I have experimented with self-colored hair for my entire adult life. Intermittently, I go get a really solid pro job, using multiple foils and even low-lites from time to time.

Recently, I’ve been focused on cutting expenses wherever possible, and over the winter I settled into a satisfactory solid color that wasn’t far from my roots from Sally Beauty.

Historically, I get the itch to go blonde in late spring, and last night was no different. I happened to be at Walgreens. I happened to be in the haircolor aisle. I happened to spot a Feria highlighting kit that I am pretty sure I’ve used in the past. It seemed like a good idea. Think about it. Don’t most bad ideas seem good for a moment?

I emerged from the shower after painstakingly painting the blue foam in evenly-spaced stripes (that I envisioned to come out looking sun-kissed) all over my head and waiting the prescribed 30 minutes.

DAMN.

“Well,” I thought, “maybe when I dry it, it won’t look so orange.”

DAMN.

After the drying process, it was still orange, but with yellow stripes.

My little redhead, in her usual effort to be honest yet gentle, said “Well, mom? At least it isn’t blue!”

This morning I combed, teased, and tried to form it into a style that would somehow camouflage the uncamouflageable. (That wasn’t a real word until JUST now, thank you very much!)

I walked into my project room at work, and was prepared to hear a flurry of “comments.” (We’re a tight-knit bunch, almost like family.) To my surprise, I only noticed a few people notice my new ‘do.

Throughout the day I tried to convince myself that there are people walking around with much worse dye jobs than me. RIGHT?

Luckily, I was able to secure an appointment tonight at Anton’s in Pewaukee.

I had a couple people make pleasant “Oh, did you do something different with your hair?” comments in my direction. They were met with “I KNOW. I AM GETTING IT FIXED TONIGHT.”

My rescuer tonight was Phung, a fellow single working mama. She didn’t beat me up for trying to color my hair at home, which I appreciated. She applied approximately 14 pounds of foils and some toner to my tortured mop and promised me it would look good.

When it was time to dry, a fella named Adam came out of nowhere with a second blow dryer. Now that was the celebrity treatment, let me tell you!

I could really get used to this.

I am now sporting the cool, evenly spaced highlights I so desired when I started this whole project 24 hours ago, as well as a styled-up ‘do. It didn’t save me any money, but I’m ready for summer and really DO plan to have more fun.

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