I said I was gonna. . .

. . . and I did.

Here am I going in. Don't I look brave?

So far, as you see, my hair bears only minor evidence of tampering: the remnants of two-month-old highlights. No biggy. I've never been thrilled with my hair color. To tell you the truth, I've never been all that thrilled with hair color. Brown. Dishwater. Orangish. Grey. Meh. Not my faves. There's a universe of colors out there, but they do not happen to manifest as hair. Aqua. Cherry popsicle. Grenadine. Goldenrod. Violet. The pearly luminescent crimson of the red-velvet-cake bath gel Alexandra gave me, the one that makes me want to eat my own shoulders in the shower. That would be a fabulous hair color!

Still, through my teens and twenties, it never occurred to me to do anything about my drab hair-colored hair beyond getting a variety of unthrilling weaves and streaks. I don't know why it didn't occur to me. For the same reason it didn't occur to me to take art classes in high school and college? Well, for the past few months, this idea has been growing on me.

I'll date its origins earlier, a few years back when I saw Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Loved Kate Winslet in it; loved her hair. But I didn't seriously consider doing it. I mean, I'm no Clementine. And then, I don't know. Ideas have a way of self-seeding, like wildflowers. You think it's just blowing by on the wind, and the next thing you know it's growing in your garden. It's there. The idea for art school came over me like that. I was working my first post-college "real job" as an editor for Lonely Planet. I'd been messing around with drawing and painting for a few years when I met the first art school grad I had ever met in my life. Surely that was when that seed -- or let's call it a spore -- planted itself. Art school started out as a wild idea and grew in the dark until one day I found myself calling art schools for their catalogs. Just like that.

Well, the hair thing happened like that too. One day I guess I realized: a) I love color. b) My hair bores me. Ipso facto, I should color my hair.

First, it had to be bleached. That was kind of like acid on the back of my scalp. Like that one time when I was battling aliens that shot acid out of their udders and one of them got me and melted off the back of my head. That's what this felt like -- like that one time. Here's what it looked like:


You only get to see the super close-up because mein Gott did it look awful with my skin. Phleh.

Next came the color. And what color!



Finally, here it is dry:

I love it! And the weird part is, it doesn't even seem weird to me. It was like I was instantly used to it. Except for the part about my acid-melted scalp. Hoo. Bleach is gnarly stuff. Fancy putting it on your head.

Thank you Dayna at Belle Epoque for the luscious pinkness!

This has been a Sunday Scribbling about HAIR. For more, go here.