Color

My hair started going gray in high school. It wasn't bad then, just a stray hair here and there. But I started coloring my hair when I got to college, as the grey hairs just seemed to...multiply. I had pretty short hair in the beginning of college, but it grew and grew and grew and by graduate school, it was about boob length. I stopped coloring it myself because it was just too difficult...I had a few incidents of splotchy color that probably nobody else noticed, but to me...it looked terrible. I moved to DC, got a real, grown-up job, and started paying a lovely lady to color my hair for me.

Fact: I LOVE getting my hair done. It feels like a great pampering session, and it is also the rare time when I can sit for two hours (which is how long a cut and color always takes for me!) and relax, read a magazine, whatever. My hair person in Alexandria, VA, was fantastic and great with color - plus she had a neat accent, worked at a British salon, and looked a bit like Kelly Osborne. Later, I realized that her "neat" accent was just a weird southern accent, as she was born and raised in Louisiana. She was about a gazillion years younger than me, and when she told me she was leaving the salon to move back to Louisiana because she was pregnant with twins...well, needless to say, I was surprised.

That was shortly before I moved to Indiana. I traveled constantly back and forth to Michigan for wedding planning stuff, and I would get my hair trimmed and colored by the fantastic woman who would be doing my hair for the wedding (the lovely Irene, owner of Flip Salon in Ferndale, for all you Michiganders!). She used this neat yogurt-based color on my hair that was less harsh than most color, didn't burn my nose when I inhaled, and lasted much longer than "regular" hair color.

Fast forward to post-wedding. i.e., now. All my hair is gone, cut about chin-length. And yes, I know I cut off my hair at the end of November and still haven't posted a photo of it anywhere. I'm sorry. I just don't take very good photos, and I'm holding out for a good one.

Anyway! I last had my hair colored in January, and I was thinking that it had been holding up really well. Of course, it's April now. And the other day, the light was reflecting just right in my bathroom mirror when I realized that I had about two inches of really bright, shiny grey roots at my part. And it looked...bad. People, I'm only 27. I should not have half a head of grey hairs!

Not wanting to fork over the cash for a professional color job, I headed to Target yesterday to find some hair-color-in-a-box. Fact: I stress out over choosing boxed hair color. What if I don't get the right color???!!! Ugh, so many things could go wrong. After about 20 minutes of contemplation that involved picking up every box of brown-ish color, I went with some Feria "Dark Toffee" or "Espresso" or something equally generic.

I went home, mixed up all the different bottles, and went to work. Fact: It never fails that the second I start coloring my hair myself, I freak out and think...crap. I probably shouldn't be doing this. I also constantly worry that I won't have enough dye for my hair. Did I mention that my hair is chin-length??? But every time I have my hair professionally colored, the hair people tell me that my hair just eats up color. What does that mean??? Sigh.

I got over my initial bout of anxiety when I realized how easy it would be to color my hair myself now that it's short. The color turned out okay, but it is more red than I would have liked. No grey, though.

A friend of mine from DC always had the perfect rich, brown hair color, and I knew that she colored it herself. I remember asking her what type and color of hair dye she used, and she said "I get whatever is cheapest in Medium Brown." Ugh. Could it really be that easy? I guess I'll find out next time...when I head to Target and come home with Medium Brown.