Instead of Saving The World ...

I feel like I'm channeling Paris Hilton or something.

I mean, there's so much going on in the world. Obama picked his Veep candidate. The Olympics. John McCain's roach whooped Obama's roach's butt (Presidential Roach Race). And yet, instead of reflecting and emoting on the state of the world, yesterday I blogged about shoes. And today, I'm blogging about my hair.

Oh well. Sometimes a girl just has to be a girl, I guess.

Anyway, my natural hair color is a very dark brown - so dark brown in fact that it looks almost black. But I really have no clue what I'd look like with it, because it hasn't been its natural color since I was about 18.

Every 4 to 6 weeks, I do what I have to do to maintain the red-brown I've come to consider me. It started when I got into my mother's closet and found a box of the hair dye she'd been using for years (a "lightest auburn" shade) and decided to give it a whirl one night back in my early college days. I wasn't intending to make a permanent change that night, I was just bored. But I liked how it turned out, and kept it that way.

Over the years, I have come to almost think of it as my natural hair color. It's been this way so long I would almost forget it wasn't "real," IF:

- I didn't have to plan my touchup sessions around no one being home. I rarely did the hair coloring around the ex, and I've never done it around Lee. It isn't that I try to convince men that this is my real hair color. I mean, Lee uses the bathroom where the box of L'Oreal Lightest Auburn sits waiting on the sink on dye-day. But just because I'm comfortable letting him know I dye my hair doesn't mean I want him to see me doing it. Any girl who has ever had her hair dyed, either at home or in a salon, will admit that there's no way to look anything but dorky while in the midst of doing what you gotta do. Besides, the stuff smells.

- I hadn't realized on more that one occasion that if I'm careless and let dye of this particular color drip on the sink, the mirror, the floor or my clothes, that it will look like a vicious axe murder took place in my house.

On the flip side, it's easy to understand why I've almost come to think of this as natural in spite of goopy rituals and the occasional horror movie moment. Since my mom has colored her hair with the same shade for years, and my father is a natural redhead (well, he's naturally bald now, but he WAS a natural redhead), people who know us all tend to think I inherited my hair color. 

I thought briefly about going back to black about a year or two ago, but I realized that the gray hairs that have started to make a blessedly sporadic but still obnoxious appearance on my head are MUCH easier to hide with a reddish-brown hair shade than with an almost-black.And while I've never been one to obsess about age, I'm just not ready to make friends with the gray.

 So, since Lee had to work today and I had a quiet Saturday morning home alone, I did the ritual. And I managed not to get the dye anywhere but on my head. Go me. The difference?

Me at Dundee Creek

 Taken last week, with the roots in serious need of a touch-up.

Just a Saturday

Taken this morning, after mission accomplished.

Now, back to your regularly scheduled Saturday. I'm keeping mine blissfully low-key, with nothing more exciting planned than a trip to the produce stand and a stop-in to visit the grandparents.

Come to think of it, I'm really acting all grown-up and domestic this weekend. I spent my Friday night mopping the kitchen floor and grocery shopping.

Yep - beer-swillin' partygirl is definitely having a homebody moment.