Ok, so here’s the thing. I’ve been feeling very ugly lately. I know that’s probably a pretty common thing for women my age, but it was getting like really, really bad. I was getting to the point that every time I looked into the mirror, I wanted to smash it with a hammer. Of course, the fact that I’m over 40 and I cry at just about everything these days couldn’t have had anything to do with it, right???

Anyway, I went and did it. I dyed my hair. Ok, I’m sure most of you are like “yeah, so what”. For me, this is a huge deal. I’m not the kinda girl who dyes my hair. I don’t do my nails, I don’t have 10,000 hair care products, and I don’t wear a ton of jewelry. Yes, I wear make up, but that’s only because I don’t want to scare the little kids in the neighborhood.

I had bought a box of hair color that I thought would cover up my severely gray hair. I’m a natural red-head and I missed it. I wasn’t totally gray yet, but it was pretty bad. The color I bought, however, was called “light golden brown”. I had read an article that said that the reason red-headed women had to dye their hair so often was that the chemicals used to make the red colors doesn’t adhere to the hair very well. Yeah, ok, so brown should do better. Cool.

So, I ran in the bathroom tonight because I knew that if I didn’t do it right then and there, that box of hair color would still be sitting there come Doomsday. I mixed the two bottles of stinking chemicals together, pulled on the wanna-be-a-real-pair-of-gloves, and started squeezing this crap onto my head. When it started out, it was a real pretty golden color. But, by the time I’d gotten to the bottom of that bottle, it was kind of a putrid-gutter water shade of brown. I was freaking out, but kept on keeping on.

Ok, this crap is in my hair and I’m getting buzzed from the odor. Weeeeeeeeee!! Anyway, I set my timer for 25 minutes and waited. I swear, that is always the longest flipping 25 minutes in history. I kept checking in the mirror in my room to see if I could tell the difference, and noticed right away that my hair was getting really fricking dark. Light golden brown my ass. My hair was beginning to look almost black. Holy crap, my hubby’s gonna have a stroke when he sees this. Ok, Chris, don’t panic.

At the end of those long 25 minutes, I made my way to the bathroom and began the adventure of trying to stick my head underneath the bath tub faucet without falling in and busting my face open. I’ve never been known for my graceful tendencies and this balancing act is fun with all the fumes and the standing on my head thing.

So, I get all the color rinsed out of my head, add a little conditioner hoping all those gray hairs won’t feel so much like fishing line anymore, and toweled off. I slowly turned to look in the mirror and couldn’t believe my eyes. I screamed for my daughter to come in the bathroom to get her opinion. Being a teenager, she has a lot of them. She squealed with delight. “Oh mom, it’s awesome”, she said. I kinda thought so too, but didn’t say anything. I wanted to see it after I’d dried it and got it the way I wanted. So, I went through the whole routine of blow dryer, hair straightener (I have naturally curly hair too), and curling iron (they don’t curl the way I want them to). And when it was all said and done, I was a fricking red head again. I went through all of this and ended up with red hair anyway. Man, this getting old crap sucks.