Tuesday, early afternoon, I had an appointment to get my hair cut. It was getting a bit shaggy, and it was time to do blond highlights which are easier when it's shorter. I've had some truly awful haircuts since I've moved to this little town, but last year I found someone that pretty much does what I want, and I like her.
I tell her on Tuesday that I want it shorter than usual because it's been too hot and with all my outside work, I don't have time to mess with it. She spins me in the chair--away from the mirror--and we chat away for half an hour about everything and nothing.
When she spins me back around, I am...speechless. I look like a convict, on the ship to Devil's Island. This isn't short, this is scalped. She's all bubbly and "oh how cute" and other nonsense I don't quite hear over the roaring in my ears. My only consolation is: hair grows.
Home again, I think the highlighting should go really fast, considering I barely have any hair left to color. I'm trying this new stuff that's organic, no chemicals, no ammonia, supposedly nourishing for one's hair, yada yada. I put the stuff on my hair, wander around doing this and that until the 30 minutes are up, then pop into the shower to rinse it all off.
Huh. I'm looking at the color as I dry off. It looks sort of...dark. And...is that red? No, no, it will be fine once it's dry because it will lighten up. Right?
Wrong.
I'm not sure what the frigging color is, but it most assuredly is NOT blond. I look at the box, it says medium blond highlights. Really? In what universe??
Later, walking to the mail box in the early evening, I run into one of my neighbors. She takes one look at my hair and says, "Wow, that's...spicy." I gawp at her. Spicy? What does that mean exactly? Mumbling something about hair color gone wrong, I come back home, grab my hand mirror and go outside on the deck for a real look in the natural light. Bloody hell. She's right. My hair, instead of the soft honey hues I'm used to, has turned into cinnamon...cinnamon toast to be accurate.
So. Not only do I look like an escapee from a women's prison--or a ten year old boy with wrinkles--but now I resemble a condiment. I'm not sure what I'm going to do. I went to the store yesterday and bought my usual hair color stuff, but I'm leery to put another product over this wretched mistaken blond-but-really-red crap.
On the other hand...this may be the solution:
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While I was at the store yesterday, I also broke down and bought a Weed Eater. I've resisted buying yet another damned garden implement, but I needed to mow down the tall grass across the road and my usual kid helper has run off to Alaska to pan for gold. Seriously. Oh, to be 24 again.
(I ran off to sail the seven seas when I was 24, so can appreciate the gesture).
Anyway. Because of the extreme fire danger--being up this mountain surrounded by pine, oak and brush--we are required to keep a fire break between the houses and the road, which means I am responsible for the verge across the road, ten feet down the slope and the length of my property. Not that my efforts would really make a difference, but between the fire department, the county, and my insurance company, it must be done.
I start out in the late morning, overcast skies, maybe I can get this done before the sun breaks through. Three hours later, sweat pouring down my face, shirt glued to my back, grass and weeds and bits stuck like nature's confetti to every available part of my body. I finish the front slope, the dicey edge along one side of the house, and the whole ridgeline in the back, the entire time dragging 200-ft of heavy-duty electrical cord. My hands have gone numb from the vibration of the machine, I itch all over from the detritus, the sun has burned every exposed bit of skin, giving me a Rudolph nose and farmers' arms. Crap, crap, crap.
In the midst of bemoaning the work, the dirt, the extreme hard graft of hanging over ridges and cliffs to hack down grasses and weeds, I harbor a tiny glimmer of hope that my hair will miraculously have been lightened by the sun and might be turning a bit blond. That would be great.
But no. It's even more red. Now my hair matches my face.
I take a cold shower, clean up, then realize I can't use my fingers or hands. They are stiff and sore, as are my arms from holding the weed eater. I can't even hold my paperback, let alone my Kindle.
Though, somehow, I was able to lift that wine glass.
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I called my mom in the early evening last night. She and my sister are coming next weekend to visit and to celebrate a combo Mother's Day/Mom's birthday. I've been so busy, and tired, I haven't talked to her since last week.
We chat, catch up, talk about next week, then I ask her if she watched Red Widow on Sunday night. Mom and I occasionally watch the same shows, though I only watch a handful, I'd rather read. This is one of the "filler" shows between the Winter season and Summer. I happened to catch the first episode and totally loved it, as did Mom. I record the show, then watch it sometime during the week so I can skip the commercials. Sunday was the season finale and I tell Mom that I heard the show was going to be cancelled. Mom blurts: "How can they cancel it? You mean we'll never find out what happens now that Marta knows her father was the one who killed her husband?"
Silence on my part. My brain is processing what she just said. "Wait," I say, interrupting her tirade. "WHAT? Her father did it????"
Mom says, "Oh no. You haven't watched it yet. I'm so sorry I said anything!"
"HER FATHER??"
"I'm not saying another word." And she clams up. No matter what I said, how I cajoled, begged, threatened, she wouldn't tell me a thing.
"I'm hanging up now," I said. "I'll call you back in an hour." I toss the phone into its cradle, her laughter ringing in my ears.
And yes, I sat down right that minute and watched the show. It was incredible, the writing is so brilliant, and damn, there is just no way this series should be cancelled.
I called Mom back and we spent the next fifteen minutes doing this:
Me: OMG, I couldn't believe her brother--
Mom: I know! But what about when Luther--
Me: God, I nearly screamed! And then the kid--
Mom: Which one? The daughter or the son--?
Me: And when Schiller actually killed the Russian--!
Mom: I know! Oh, they just can't cancel this show! We'll never know what happened!
It's good to have diversions in life to relieve the disappointments, in a haircut gone bad, honey turning to cinnamon, wearing a brown paper bag for the next month, and accidentally hearing a startling denouement.
A busy few days up the mountain, for sure...
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