“You’re Always Rockin the Random Hair Colors”

On the phone the other night with my sister I told her that another crazy color has now made its way to the top of my head and in response she said word for word what I have quoted for the title. She immediately followed that up by requesting pictures which I was hesitant to commit to at first (it was such a big change I was even a little shocked) but in the end it got me thinking that she is completely right. I love to mix it up. It is only hair and eventually it will grow out and be cut off. For at least the next month this is me; I will own it and to be honest it is starting to grow on me.

There are now only about four colors my hair has never been -- pink, blue, purple and green -- and I am quite sure I will eventually get around to some of those. Not green though, that always makes me think of the early days of hair color when women would go blonde and then get in a pool. To be fair, I have also never allowed myself to go gray; that is the color I try to avoid by using all these other ones. Someday when I am old and my roots start to grow in at a 70/30 proportion I will just dye it grey and get it over with. I will go with the stunning Jamie Lee Curtis look and be the sexy older gal who rocks short, gray hair. Let me just make a point to note that I do not consider Ms. Curtis to be old, despite how those sentences appear to connect. I am only in my thirties so if I was on the same track as her I still have fifteen years of insanity before I flip to silver. Then again, maybe that would be a good time to go purple.

Over the last year or so I would spend a ridiculously long time staring at the boxes full of smiling faces and end up reaching for auburn with a sigh, wishing I had the guts to do something extreme like this again.




I mentioned that I have never gone pink but it certainly looks that way so let me explain. My hair was as short as the photo on the right but I still wanted to do something outrageous while I visited my friend D and her then husband A in North Carolina so A grabbed his little neon hair ties and D grabbed her fake hair extensions. He spent about two hours turning my tiny hair into little nubs on top of my head then placed the extensions all over the back. We went dancing that night and it was a blast. Removing all of them the next day turned me into Foxy Blonde due to the platinum afro I was left with. This color made it about a year -- the maintenance with root touch up became aggravating so eventually it went back to auburn.

Another short lived, but much more difficult to get rid of, color was when I went jet black. That was fun but harsh in contrast to auburn and I did not love it. In addition to the color, this was during a time when I was attempting to grow my hair out so there was (to me) a lot of very dark hair. After a few days of looking in the mirror at a new color I usually start to think ‘it could be alright’ but that feeling never came. Within days I was doing everything possible to try to soften it but as a painter I know that it is always easier to deepen a color than lighten it and it took a really long time to get rid of. I eventually gave in, going shorter with the cut, and pulled out the bleach to strip the black out which is what led me to sandy blonde this past summer.

After close to two years of bouncing between brown and auburn then finally on to (hold me back) sandy, reddish blonde I had enough of my boring head so while picking up body wash the other day I spent literally thirty seconds in the aisle of happy boxes; just long enough to scan for something wild. I thought it might present a little deeper but no; it looks as if Strawberry Shortcake is my sister. Think fire truck, the heart on “I ♥ NY” shirts, lights on an ambulance, stop signs. Yeah. On the plus side she dresses really cute -- she knows how to rock a hat and pink patent leather Mary Janes with a jean skirt and a hoodie so I suppose there could be worse characters to resemble. She is adorable and apparently a really good person, not to mention “spunky” which I certainly have going for me. Hmmm, I actually have that entire outfit.

Yesterday while touring the Boston Harbor Islands (which I will expand on at some point) Matt snapped a couple photos of me that I am willing to share.

Holding up our fine city.

Let me out of here!

This wall was at least four feet thick.

I took the one of the two of us together. Matt looks exactly the same as he did four years ago.