Dyeing

My hair is red. Well it's really a muddish brown, bordering on black. And I don't need to mention the gray, right? As of a few days ago, I'd call it magenta, which I darkened yesterday to more of a shade of burgundy.

Truthfully? I'd describe it right now as burgundy straw that smells like a campfire and needs cut very badly.

I've been dyeing my hair red forever. A lot of years ago at a family function my great-uncle told me that my red color was the same as his mother's, my great-grandmother, so I kinda felt that gave me the right to call myself a redhead. And I was vindicated when my nephew was born last year with screaming red hair. My son trotted out his college knowledge when he asked who the redhead was on our side of the family because of the whole recessive gene thing that has to come from both parents. Well, duh. Grampy's mom was a redhead. I'm nearly a redhead! It's in the family!

But lately I've been thinking it's a little much. A little too red. A little too loud. When I saw a picture of myself from June in the beautiful sunny sunshine of San Diego looking like I Love Lucy, I figured it was time to kick it back a notch.

The color I chose was called "auburn brown". The picture swatch on the box showed a nice warm medium brown with some red tendencies. Which would have been perfect except for the fact that it turned my hair a purplish reddish dark, dark....well, magenta.

"How would you feel if this was your hair?" I asked my sis.

"Horrified?" she responded.

Nice.

I went to work the next day and said to everyone who looked at me, "We all know my hair is purple and I refuse to discuss it."

Yesterday I recolored it with my normal color, medium auburn, which turned it burgundy. I went swimming and was afraid to get it too wet for fear I'd leave a big maroon cloud in the pool. My hair guy is in Punta Cana at the moment and I'm afraid to even wash it to try and lighten it up because it feels kind of....crunchy. Like it could crackle off in wiry clumps if I do anything else to make it mad. So now I've got burgundy haystack hair that smells like chlorine and last nights campfire.

Some days it's just damned hard to feel attractive.