The night before we left for California, I dyed my hair orange.
Now, I know what you’re thinking. You’re all, “But her hair already IS orange? Should I say her hair is orange? Has she not noticed?”
People, I mean ORANGE.
No, MUCH more orange than that. Seriously.
This was the culprit:
Wella Lifetex Color Reflex Mask in Red. Naturally, the company discontinued it as soon as they knew I liked it, but not before I’d managed to squirrel a tube away in preparation for a time when I’d want my hair to look slightly redder than it does naturally.
That time came, as I said, the night before we left for California.
Now, as most of you know, my hair is naturally red, and I never really dared to tamper with it for fear of… well, for fear of it turning BRIGHT ORANGE, basically. I do, however, like to dabble in that small area of haircare – and trust me, it’s a VERY small area of haircare – which consists of products designed specifically for red hair. Wella Lifetext was one of those products: it’s basically a conditioner, but it’s a conditioner designed to “bring out the red” in your hair, and make it glossier, prettier and REDDER. It does this by depositing a small amount of colour every time you use it.
Now, I’d used this before and loved it. It did, indeed, make my hair shinier, and it did, indeed, “bring out the red”, although, honestly, it did it in such a way that only I would notice the difference. And it washes out after about three shampoos, so I figured it was safe even for me to use. Ha!
Because the product had been discontinued, there was only a small amount left in my one remainng tube, but it was just enough for one application, so I slapped it on with gay abandon, and then went about the business of packing my suitcase.
This was my fatal mistake.
I got so wrapped up in the process of adding and removing items from my suitcase that I left the product on for longer than the 2 – 5 minutes advised on the tube. Quite a bit longer, actually.
When I finally rinsed it out?
Orange.
“Whoops!” I thought. “Went a bit too far, there! I will shampoo it again!”
So I did.
ORANGE.
By this point, it was around midnight. Our flight was early the next morning, which is why I was washing my hair last thing at night: I figured if I did it then, and just tied it back to sleep in, I wouldn’t have to bother washing it in the morning, and could have a few more precious minutes of sleep. I’d finished packing my suitcase by this point, and had even laid out my clothes for the next morning, so all I had to do next morning was drag myself out of bed, have a quick shower, throw on some clothes and makeup and go.
I looked at the hair. And you know, it was late, and it was dark. I was looking at it under artificial light, and we all know how much THAT can change the appearance of things. I can actually look not too bad in artificial light, for instance, whereas in harsh daylight, I look like a hag.
“I don’t think my hair is any more orange than it is naturally,” I told myself. “It’s just the light. It’ll be fine in the morning.”
So I tied it up, set my alarm, and went to bed.
In the morning, things went mostly according to plan. The alarm went off, I sleptwalked to the shower, and then slepwalked back into the bedroom, where I positioned myself in front of the mirror to let down my hair, all Rapunzel-like.
ORANGE.
Like, REALLY, REALLY ORANGE. I’m talking OMGORANGE.
It was a very obviously artificial orange: the type of colour that just does not occur in nature.
“OMFG!” I said.
Well, I was in quandary. I had just over 20 minutes before the taxi was due to arrive to take us to the airport, and my hair was bright orange. Also, Terry, who plans our trips with the precision of military manoeuvres, was in the vicinity, and would NOT be pleased to know that The Schedule was about to be disrupted by my orange head.
I tried to pile The Hair on top of my head, thinking that the less you could see of it, the more natural it would look.
Nah.
It actually looked a bit worse, to be honest.
My mind was made up. Ripping off my dressing gown, I ran for the bathroom… only to get halfway down the hall, realise I had no time to wash and dry my hair before the taxi arrived, and turn and run back to the bedroom.
I had repeated this move about five times, in a frenzy of indecision, before Terry noticed me running up and down the hall naked, and wanted to know why.
“MYHAIRISOMGORANGE!” I wailed. “I need to wash it! I need to wash it NOW! There is time for me to wash it! Say there is time for me to wash it!”
Terry grabbed me by the shoulders and looked me in the eye.
“You’re not washing your hair,” he said, speaking very slowly and quietly, and actually, menacingly. “We. Will. Miss. Our. Flight. If. You. Start. Dicking. About. With. Your. Hair. Now. Understand?”
I nodded, mutely, and meekly headed back to the bedroom to get dressed.
And then, as soon as I heard Terry head downstairs to take the cases outside and wait for the taxi, I ran for the bathroom, locked the door behind me, wrenched the showerhead off the wall and, bending over the bath, SHAMPOOED THE HELL OUT OF MY HAIR.
And there was absolutely nothing Terry could do to stop me.
I was still blow-drying it when my parents arrived, closely followed by the taxi. It was a close-run thing. But by the time we got on the plane, my hair was – mercifully – free of TEH ORANGE.
I’m sure Terry will start speaking to me again soon.
Tagged hair
We made it to L.A., and we’re having far too much fun for me to find time to blog, so for the moment, let the record show that my hair is continuing its assault on my person, this time under the new guise of…
THE HAIR HORN!
Don’t have nightmares, kids…
Tagged california, hair, L.A.
Back when I wrote this post (which was about that time I flashed everyone at the local garage, thanks to a strong gust of wind and a big-skirted dress, just in case you can’t be bothered clicking the link), some of you were kind enough to say how much you liked the photos which accompanied it. And honestly, I felt a bit bad about that, because the fact is, that’s not what I actually look like most of the time.
HERE’S what I ACTUALLY look like most of the time:
Funnily enough, this is also going to be the poster for my very own horror movie, The Hair. Tagline: When hair is cut violently, a powerful curse is released…
OMGHAIR!
The curse cannot be broken:
(I’m also waltzing with a ghost in this photo. If you can see the ghost, I’m afraid you’re cursed, and your hair will kill you in your sleep tonight. If you can’t see the ghost, meanwhile? Also cursed. Sorry.)
The curse can strike at any time, and ruin any photo:
As you can see, in this photo Rubin’s special canine senses had alerted him to the approach of THE HAIR. He tried bravely to fight it (or perhaps he’s actually just struggling to get away from it, who knows?) but alas, it was too late, and that nice photo Terry had set up, with my disembodied head floating above some flowers, was ruined by the curse of THE HAIR.
Sometimes The Hair will find new and unusual ways to attack. There you will be, just walking along minding your own buisiness, when:
HAIR MOUSTACHE!
Think you can escape it?
THINK AGAIN:
Note the expression on my mum’s face here. She sees The Hair. She knows I’m doomed. She’s just wondering how to tell me. Or whether to run.
(No, I have no idea what was going on in this photo. Other than that my hair was trying to kill me, obviously.)
You should also fear the close cousin of the Hair Moustache, the HAIR BEARD:
It’s a little more subtle, but just as deadly.
So, readers, while it’s not my intention to make you all have nightmares (I think I did that already when I posted the link to THAT OLD WOMAN from Insidious) I hope I’ve shown you today that you can run, but you cannot hide from…
THE HAIR.
Move over, Samara. There’s a new creepy girl in town.
(Coming soon to a blog near you.)
(Er, if you could maybe imagine the Psycho music or something playing here, thanks.)
Tagged hair
Since we last talked:
1. This happened:
The wind, it was frightening. It still is, actually. Just to make things even more interesting, the more the wind roared and howled, the more Rubin did likewise. Imagine the wind roaring, the dog barking, the fence creaking and falling, the sirens wailing, the rain lashing, me whining… It was quite a day, really. And now we have no fence. At least we don’t have to worry about Rubin escaping in the meantime, though: he is so scared by the continuing high winds that he’s refusing to go out in them. When persuaded, he’ll just dash outside the back door, quickly do his, er, business, and then run back in with a look on his face that says, “THE HELL?!” I know how he feels.
2. This happened:
(Top story on BBC news this morning. Nice thing to wake up to.)
Yeah. For a moment there I thought I’d gone back in time to last summer, when my trip to Florida was almost cancelled because of volcanic ash, but nope, it really is happening all over again. I swear you couldn’t make this up. At the moment the airports are saying they don’t expect it to last as long as it did last time, but basically it’s a case of “wait and see”. We’re trying to be positive, but it’s a bit stressful, to be honest, and I’m getting a bit tired of planning trips and then spending the run-up to them wondering if we’re actually going to be able to go or not. This is the third time in a row that this has happened (twice with volcanic ash, once with heavy snow), so I’m hoping these things really do come in threes, and that this will be the end of it, but… probably not. Next time I announce that I’ve booked a holiday somewhere, could someone please slap me?
3. This happened:
It’s the notice (translated into English by Google Translate) of the message currently posted on Lin Shiudeng’s most recent “I’m ripping off Amber” website, which we managed to get taken down yesterday, within just a few hours of finding it. I particularly like the bit about how “there is the temptation of women pictures”. And you know, there WERE a lot of photos of me on that website (in fact, Lin had stolen every single one of my photos from last year’s Shoe Challenge)! I somehow doubt that’s what they were referring to, though. (Or that Google Translate is providing an accurate translation of what this message actually says…) So, another small victory for us, but when you consider that we’d spent the entire weekend filing DCMA notices and having Lin’s last set of websites taken down, only to wake up on Monday morning to find a brand new one waiting for us, it is starting to feel like a losing battle. Lin can put new websites up as quickly as we can have them taken down, basically, and for whatever reason (and I don’t think we’ll EVER know the reason) he/she seems to be absolutely hellbent on having at least one duplicate of my website online AT ALL TIMES, which means that, for the past week, fighting Lin, and all of the other copycats we’ve now found, has been a full time job for Terry. That’s obviously not something we can sustain in the long term, but for now we’re still working hard to find ways to make it easier to find these people, and easier to take their sites down when we do find them. Meanwhile, I like to imagine that Lin Shiudeng looks exactly like THAT OLD WOMAN from Insidious. On, and speaking of THAT…
4. In the comments on my post about Insidious, Lili mentioned a movie called The Grudge, which she said was in a similar league to The Most Frightening Movie Ever If You Are Amber: The Ring. And obviously my experience with THAT OLD WOMAN hadn’t frightened me enough, because Terry and I went right out and watched The Grudge. Hello, sleepless nights! (Note: not really. It was creepy, but it didn’t freak me out as much as The Ring did. Or like T.O.W did.)
5. My haircut happened.
No photos of that, though, because, in a completely new move for me, I decided to be sensible about it and just had a trim. You probably won’t be able to tell the difference. I consider this to be a GOOD result for one of my haircuts.
And that’s where we’re up to this week.
Tagged hair, lin shuideng, travel ordeals
Readers, there’s really no easy way to say this. In fact, because I am slightly afraid of you all, and know you’ve always reacted with horror to my “Hey, I could totally get a fringe!” suggestions in the past, I actually wasn’t going to say anything: I thought I’d just avoid posting photos of myself for a few months and no one would be any the wiser. But my clever plan was foiled, and it was foiled by my very own Shoe Challenge, which started last month and which requires all participants to take photos of themselves and post them on the Internet. Now, what kind of asshole comes up with a rule like that, eh? Oh. That would’ve been me. Excellent. I hate myself.
Of course, I could have simply taken advantage of the “you can crop out your head if you want” clause, but I’ve never done that before and people would notice and ask why, so I’m just going to come clean. I’m going to say this very quickly and then I’m going to run away and hide:
ItriedtocutmyownhairandIscreweditupsoIhadtogotothesalonandnowIhaveafringe.
And now, a short intermission, during which you can all shout at me:
<short intermission, shouting >
So, I’m not even going to TRY and defend my latest act of complete and utter idiocy. I did it because I am stupid, and that’s really all there is to be said on the matter. Because I am me, though, and I normally like to say much, much more than is ever necessary about any given subject, here is my explanation:
“I am stupid. Like, ‘If I’d been born a couple of hundred years ago, I probably wouldn’t have survived childhood’ stupid. Seriously.”
Wait, I meant my OTHER explanation:
Well, see, you know. I had been bored with my hair for a while. It wasn’t that it was a bad cut (Although obviously at least one person will email me now to say that yes, it was): it was just that I’d had it since I was about 14, and I was well and truly sick of it. The problem with that, though, was that over the last year or so, my anxiety about having my hair cut has only intensified. I mean, I know I always joke about hating going to the salon, but seriously, folks: I hate going to the salon. So I just stopped going, other than when I felt it had become unavoidable. And even although Iwas bored with my hair, I could see no way of ever changing it, because every time I DID have it cut, I was so afeared of The Return of the Mullet that I would just have it trimmed and then leave looking exactly the same as when I arrived. I knew I was being silly about it. “Amber,” I told myself, “Ain’t no point going through your ENTIRE LIFE with EXACTLY THE SAME HAIRCUT, just because you’re too scared to change it in case you hate it. Even although every time you have changed it, you’ve hated it.” But I WAS too scared. And I DID continue to go through life with exactly the same haircut.
Exactly the same haircut
It was a problem.
But then. Then came The Googling.
“You know,” I thought to myself one day, “I bet it’s not THAT hard to cut your own hair. I bet I could do it if I really wanted to. I will Google it.”
So I did. But rather than Googling something that might have actually helped me, like “THE PERILS OF CUTTING YOUR OWN HAIR”, say, I obviously Googled something like, “Cutting your own hair is easy, yeah?” Because I got a bunch of results that were all about how EASY it was to cut your own hair. How easy? SO easy! “Awesome!” I said. “Pass me the kitchen scissors, Terry!”
OK, I didn’t say that last bit. Instead, I took my search to YouTube. And there I found a bunch of tutorials with titles like, “How to cut your hair yourself – it’s easy, and not in the least bit stupid!” They had all been made by lovely young girls with gorgeous, gorgeous hair. “I cut it myself,” they all said in their videos. “Because it’s easy!”
And that was when I reached for the scissors.
Well, no, not exactly. I actually spent several weeks contemplating the thought, which obviously makes me sound even more stupid, because there was SO MUCH TIME for me to talk myself out of it. (“Why didn’t you mention this plan?” asked Terry, aghast, when I came out of the bedroom looking like I’d just lost a fight with Edward Scissorhands. “Because you would have talked me out of it,” I said, and that right there shows you why I should probably be taken into protective custody for my own good.) Then, on Saturday, I was having dinner at my parents’ house when, following a routine trip to the bathroom, I looked in the mirror above the hand basin and realised that some strands of my hair were much longer than others.
(This was the cut I mentioned here, by the way, so either some strands of my hair grow freakishly faster than others, or I’d been walking about like that for the past four weeks. And the only reason I had THAT cut was because the last time I’d been to that salon, they’d left one side much longer than the other. Yes, I still went back. Because they’re cheap and I’m in and out in ten minutes, which makes me willing to overlook the fact that hairdressing obviously isn’t part of their skill set.)
(This isn’t even the bad bit of the story yet, by the way.)
“Aha!” I thought. “This is just the opportunity I’ve been waiting for! I will use my new found hair-stylin’ skills – thanks, YouTube! – to fix this!”
So, while my parents and Terry were all outside taking photos of the night sky (Don’t ask), I went into the kitchen, snuck the hairdressing scissors out of the drawer (Yes, my parents own hairdressing scissors. Because my parents own EVEYTHING. Seriously, there will probably come a day when I can type the sentence, “.. so I went into the kitchen and snuck my parents’ nuclear warhead out of the drawer…”) and retired with them to the bathroom.
SNIP! Went the scissors. SNIPSNIP! A-SNIPSNIPSNIP! It was, dare I say it, easy. And also oddly satisfying. As I snipped, I felt my powers grow. It was like when Luke Skywalker started learning all those mad Jedi skillz. Seriously, it was JUST LIKE THAT.
“The Force is strong in you, young Padawan,” I told my reflection. “Attempting all kinds of complicated hairdressing feats, soon you will be!”
And sure enough, the hair looked fine. But I had created a monster of a different kind, there in my parents bathroom. You see, up until then, my thoughts about hair cutting had been of the strictly theoretical kind. It was one of those things that are kind of fun to think about, but which you know you’ll never actually DO, like when I imagine myself on X-Factor sometimes. Now, though, things were different. Buoyed by my recent success in the bathroom, my plans started to take on a more concrete form. It was but a matter of time before I put my skills to their true test, and one way or another, I knew my hair would be a-changin’. I just didn’t realise it would be happening this Tuesday.
After all my planning, though, when it did happen, it was very much a spur-of-the-moment thing. It was yesterday morning. I’d just finished blow-drying my hair, and I wasn’t happy with it. The bits at the front were looking a little straggly, and wouldn’t sit right, and all of sudden I knew EXACTLY what to do about it.
“Screw this!” I said, then I turned on my heel, grabbed the scissors, and cut those bad boys right off, without even giving myself a chance to think about it.
Of course, as soon as I saw the worryingly-long strands of hair fall to the floor, I realised what you all realised right at the start of this post: that I had made a monumental mistake. The full weight of the delusion I’d been operating under all came crashing down upon me in that one-split second, and for the first time in weeks, I was able to see clearly: and not just because I’d chopped several inches of my hair off.
So I cut some more, in a bid to even it all up.
WHOOPS.
Only then did I accept defeat and do what I should have done in the first place: I called the salon. And not my local Krappy Kuts, either. I knew this task would be beyond them. No, I called the proper salon, ‘fessed up, and managed to get an appointment with the salon director that afternoon. One hour and a lot of money later, I was no longer looking like a total idiot (Luckily my ruthless attack on my own head had centred solely around those strands at the very front, so the rest of the hair remains intact. And actually, the stylist has managed to give me more or less the cut I was trying to do myself, and which I’d been thinking about getting for months. It’s just a shame I don’t actually like it now I have it, thus proving that I was RIGHT to be scared to make even the smallest change, and that I should never, ever, EVER try to change my hair, no matter how bored with it I get). I WAS still feeling like one, though, obviously.
And that’s how I came to have a sideways fringe, and no money.
The End
(P.S. No, I’m not posting photos. I’m going to be pinning it back until it grows out anyway, and I’ve also been getting some very personal comments about the general state of my face here recently: I can change my hair, but there’s not much I can do about my face, unfortunately, so no photos until it grows out!)
Tagged cutting your own hair, hair
… because in December I’m going to be back here:
Tenerife, Canary Islands. I’m up in the mountains at the time, which is why I look so omgfreezing. I’d also just had the flu, thus ruining most of the first week of our trip. And we’d managed to get the hire car impounded. We’re going to try to do better this time around. Mostly, though, we’re going to see these guys:
Three monkeys! Awwww!
We booked late because we were really hoping to be able to go somewhere a bit warmer/different, but we were once again thwarted by the fact that you can hardly fly to ANYWHERE direct from Scotland in the winter. This makes me sad. This, however, makes me happy again:
I am always properly coordinated with my surroundings. Even when my surroundings are a cage full of monkeys.
(I’m actually wearing that sweater right now, funnily enough. I should shop more.)
(That was a joke, obviously. Shopping more is the last thing I need to do.)
(I probably will, though. I mean, there is a really good branch of Zara right around the corner from the hotel. I know, because I brought most of it home with me last time.)
This December is the 10th anniversary (!) of my first “date” with Terry, and it’s also the 5th anniversary of his kidney transplant, so it’s a bit of a landmark month, which we’re very much looking forward to celebrating in the sunshine – or, at least, we hope we’ll have sunshine: you can never really tell at this time of year!
In other news, I’m considering getting a fringe, in order to hide the “11s” that have appeared between my eyes, as a result of all that frowning/squinting/ageing like an old hag I do. I know I’ll hate it if I get it, but I’m hating the 11s even more, so it may be the lesser of the two evils. Or maybe not.
Tagged hair, monkeys, tenerife
(*Note: ha, gotchya! Of course I’m not giving up blogging about my hair! Because what else would I blog about? No, seriously?)
Well, The Internet has spoken on the important issue of What I Should Do With My Stupid Hair, and it seems the Internet is firmly in favour of me cutting it all off. Or a big chunk of it, anyway. Like, really in favour of that.
Naturally, this has given rise to several small but intense moments of paranoia today, as I’ve thought to myself. “OMG, The Internet must really, really hate my hair the way it is now, if it’s this enthusiastic about the idea of me cutting it off! Wah!” But who am I to resist The Internet? So (drumroll)…
I’ve booked an appointment with my hairdresser for this Saturday. I know! I was amazed they could fit me in that quickly too – yay for the recession and people choosing to cut their hair themselves or something! (Note: joking. Also, never cut your hair yourself, kids, that way madness lies. Trust one who knows. )
I’m still not totally sure what I’m going to have done. I’m pretty sure the length will be considerably shorter, but, having re-examined the hair in the cold light of day (why yes, I DO spend too much time thinking about this!), new evidence has come to light, namely the fact that the layers around the front actually start at CHIN LEVEL. These are the most troublesome bits of all, so even if I go to shoulder length (NO. I WILL NOT BE GOING TO CHIN LENGTH. ABSOLUTELY NOT. UH-UH.) I will still face a mighty tussle every morning to coax these layers into submission.
Clearly, getting a fringe is out of the question. I repeat: is OUT. OF. THE. QUESTION so, well, I have no idea what I’m going to do about that. I think I’ll probably just not think about it until I’m actually sitting in the Chair O’Doom, wearing one of those huge, unflattering capes, and then ask for a fringe anyway.
(I’m kidding about the fringe.)
(Probably)
Meanwhile, Terry had lots of fun today making me look like “a mutant” (his words) with Photoshop. I’m particularly amused by the mad skillz he has employed to draw in the part of my sweater which was covered by my hair in the original photo. I promise I don’t ACTUALLY have a hunchback. Well, not so as you’d notice…
Almost 100% certain I’ll be going with the one on the bottom right…
(These all have about 5″ taken off the bottom, by the way. Except the,er, Bichon cut, obviously…)
Tagged hair
Say you’d had a really bad haircut. A haircut so bad, in fact, that even now, months later, you’re still growing it out, and while it may not look too bad to the naked eye, only you (and now the five or so people who read your blog) know how much time you have to spend trying to wrestle it into submission every morning. (Clue: a LOT of time.)
Say you know that, at the current rate of progress, you still have quite a few months to go before your hair will return to anything like “normality”.
Would you:
a) Say, “To hell with it!”, make an appointment with the hairdresser and have it cut to shoulder length (or, OK, maybe just below that), thus getting rid of most (but not all) of the mullet-like layers in one fell swoop, but leaving your hair the shortest it’s been since you were about 14. And you’re really not sure how you’re going to feel about that…
b) Say, “To hell with it!”, leave it to continue growing out for another month (even although some mornings you’d like to rip it clean out of your head) and spend the money on shoes instead.
c) Take the sensible-but-boring approach of getting it cut, but only having a couple of inches taken off, so you will continue your progress towards normal, non-layered hair, but slowly.
d) Get a fringe.*
Your feedback on this most important of issues would be appreciated.
*Note: I’m kidding about the fringe. Probably.
Tagged hair
A few weeks ago, I started using a new hair conditioner. It’s called ‘Radiant Red’ and as the name suggests, it’s made especially for us redheads. (And very good it is too, by the way: you should totally buy it. Unless, of course, you don’t actually have red hair, in which case that would be a bit silly.)
Anyway. The conditioner is called “Radiant Red” and trust me, this is not a reference to how my hair looks after I’ve used it, but a reference to what the conditioner itself looks like. It is red. Oh so very red! Radiant red, you could say. Or you could just say, “Oh my holy hell, I wish I hadn’t bought white towels now. And a white bathroom suite.” Because trust me, this stuff gets absolutely everywhere. One thing I’ve learned about myself since I’ve been using it is that I apparently flick my head around like a demented person when I’m in the shower. (WHY?) I know this because every time I use the conditioner, the bathroom ends up looking like THAT scene from Psycho. GOD.
Luckily, the stuff washes off. Not so luckily, I am the person who has to wash it off, which I guess is only fair, really, given that I’m the one doing all the head flicking.
So, yesterday I decided to have a shower while Terry headed out to walk the dog. I thought this was quite cunning of me, because not only did it get me out of having to be outside, where it is cold, it also gave me a good excuse for not answering the phone while Terry was out. Or, indeed, the door.
The postman arrived at the door with a package for me while I was in the shower. I didn’t even hear him knock, on account of how Rubin wasn’t there to throw a complete fit at the sound of someone walking up the driveway, so I continued to merrily apply my RADIANT RED conditioner to my hair, in blissful ignorance of the fact that there was now a package waiting for me. So the postman took the package to our neighbour, and a few minutes later Terry arrived home, let Rubin into the house and then headed over to our neighbour’s house to collect the package.
For reasons that still aren’t clear to me, he did not take his keys with him when he did this. So the door closed behind him, and locked, forcing him to knock to gain re-entry.
I, meanwhile, was still in the shower, still coated in RADIANT RED, and still completely unaware that all this had happened. So when Terry knocked on the door and Rubin started a hysterical barking in response to this, I was confused. Apparently Rubin was home, but Terry was not? Had Rubin made his OWN way home from his walk then, and somehow let himself into the house? What had happened to Terry? And why was Rubin barking hysterically? Was it… OH MY GOD… could it be that something had happened to Terry while out walking, and Rubin was, at this very moment, trying to get me to follow him to the scene of the accident, where I would no doubt find Terry stuck down a well, calling feebly for help while his faithful hound raced home for reinforcements?
Well, no. Terry had just locked himself out, and so it was that I was forced to abandon my lovely warm shower and run the naked gauntlet of the freezing cold house, scattering RADIANT RED as I went, in order to let him in. By the time I got back to the bathroom it literally looked like a massacre had just taken place. The walls were splattered with RED. The floor was splattered with RED. The ceiling? RED. (HOW?) The bath? Filled with a pool of RED, that I swear to God, looked exactly like blood. Seriously, I am still amazed at how far that stuff goes. I’m still finding bits of it now, every time I go in there. And I really wish I had thought to take a photo at the time but clearly I’d more pressing matters to deal with at the time, so all I have to show for The Incident is this:
 The Afterbath They were on the floor of the bathroom as I swept by them, and the photo actually doesn’t do justice to the sheer amount of RED I had to clear up. You’ll just have to take my word for it.
Oh, and that package Terry went to collect for me? Contained two more bottles of the RADIANT RED. I’m not even joking.
Tagged hair
So, yesterday I went to the hairdresser and had a big ol’ chunk cut off my hair.
Now, I know what you’re thinking, but don’t worry, this isn’t going to be one of those entries, where I end up screaming and crying that OMG, it’s SO UNFAIR, and I HATE MY LIFE. No, this is actually a good hairdressing story – or as good as a hairdressing story can get for me considering I’m still growing out a MULLET, obviously.
Anyway, as you know, after my last brush with hairdressing hell, I had sworn to never let a pair of scissors near my head again, and to just let it grow until it got so long I had to employ a team of small children to walk behind me at all times, carrying it. I believe the name “Rapunzel” was mentioned. And the thing is, I totally intended to stick to this plan, but a few weeks ago I suddenly realised the plan was fatally flawed, because while it is true that the front part of my hair has, indeed, been growing, SO HAS THE BACK. At the same speed. So if I just let it grow I would basically never be free of the Mullet. I’d just have a super-long mullet instead. Yeah.
Gradually, then, the unwelcome truth became evident: if I ever wanted to hold my head up in public again, I would have to just bite the bullet and submit to having large chunks cut off the back of my hair every few weeks, so that eventually the front and back would meet in the middle, so to speak, and I would have “normal” hair again. Maybe.
Well, for the last few weeks, each day I have faced an almighty battle not to just pick up a pair of scissors and hack it all off myself. It is THAT BAD. And yesterday morning I woke up, looked in the mirror and realised that I could not tolerate it ONE DAY LONGER, and that if I couldn’t get it cut right that very day, I would be doing it myself. Given that I am the clumsiest woman alive, the second option didn’t sound good even to me, and so it was that I found myself in the car and driving towards the only salon I knew might be able to squeeze me in on a Saturday afternoon, repeating the mantra, “I will not ask for a fringe, I will NOT ask for a fringe” over and over again. In fact, I repeated that mantra so many times I’m actually amazed I didn’t just walk into the salon and shout “NO FRINGE!” at them.
I didn’t, though. And they told me, yes, they could fit me in, so, with fast-beating heart, I sat myself down with the stylist and told her the tale of The Mullet, after which she moved in for a closer look at the offending hair.
“OH MY GOD!” shouted the stylist, jumping back as if stung. “This is… this is a MESS!”
Now, I have to admit, I felt ever so slightly smug about this reaction. The thing is, no one has ever really believed me about how bad this haircut was. For the past two months, I’ve mostly tied it back, cunningly trying to disguise the fact that I now looked a lot like Billy Ray Cyrus, when viewed in a certain light. And, you know, there is the fact that I’m a known drama queen, and I just know most people have listened to my tale of woe and thought, “yeah right, whatever. Bet it looks exactly the same.” But it was NOT the same. And this New Stylist had instantly seen it for what it was.
“There’s a really big difference between the length at the front and the length at the back,” she said, staring at the hair as if it might bite her. “It’s almost like…”
“Like a mullet,” I said. “Yes, I know: you can say it.”
“Yeah,” said the hairdresser, warming to her theme, “But the thing is, I bet even YOU don’t realise how bad this is. I mean, you can’t see the back of your head. Seriously, YOU SHOULD SEE THE BACK OF YOUR HEAD!”
I just nodded at this, as if I hadn’t spent hours in the bathroom over the past few weeks, holding up my little Sephora mirror to try and view the back of my head. And then weeping. And drinking.
“I mean, I’d have hated to have seen this when it was first done,” continued the stylist, who was actually starting to enjoy herself just a little bit too much at this point, really. ”That must’ve looked TERRIBLE.”
Then she tried to persuade me to let her cut it to shoulder length. “It won’t fix it,” she said, “But it’ll make it look less like a … well, you know.”
Readers, I held firm. I know she was right, but I was nervous enough about being back in The Chair (“You must be terrified!” said the hairdresser cheerfully as she started snipping. “I would be!”) without adding the pressure of a Dramatic Change into the mix. So we compromised, and she cut it to just a couple of inches under my shoulders. This actually still feels like a Dramatic Change to me (when I brush it I get that horrible sinking feeling when the brush suddenly encounters air and I’m all, “OMG WHERE IS MY HAIR?!”), but I realised a long time ago that when you have long hair, no one ever notices the fact that you suddenly have four inches less of it than you used to. This theory was proven last night when we went to visit my parents and neither of them noticed, even when I swished my head around ostentatiously. They just thought I was having a fit or something.
Anyway, it’s still going to take months to grow out the mullet completely, but the point is, I have at last had a haircut that didn’t make me cry afterwards, and I think this could be a turning point in the career of my hair. I feel like maybe the ancient curse has been broken, and there is new hope that the mullet may one day be defeated. And I was going to blow-dry it and style it all nice, then get Terry to take a picture of it, but then I thought, “Why do that when I can just sit around on my ass letting it dry naturally and get all frizzy first?” So I did. Then I remembered that when Terry takes photos of me, they generally end up looking something like this:
 windy! He took this while we were out walking the dog today. “Take a picture of my hair,” I said. “Try not to make me look like a lunatic,” I said. Gah. So it looks like this is about as good as it’s going to get in terms of photos of The Hair:
There were others, but I swear to God, I had my eyes closed and was frowning in every. single. one. So, um, yeah.
Maybe I’ll ask for a fringe next time?*
(*joking!)
Tagged hair, haircut, red hair, redhead
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