Not So Red (phew!)

I told my friend Zanne about a month ago that I was going to dye my hair a couple of days early in case anything should go wrong.  She laughed and said “what would make you think something would go wrong?”  And the answer was everything preceding  that moment of my life.  And indeed the hair color did go very wrong.  It was SO red, and so uneven.  The picture I posted really did not show the horrible unevenness of the color.  You would’ve thought I had just squirted it all right on top of my head and left the rest alone. There were some locks of hair that were bright red on the top and strawberry blonde on the ends and light brown at the roots. The unevenness was way worse than the color intensity. So I was freaking out today.  I was pretty calm about it Wednesday because I was sure it would fade quickly.  When it hadn’t faded by today I was pretty worried about it.  I was shampooing and scrubbing it like crazy, and then squeezing the wet hair to try to force the dye out.   Then I used some dark red-brown temporary dye and a tiny little tint brush to try to paint in some lowlights.  Then I tried a  light red-brown on the parts that weren’t as red.  And it was better, but still not good.

Then I remembered something. I remembered that I’ve been highlighting my dark, dark, mousy, dishwater blonde hair for months.  I already own toners that cancel out red/gold tones.  Thank God!  And it was in my bathroom all along. How did I not remember? Thank you, Fanci-full, for coming to the rescue once again.  Between rag rollers and Fanci-full hair color rinses, I’m becoming increasingly convinced that it’s the women over eighty who know all the good hairstyling tricks.  So it’s a nice auburn now.

Now off to Las Vegas!  Woooo!  Vegas, Baby! VEGAS!

Oh So Red

So I dyed my hair for my Ginger Halloween costume.  It is red.  Too red.  Yesterday I looked like a 15 year-old that dyed her hair with a mix of cherry and orange Kool Aid. That is no fault of the good people at Clairol that make Natural Instincts hair dye.  I should’ve followed the directions and done a strand test to determine the length of time necessary to get my hair the right shade.  I actually should have done two strand tests: one on highlighted hair and one on un-highlighted hair.  And I should’ve done the bottom section first and the top section last.  And I should’ve used a bowl and a tint brush and not just the applicator bottle.   And I even could have called the 1-800 helpline thing that they have all over their box and website to get some advice.  But I didn’t.  So here we are.

I know I should post a pic with the hair color to show you how red it is.  But the flash on my camera makes it look like a really nice, pretty shade of red, so y’all would just think I’m crazy.

Oh wait.  I tried my other camera and it gives a better indication of how red it is.

And I already did, for a moment, consider dying all of it a bright, dark, Christina Hendricks red.  Hmm… but I think I’d better leave that shade of red to a professional colorist to put on my head.

I have some clarifying shampoo that my hair cutter gave me last time I got a haircut.  She’s an older Hispanic lady, and she really doesn’t think my washing my hair once or twice a week with non-sulfate shampoo gets it near clean enough, so she gave me some really intense shampoo to use.  But she gives me the best haircuts ever, so I’ll keep going to her even if she scrubs my hair crazy and strips it of everything that makes it curl pretty.  My hair is in shock for like 3 days after the scrubbing.   Anyway, the clarifying shampoo will be good to get some of this dye out.  It’ll probably be perfect with one more washing.  It’s already way better today than it was yesterday.  If you can believe.

Also, the conditioner that came with the hair dye is supposed to last for 5 or 6 uses.  Oh Miss Clairol, you’re so funny.  With all this hair, that little tube of conditioner will maybe last 3 for me.  Maybe.

I Wanna Play a New Game

I’m  bored and I wanna play a new game.  I’m tired of this dumb shopping only-at-Walgreens-and-writing-about-it game.  It’s boring now!  I’m so glad I only have 5 weeks left.  For the past 5 months I seriously have not been counting down the days until it’s over.  Until now.  I just want to be done.  I was totally ready to cheat this week, too.  I’m going as Ginger for Halloween and I need to dye my hair red.  I’ve been wanting to try red for awhile but I always get scared and end up dying it a “Light Copper Brown” or something.  So I need to have it RED red for Halloween if I’m gonna be Ginger.  And it is light enough to get red right now.  Anyway, I was totally ready to cheat and buy the dye at Sally’s*, but luckily Sally isn’t carrying any demi-permanent hair color that’s the right shade.  They all look too brown.  So I think I’m just gonna go with the Natural Instincts “Spiced Tea” color that they carry at the Walgreens.  I’ve liked the demi-permanent Clairol color that I bought at Sally’s before, and I’m hoping this is pretty much the same thing. It could very well be a disaster. I had a hair stylist friend a few years ago who told me to never, never, ever color my hair with color from the drug store.  She had this horror story about how her hair melted once during beauty school because of drug store hair color.  So I’m a little scared.  I’ll let you know how it goes.

Seriously though I’m so ready for this to be over!

But this whole project would be boring if I quit now.  I should stick it out.

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* I understand that the name of the store is Sally Beauty Supply and that Sally is the name of the store, and not the owner, so the possessive  ’s is unnecessary.  But it’s weird to call a store by a human name. It sounds wrong.  Like, “I’m going to Fred.”  It sounds weird, right?

Random Thoughts, Facts, and a Question or Two.

I think Pier 1 is Walgreens’, like, arch-nemesis.  Only because Pier 1 doesn’t sell anything that you actually need (a fact pointed out to me by my manager when I worked at Pier 1). I’d be awful hungry if I was shopping only at Pier 1. My periods would be pretty awkward too.

I’m searching for hotels in Vegas, and have found myself checking the closest Walgreens locations to various hotels.  P.S. It says there’s a Walgreens at Flamingo and the Strip?  I don’t remember one there.

I went to the Walgreens on Fremont Street in Vegas last April.  It was full of mostly t-shirts and souvenir shot glasses, just like every other store on Fremont Street.  More details about that in November.

I love that Star Trek TNG is set in the 24^th century, but Dr. Crusher has the same hairstyle as many (if not most) of the cheerleaders and goldenettes of my high school days.   Also, the hallways in the USS Enterprise have the same color carpeting as my parents’ house.  And, I’ve seen extras who I guess are supposed to be “off-duty” sporting polo shirts with pleat-front khakis.  If their society is so much more advanced, why do they wear pleat-front khakis? Or indeed, pleat-front pants of any sort?

I hope I never get lice.  I think those lice combs would be really hard to get through my curly hair.  I came across them while looking for deep conditioning treatments at the Beauty/ Hair Care/Treatments section of walgreens.com.   It’s mostly topical hair growth ointments and lice control products.  But there’s also dozens of shampoos and styling products that would seem to make more sense in the shampoo and styling products sections of the website.

I didn’t realize the word “lousy” originally meant “full of lice” until I read All Quiet on the Western Front.  Etymology is fun!

If I were to see somebody roasting green chile in a Walgreens parking lot, would that be close enough to be considered shopping at Walgreens?

Ok, just just now, as I was writing this, I was looking at this L’Oreal toner and the aforementioned and afore-pictured lice comb was shown as a “Related Product”.  What does toning brassiness out of bleached hair have to do with lice?  Do fake blondes have a higher likelihood of lice infestations? And if that’s true, are bargain-priced blonde hookers the ones skewing that statistic?  I dunno, it just seems like they would end up in places that were lice infested more frequently than most people. But really, how are these two products related at all?  Other than… you know, hair?  Also, why is this toner called “Brass Banisher”?  Anyone who lightens their hair knows what toner is. I myself was disappointed when I couldn’t find toner, and was lucky to stumble upon this Brass Banisher.  The toner I bought at Sally might not get me through to November.

I Don’t Even Need to Buy Stuff!

Recently, I’ve been experimenting with pin-curls in my hair because… well, there’s no “because”.  That’s just what I’ve been doing (with the help of Aya’s videos at Strawberry Koi Vintage.)  Then the other day I washed my hair kinda late, and I didn’t want to go to bed with soppy wet hair.  So I tried some rag-curls.  My hair came out fabulous… and big, very big.  But the great thing about rag curls is you don’t have to buy anything for them!  I just cut up some old flannel pajamas I had lying around.  And they’re soft, so I could sleep on them.  I’ve never been able to sleep on rollers.  Of course, I suppose that’s a skill you have to learn, and I never wanted perfectly curled hair enough to learn.

And my parents gave me some potatoes and some pluots.  The pluots were so delicious.  So basically, I don’t even need to buy stuff!

But I just went shopping at Walgreens, so I guess I do still kinda need to buy stuff.  I bought some of those Dr. Scholl’s foldable flats that you can carry in your purse for when your feet hurt from walking around all night wearing 3 1/2″ heels (I mean that in a partying kind of way, rather than a hooking kind of way). I can’t believe those purse-friendly flats haven’t been around since the beginning of time.  Or at least since the invention of high-heeled shoes.  And they probably have been around in a low-key, underground sort of way, but they should’ve been available everywhere.  It’s one of those ideas that I’m like, “why didn’t I think of that?”  So I finally bought shoes at Walgreens!  And then there were some other shoes that I didn’t buy.  They were those sneakers that are kind of like ballet flats?  And I noticed the sizes were S, M, L.  What the hell kind of size is Medium for a shoe?  For a slipper or a flip flop maybe, but an honest-to-god shoe? Weird.

Mandy McAdoo and the Mystery of the Missing Noun

Good, unexpected things at the Walgreens.  Firstly, and most amazingly, they had apple pies at a local Walgreens this week.  And I don’t mean one of those half-moon shaped, hand-held “fruit pies” that come in a wrapper.  I mean actual, honest-to-god, round, 8” diameter pies.  Like that you’d slice and serve on a plate with ice cream and everything.  I guess ‘cause of the 4^th maybe?  Anyway they had them.  I was about to buy one, and then I remembered that I’ve yet to enjoy an apple pie that I didn’t bake my very own self.  So I had serious doubts about enjoying the pie from Walgreens.  But who knows? Perhaps it would’ve been lovely.

Also, I found some sulfate-free shampoo.  I had been using DevaCurl products, but those aren’t sold at Walgreens, so I couldn’t buy them and I didn’t stock up before this project started.  And it’s really not that easy to find sulfate-free shampoos.  Even at a health food store most of the shampoos have sulfates. But there’s a new line of hair products called Renpure Organics, made by some family called Redmond, that are sulfate free and claim to be made with organic, safe, fresh, natural ingredients.  And it’s great if they are all those things.  I don’t really care if they are or not, I just don’t like to put sulfates in my hair ‘cause they dry it out.  And then I started to wonder,  who cares about fresh ingredients for one’s hair?  Does something terrible happen to the thyme extract if it is not put into the mix just at the peak of freshness?  Who knows?  Maybe it would make all the hair fall clean off my head or something.  Anyway, the Renpure people are also doing this rebate thing so that you can try one “free” (free if you get your crap together to do the rebate on time and everything of course).  So that’s good.  And the products are pretty good.  I bought a shampoo, and then later a conditioner, and I really like them.  And they don’t cost $15 a bottle, like so many of my hair products.

And now for the grammar fun!  At the bottom of my conditioner bottle it says “THESE PRODUCTS ARE NOT TESTED ON ANIMALS TESTED ON THE REDMOND’S.”  Ok , first there needs to be a period or (even better) a semi-colon after the word ANIMALS.  And yeah, there is a line break between ANIMALS and TESTED, which could imply the end of a sentence/thought.  But then there’s a period at the very end, after REDMOND’S.  So the author was not using line breaks as stopping points if there is a period used elsewhere at the end of a line.  And, more importantly, it’s tested on the Redmond’s what?  There’s a noun missing.  Unless, of course, it is tested on animals, but only on animals that aren’t tested on the Redmond’s missing noun.  Now, obviously, I pepper my blogs with sentence fragments and run-ons and unnecessary commas in an attempt to capture my voice, but I don’t think the back of a bottle of conditioner is the ideal time and place to play free and loose with grammatical rules.  And if a technical writer or copywriter does choose to be cavalier about grammar there, the results need to be absolutely charming.  Just sayin’.