Abraham Lincoln in Chocolate Mocha Brown

Derek has been coloring my hair for me ever since we got married. It’s not something that he really enjoys but it is something that he does because he loves me (and because I whine around about it until he caves). For years, I colored it a slightly reddish medium brown shade. Then I went completely manic on meds and starting coloring it myself pretty much every other weekend. I also cut it myself several times. There were days that my head looked like somebody had put a calico cat in a blender – not a pretty sight ! Something about going manic makes you crave change and you are never ever happy with how you look. So bleaching huge chunks of my bangs albino white and chopping off the back to look like Joan Jett was my way of expressing myself. I got lots of “that chick should be locked up somewhere” looks for sure. But when you are crazy you really don’t give a rat’s ace what everybody else thinks and you continue to color your hair every shade of the spectrum and ignore the strange glances.

Now that I am off of all of the meds and back to my semi-sane self, I have grown my hair back out long and naturally wavy. I used to love to paint that multicolored goo on my head and be shocked at what turned out. Now I hate the feel of hair color on my head and put off coloring it as long as possible. Well this week when I saw wiry, gray strands sticking straight up ala Alfalfa from The Little Rascals, I decided that I had to color. I informed Derek that it could not wait another second while we were swimming last night. He was so thrilled !

I have so much hair now that it takes 3 boxes of haircolor to color my whole head. I bought a box of medium brown (light chocolate) and mixed it with 2 boxes of dark brown (deep mocha). Derek raised his eyebrows when the colors came out – one had a eggplant tinge to it and the others were somewhat Ronald McDonaldish. I assured him that the color of the product was not the same as what my hair would turn out. I sat on the edge of the tub and awaited my “professional” hair coloring application. Derek then started globbing that goo all over my head. He started his professional hairdresser voice and said “dahling – your hair is going to be fabulous!”. I of course started laughing and he scolded me and told me that if I didn’t sit still then this was going to turn into a Jackson Pollock hair coloring application.

I really cannot complain about him doing my hair color and his technique because he is doing me a huge favor by doing it for me. Buuuuuuuuuuuut – he does have a tendency to do the glob and rub method where he puts a huge blob of hair color in one spot and then rubs it in to my brain. He was flinging that stuff like a mad man. After he got all of the goo all over my head he proceeded to make sculptures out of my hair. His favorite was when he made gigantic curls on the top of my head, scrunched up his face, and starting singing “we represent the Lollipop Guild – the Lollipop Guild – the Lollipop Guild” from the Wizard of Oz. I of course broke out in laughter again and was told “daaaaaaaaahling you must sit still”. Which only made me laugh more.

After the application was done, I sat in the tub for 20 minutes waiting for my processing time to be over. I then leaned over the tub and washed the 50 pounds of nearly black goo out of my hair. It took forever. When I got it all washed out – I stood back up. Well all I can say is that the stains on the sides of my face and all along my neck looked nothing like a Jackson Pollock painting. They looked more like one of those images that people see in the water spots on their ceilings or in discarded socks on the floor. I think that one of them vaguely resembles our former president Abraham Lincoln. The one on the other side kinda of looks like Bozo the Clown. I yelled at Derek from the bathroom, “Honey – get me a piece of bread STAT – so that we can burn these images into some toast and make some money on EBAY”.

It didn’t work. Guess I am going to have to sell a kidney after all.