I’m Definitely Having a Moment

Matt and Emma (Skyping me from Kuwait): Mom! What have you done to your hair?

Shelley: Long story, but lucky for you, dad’s still in England, so I’ve plenty of time to share it. I’ll start at the beginning. You might not know this, but for the last year, I’ve been thinking about not dyeing my hair, because I’m tired of the hassle of colouring it every five weeks, for twenty-seven years, not to mention how good ole menopause has thinned it out. I realized I would be taking a chance that people may no longer think I’m a young fourty, fourty-five, fourty-seven, fifty year old, but was willing to sacrifice. Sadly, I wasn’t sure how to go about it, until I watched, “House of Cards” where I spotted Robyn Wright, with her fabulous haircut, one that I could easily copy, except for the little detail of how her top section is blonde and mine would be white.

in2eastafrica.net

My hair dresser did exactly as requested, left the top as is and dyed the bottom, but when I returned home, I hated the mix of white roots and brown ends, so

I returned to the salon, and had her cut and cut and cut and cut until I yelled, “Stop! If you keep cutting, I won’t have any hair left!”

But she said, “If I stop, you’ll be left with random brown patches and I don’t have any time to bleach them.”

And I said, “I don’t care.” but when I returned home, I realized I did care, so I grabbed my scissors and began viciously hacking out the brown patches until it dawned on me that pink patches of skin were also not what I wanted, so I Googled,

“How to remove unwanted hair colour.”

Luckily for me, the first site that popped up listed 10 sure fire ways of bleaching unwanted colour. Not willing to take any chances, I mixed

# three – peroxide

# five – lemon juice

# six – Baking soda

together and mashed the concoction into my hair, but even after an hour, those freakin’ brown patches hadn’t shifted.

I was gutted.

But, as you know, “Smiths don’t quit” so, I jammed on my baseball cap, headed to the grocery store, and bought

a box of professional hair colour remover and a box of hair dye because I was unsure of my next move. Finally, after hours, days, minutes seconds of deliberation, I chose

the professional hair colour remover knowing that if it didn’t work, I could always return to dyeing my hair every five weeks. Sixty minutes in, I was horrified to see that my brown patches were orange. Apparently I missed this little detail.

Thoroughly panicked, I frantically grabbed the half empty bleach bottle out of the garbage, opened it and… and… Damn if the solution didn’t explode.

Everywhere.

After clean up, note that the bottle is still foaming.

Including in my wine. I’m not sure what traumatized me more, my hair or bleached wine. Despite it being 11:30 PM, I shot off a text to Andrew,

And that, Matt and Emma, is the story of how my hair came to look like this…

Matt and Emma: Are you crying?

Shelley: I’m definitely having a moment.

Flowers to cheer up mom from Matt and Emma

Shelley and John