My Hair....has nothing to do with books or a hair memoir

When I was a naiive young girl of 12 years...and even when I was a more worldly 16 years of age, I had maintained that when I started aging that I was going to glory in my gray or white hair. I was possibly going to dye it the pale blue or pink that some of the older ladies I used to see in 1969, 1972 - sometime in that era - walking around downtown. They always seemed to have a cloude of pale pink or blueish toned hair. I thought it was pretty, and I decided that if my hair ever got completely white that I would maybe do this, but I was going to love my white hair.

HAHAHAHA.

I started getting WHITE hairs in my early thirties, and not being quite ready to glory in my old age yet, I started a round of dying my hair.

I used to be a brunette with some very interesting red and gold highlights throughout the mass of hair. In the sun, there were times when large areas of my hair looked reddish. So I started going for the burgundy hair dyes, Chocolate Cherry, etc.

I noticed, then, that my hair seemed to grow kind of fast...I had to touch up my roots more and more often. In fact, by 2005 it seemed that I was getting this skunk effect every two weeks. I'm sure everyone has seen this. Beautiful shades of color with at least an inch of white hair running along the part....By 2009 I was gettin tired of asking for help in dyeing my hair - work injuries made it hard for me to do my own hair. I've had each of my sons help me dye my hair, my daughter helped quite a few times, and my daughter in law helped quite often....but it gets very old asking for help, especially when I needed to do my roots so damned often. So I decided to stop dyeing my hair and started letting it grow out. My hair was down to between my shoulder blades, and let me tell you, it is awkward having four inches of graying and whitening hair on top of various shades fading hair dyes.

In 2009, being too cheap to pay for a hair cut, I asked my then 15 year old niece to cut my hair, and she was happy to help. So I had this rather short hair cut (for me)...and looking back now, I think - oh how young I looked - that was only two years ago..... Anyway, whining about aging aside, this is the first picture of me with all the old dyed hair cut off.

My hair grew out some more, and then last summer my niece gave me another haircut, this time shorter in the back, longer at the sides...but in the two years since my first hair cut quite a bit more white hair has appeared. Which does not make me happy....I never thought when I was younger that I would have so damned MUCH white hair at the age of 50 - which is my age in this picture at family event.

Anyway, following my usual practice of going long periods without hair cuts, (once I went four years without a trim) I noticed that it's been about a year since my last cut. How's that for math skills? Let's see, 2011 minus 2010...yup. One year. My hair has grown at least 7 inches.....Seems impossible. I believe I read somewhere that hair grows a max of four inches a year? My hair is seven inches past my chin, which is where my last cut ended. Chin level. And, because of a quirk in my hair and the last style used, it's shorter in the back. My hair in the back is, as usual, tight little curls as opposed to the straightish hair in front, it looks even shorter in the back. I am So lucky to have different hair textures throughout my head. straight hair on top and in front, little tight kinky curls in the back and the bottom half of my head. My hair has never been able to make up it's mind what it wants to be - straight or curly. Kinky or smooth. I get both. Makes giving me hair cuts challenging. I always used to have to warn professionals that what my hair always ended up curly and shorter in the back, no matter what the front did.

I've become extremely bored with my white sections of hair.
When you're used to seeing dark hair out of the corner of your eyes your whole life, it's hard to get used to seeing white wisps floating around your face. And of course, my hair in the back isn't even white, no it's more of a blackish brown to gray mixture.

I am not aging gracefully.

I am aging crankily and pissedly.

I want darker hair again.

I want my eyes to be more like they used to be

I don't want my lower lids to have their own baggage.

I want firm body fat instead of jiggly fat.

SIGH....To make myself feel better, I like to watch the firm young girls on t.v. and picture them aging, sagging, with graying hair.

MWHahahahahaha. Snicker, Snicker.

So my daughter in law dyed my hair blue.

However, I now remember that gray and white hair is a bit harder to dye. We left the dye in for one hour and twenty minutes. We probably could have left it in for two hours. There is still some white little hairs stubbornly mocking me.

But with the sections of white hair that did take the dye, and the darker bits that are now dark blue it looks like I have medium blue hair with light blue highlights.

and strangely, my eyes look grayish in this picture.

So now you see me in all my glory - my scar covering tattoo, my two nose rings, my sad little crooked mouth and my highlighty blue hair.

I am now ready to go see the Smurf movie.