For MEH.

It does. You should all be jealous. But holy shit! It took about 10 bazillion — okay 7 — processes to get my hair the exact red I wanted it.

Step 1 - Hair Process 1:
Thursday night - bleach. power failure. end result — Leeloo Dallas Multipass. Ugh!

Step 2 - Hair Process 2:
Friday night - Re-bleach pieces that I missed in the power failure on Thursday night.

Step 3 - Hair Process 3:
Ignore Rachael’s warning. Apply Manic Panic Pillarbox Red. Wrap head in aluminum foil and bake head under bonnet dryer for 2 hours.

Step 3:
Rinse hair. Look in mirror. Hair is Pink. Granted, it’s a cool pink, but not what we were going for here. Realize I may be going to Rico’s birthday party with pink hair. Cry.

Step 4:
Saturday morning drive to the mall. Talk to Laundry Broad on the phone on the way. Follow her advice to “own it” and venture into the mall like I purposely wanted my hair to be pink as I walk to the other end of the mall because I thought Spencer’s was by the entrance I parked in. Cute Punk Boy (who is probably young enough to be my kid) approaches me by the Manic Panic display and says, “Wow! Your hair looks sick! Which color did you use? Does it really glow in black light?” Happy to satisfy his curiosity, follow Cute Punk Boy to section of store that is blacklit (is that even a word?). My hair does, in fact, glow. Stifle sob. Unfortunately, Spencer’s has only MP colors in stock, Vampire Red (which is more pink in the swatch than Pillarbox Red) and Wildfire (um, no). Head over to Hot Topic on a quest for Special Effects Hair Dye in Candy Apple Red. Field looks of horror from random suburban housewives in the mall on the way. Because Hot Topic at this particular mall is lamer than most Hot Topic stores, they do not carry Special Effects. Buy Raw Fire Red Permanent Hair Dye because I figure it’s probably better to be Fire Red than pink at this point. Leave mall. Sit in car and cry a little.

Step 5 - Hair Process 4:
Stop at Ulta thinking maybe they might have “extreme hair color”. They don’t, however, they do have a salon. Have stylist at front desk tell me there was no fucking way in hell she was doing anything to my hair. Well, she didn’t actually say that, but it’s what she implied. Enter Tina. Tina is a balls to the wall kind of stylist. Tina hauls out color book. Points to a color that is kind of a deep, purplish auburn and says “this will get you in the general direction you want to be.” Tina is called crazy by other stylist. I resist urge to throttle other stylist. Tina puts color on my hair. Sit under dryer for 40 minutes. Rinse. Blow dry.

CE: I’m not happy with this.
TINA: Neither am I.

Step 6 - Hair Process 5:

Tina applies some other liquid chemical that resembled thickened blood and had the word “stain” in the name of it. Fall asleep under dryer for 20 minutes. Rinse, condition, blow dry. Okay, this is closer. My hair is burnt cranberry color. But it looks nice.

CE: Well, it’s better than the pink.
TINA: That it is.
CE: But it’s still so normal. It’s still very suburban housewife.
Other Stylist: What subdivision do you live in?

Step 7:
Refrain from telling other stylist to go fuck herself. Tina pulls me aside, tells me to stop at Armstrong McCall on way home to pick up the Matrix Prizms.Plus Semi-Permanent Hypershine Conditioning Color Gloss in Zappy Red that she’s going to call and tell them to sell it to me. (Armstrong McCall only sells to licensed cosmetologists.)

Step 8:
Drive home after stopping and purchasing 2 tubes of Zappy Red Prizms.Plus. Walk in house. MEH stares.

CE: What?
MEH: You went through all that and your hair… it’s like, the color it was when I met you.
CE: It’s not done yet. I have one more thing to do.
MEH: Um, okay.
CE: Shut up.

Step 9:
Head to Rico’s birthday party at Pump It Up. Have blast. Take ton of pictures.

Step 10 - Hair Process 6:
With MEH assisting again, apply Matrix Prizms.Plus Semi-Permanent Hypershine Conditioning Color Gloss in Zappy Red. Wrap head in aluminum foil, bake with bonnet dryer for 30 minutes. Rinse. Condition. Blow Dry. Apply ICE Hair Erratic Molding Clay

and Distortion Styling Gum

and voila!

It’s actually much brighter red than it looks in these pictures, but I couldn’t get the lighting right and frankly, I’m too exhausted to care at this point.

I’m probably going to hold off on the black chunks until July when Michelle comes to visit because, seriously, if I process my hair one more time, I think it will scream “fuck you” and just fall out and I so don’t have the bone structure to pull that off.

… while in the throes of their midlife crisis.

But not me, because my idea of a bad ass sports car is a 1967 Shelby GT 500

– only in candy apple red with silver flake and black metallic striping. Oh and Nitrous. Totally must. have. nitrous.

Procuring one of these babies would set me back somewhere in the neighborhood of $100K. Um, so…..

I decided instead to dye my hair Pillarbox Red

with black chunks. Kind of like this.

I was supposed to do it last night, but a huge storm rolled in (thunder and lightening included) just as I realized I did not have enough bleach to do my ends. I ventured out into the storm to get some more. Yes, I went out in public with my bleaching hair covered in a plastic cap. *screams* Sallys apparently closes at 8:00 p.m. so I was S.O.L. I headed home and as I pulled into our subdivision, the power went out. Great.

After leaving the bleach on my hair for 1 1/2 hours, I attempted — by the light of a camping lantern — to see if enough of my brown lifted. It looked like it lifted enough.

Um, maybe not. Go ahead say it. It’s the first thing MEH said when he saw it and has pretty much been the standard reaction to everyone I ran into today at the store buying stuff for the goodie bags for Rico’s birthday party.

Leeloo Dallas Multipass!

The right sort of people do not want apologies, and the wrong sort take a mean advantage of them.” - P.G. Wodehouse

Thanks to everyone who left words of encouragement both here and at Gaz’s blog. You all fully rule.

So here’s what happened this morning …

The part of Gaz’s hair that’s pink:

I gathered it all together and tied it in a little ponytail, braided it and tucked it under, with massive amounts of hair pins and clippies. You can’t even see it. I should have taken a picture, but it took longer than I thought and I didn’t want both kids to be late for school.

We drove Rico to school and then headed over to Gaz’s school. We missed the bell, so we went into the office. I explained to one of the school secretaries what I did so that Gaz’s hair wouldn’t be a distraction. I signed Gaz in and she went off on her merry way.

I told the secretary what happened yesterday and that the School Counselor and Assistant Principal who talked to Gaz must have thought the pink hair color was spray on and would wash out. The counselor wasn’t around and neither was the Assistant Principal so I couldn’t talk to them. So I explained to the secretary that the color it was semi-permanent and was not going to wash out for quite some time.

SEC’Y: There’s really nothing in the dress code that addresses this.
CE: I know, right? I mean there’s a mention in the Secondary School’s Handbook, but I’ve subbed at all three high schools and have seen kids with green, blue, and orange hair and it was no big deal. I didn’t think it was going to be a problem.
SEC’Y: Honestly, I saw her yesterday in the hall when it was down and didn’t even notice it.
CE: I figured the kids would make a big deal out of it, but it’s the last week of school and I thought it would be fun. I didn’t mean to cause any drama, but I’m not bleaching it out and I’m not going to apologize for something that is really no big deal. I mean, it’s just hair.
SEC’Y: It is pretty harmless.
CE: And it looks cute, and she loves it. It could have been worse, at least I didn’t dye her whole head.
SEC’Y: [Laughing] Better to do it now when they’re 10 and get it out of their system.
CE: Exactly.

So, there it is. Everything is cool as of this moment.

I did ask that if there were any further concern regarding Gaz’s hair, to please call me and that I would have no issue with Gaz missing the last couple of days of school. She’s only missed 4 days this year, and tomorrow is her class end of the year party and Thursday is a half day.

I called MEH to give him an update when I got home.

MEH: So how’d it go?
CE: Everything’s cool. I think. We’ll see.
MEH: So how many other pink-haired girls were there at school today?

The Cult of Gaz and all.

For Gaz anyway.

She got busted and talked to by the School Counselor as well as the Assistant Principal the minute she walked in the door this morning. They told her she needed to wash it out for tomorrow. Apparently, they thought it was spray on color.

So Gaz has been freaking out all day thinking I’m going to bleach it out.

Nice how they didn’t bother to call me.

Whatever.