brand. It wasn't. I had shorter hair by this point, but it was not so much calico as lopsided--lighter on one side. I spent the entire night with my head slightly tilted so that people would suspect the light was wrong, not that this fool woman yet again was playing Revlon roulette.

The last three weeks have been grim for various reasons, and I've been feeling hermitish and blue, and in a fit of insanity, yes, you guessed it, I dyed my hair last night. It's a horrible color. Medium brown, my ass. It's kind of a deep red that probably would look cool on someone twenty-five, but on me it only looks desperate. Even more horrible, it looks REALLY permanent. Like it will take a good six months to grow out.

Sigh and damn.

Clearly, she cannot be taught.