Seriously, shouldn’t I be having my horrific my-hair-is-orange story based on some sort of drugstore box experience?

I usually don’t get my hair professionally colored. I THINK that underneath my layers of box color, my hair is still some sort of dark blonde tending toward red in the light. That’s what my roots look like, anyway. I color my hair strawberry blonde and I am told it’s very flattering. My dad’s side of the family is half Irish, and I have his fair skin and freckles and his mom’s green eyes. So I amp up the red a little bit, but I at least come by part of it honestly.

Anyway.

I very much needed a haircut and since my stylist is on maternity leave and the rest of her salon is booked for the next eleven million weeks, I decided to give the neighborhood chain a shot. I have a pretty simple haircut; all the layers are in the right place and I just needed an all-around trim to tidy it up. And, since I just do a single-process color and the salon was having a special ($20 off? Ooh!), I thought I’d treat myself and get my roots covered and the rest of my color brightened up. Red fades quickly.

How the HELL did I end up blonde yesterday?

“Oh, no no no,” I said when I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror after the stylist washed the strawberry blonde color from my hair. “My roots look like they have been bleached.”

“Ummm…” he said. “Let’s dry a chunk of it and see what it looks like then.”

Five minutes later. “No good,” I said firmly. “This looks nothing like the swatch. This is blonde and a little bit of ORANGE. No.”

He shuffled around and brought out the book and we looked at the swatches. I was right. And there was no reason, other than a faulty timer or gross incompetence, that the darkest part of my hair (roots) should have turned out bleach-blonde while the rest was slightly darker and orangey.

He offered to recolor it with a darker shade, and I refrained from making a “hell yes, you’d better” comment and we decided to mix the next 2 shades down to get a better red but keep it from going too dark.

Next step, clown hair.

The stylist applied the second batch of color to just the top 4 or 5 inches of my hair for some reason, let it soak in for about 20 minutes, and then put the rest on the bottom 4 inches for 15 minutes. I must have looked terrified when I looked in the mirror after the rinse, but I waited till he dried part of it before commenting. The result of this half-and-half application? Nice strawberry blonde hair on bottom, clown hair on top.

“That is…bright,” I said slowly.

“Oh no, it’s just not quite dry, and it looks really good. If you touch it up at home ever, you should use one of those Feria reds, those are great.”

“Feria reds look FAKE,” I replied. “I usually use the–” And he set about my head with the scissors.

The cut turned out really well. It looked just like the pictures (which is better than some people have done) and the layers are perfect. I was pleased and began to think that maybe the color was just a surprise and I wouldn get used to it. Heh. It wasn’t until I walked out into the sun that I realized how freaking bright it was. People stopped and stared. Small children screamed. Jesus wept.

This morning, I woke up and still hated it. The top was SO red. The bottom looked so bland next to it. It was all wrong for my complexion. So I went back and talked to the manager, a certified “master colorist,” (by whom I have no idea), and asked what could be done for me. She started talking about corrective coloring and toning and various processes that may or may not work and may or may not take hours and hours. I wondered whether I really ought to trust my hair to a lady whose previous customer was leaving with trashy golden blonde highlights.

“Could I just have my money back?”

“We don’t do refunds on chemical processes unless we can’t fix it.”

“You don’t know if you can fix this, though,” I protested.

“But we have things we can do that will probably make it all right.”

“I don’t want my hair over-processed and quite frankly, I’m not so in love with your color system. And besides, you charge $60 for corrective color, which I assume you will do for free in this case.”

“Oh of course, we want you to be satisfied.”

“But that’s more than my refund would be.”

She told me to come in on Wednesday.

I left without my refund and went straight across to the street to Walgreens, where I bought a semi-permanent color (slightly more brownish-red, no ammonia or peroxide for my poor hair) on sale, and a hot oil conditioning kit. Total cost: under $6.00. My plan was to darken my hair a bit to tone down the red and then let it recover for a week or two before putting in some color breaks to lighten it a bit.

So now, two hours later, I’m working my good haircut and my new reddish-brown hair that is mostly one color. Darker than usual and still a little redder on top than on bottom, yes, but at least I don’t look like a circus freak.

And I will not be going in on Wednesday.

Wow. What an article.

Ashley from Turquoise Ribbons sent that link out on Twitter today… I read the article with my eyebrows up to my hairline in pure shock. This is the sort of thing you might read on an angry person’s rant blog, not on anything resembling a professional website. Well, you shouldn’t read it anywhere because it’s crap, but you know what I mean.

Salma Hayek has a beer gut, which she tries to hide by wearing flowing dresses. She fools no one with this trickery. This lady is fat.

Yes, America Ferrera plays a dowdy, awkward character on TV’s Ugly Betty [...] Hollywood is about being extraordinary, not ordinary. It’s crazy that she has become a poster child for “curvy” women. She basically gives women an excuse to be fat.

Read it and barf. Those women are beautiful.

It’s something of a coincidence that this article was shared with me today because after yet another morning of trying on pants and flinging them away for being too tight around the girl parts,  I was frustrated beyond belief with the fact that I am yet again gaining poundage where I need it least. (Come ON, boobs, do your part here!)

For the record, I know I’m not fat. I know I’m not ugly. I know that a lot of girls would love to have my body. I know a lot of boys who would like to have a grab at it. Ten or so pounds after we broke up, Tim still says I’m his hottest ex-girlfriend. But pants are expensive and I am sick of gaining weight because it costs money, and I don’t have much to spare.

I like to think that I’m pretty positive about my body image. When I say I have a big booty it’s not because I think I’m a chunk, it’s because proportionally, I do. I carry my extra weight south of the hips and north of the knees, and it’s exaggerated by my genetic predisposition to have a sway back. My sister has it too. We get it from grandma. It’s no big deal, it’s just how we are built and frankly, I don’t mind having a little extra cushion back there. It makes stadium bleachers a little more comfortable, and it looks good in the right jeans. Boys like it and so do I. It’s my one womanly curve. (Again, boobs, quit slacking – these fries are for YOU!)

I don’t weigh myself and I don’t (yet) own a scale. It’s never really mattered to me because my weight hasn’t changed much in recent years. I’ve been underweight most of my life and now that I have achieved a healthy weight, it’s not something on my worry radar. But I’ve gained SOMETHING recently, I don’t know how much, and the one reason it really bugs me is because none of my pants fit. I just bought all new pants when I gained my healthy weight a couple of years ago (thank you, Depo-Provera) and now none of them are any good to me. Even my lazy-day slacker jeans are squishing me a bit.

Is it sick that I’m thinking about diet and exercise not because I’m overweight or unhealthy but because I just want my J. Crew cords and my Paper Denim & Cloth Franklyns with the patch pockets to fit again?

So now I will become one of those girls who clings to her “skinny jeans” and puts them away on a high shelf, unwilling to part with them because someday, some wonderful day, she will lose ten pounds and fit in them once more. That depresses me. I will say it flat out and underline it to emphasize my honesty: my weight gain depresses me. It depresses me like my credit card statements and bank account and 401(k) balances depress me.

I went to the nice resale store the other day to drop off some other no-longer-fitting stuff (I physically could not put the jeans in the car) and I looked at pants. They weren’t too expensive, they were in good shape and by decent brands, but I didn’t even try on a single pair. I was sad just looking at them, sad to the point where I gave up completely and figured that if I couldn’t wear MY pants, I wouldn’t wear ANY pants! I will wear dresses! And if/when I do lose weight around the boo-tay, my dresses will still fit. So I bought an adorable green Banana Republic dress for $6.00 to make myself feel better.

I don’t feel better yet. I am cute in my new dress with my sweater-knit tights and kicky citron flats, but I want my pants back.

——————————————-

**No, I am not pregnant. Last I checked, babies make the bulge in the front. But I peed on the stick anyway, and all is well down there.

**Dress pants are another story. I can’t smoosh myself into dress pants. Tight-around-the-booty can sometimes work with jeans, but NEVER in the office. Those must all be replaced immediately.

I had my mouse over the “Publish” button and was about to send off a post about how I hate being sick on vacation but it’s okay because my vacation is going fine anyway, blah blah, when my phone rang.

It was E.

I came up to Chicago yesterday to crash with a friend and do a little shop-shop-shopping since E had to work Friday night. The plan was for him to catch the good old MegaBus (woo!) from St. Louis at 8:30 to come up here today and I’d pick him up at Union Station at 3, from whence we would proceed to the rest of our vacation together – seeing more friends tonight, going to Michigan tomorrow, etc.

8:38 am

“Baby, you’re not gonna believe this.”

Have I heard that line before? “Are you on the bus?” I ask slowly.

It all tumbled out as one sentence. “I called the cab driver 45 minutes before the bus was supposed to leave and he was late and picked me up ten minutes before I had to be on the bus and he made two wrong turns and I missed the fucking bus and I am so sorry baby I am raging pissed right now and the noon bus is full so I can’t get another one till four o’clock and that means I won’t be there till almost ten.”

Delete happy post.

So I get to do what in the city by myself this evening? Am I supposed to keep the rendezvous with his friends that I’ve never met without him? Where do I park now? Meet friends where? I need a map! I am a planner and the plans have gone awry! What do I doooo????

Eff eff eff eff.

He’s calling the friends we were supposed to meet and stay with with and he’s going to get instructions for me. It looks like I might get to park the car in their swanky downtown building for free, so that’s nice. I’m probably going to have to meet up with these strangers and hang out with them before he gets there, which would make me a tiny bit nervous anyway but is making me much more nervous now because I am a germy ball of snot wrapped in blue Puffs tissues, and it is not a good look for me. Strangers don’t want to welcome the plague into their expensive lofty apartments to stay the night and clog up the furnace filter with ick. I’d feel much better if he were there with me, holding my grimy hand for the introductions.

But c’est la vie. They’re his lifelong friends so they have to deal with me (and I can still be charming with a red nose). And really? It’s just a few extra hours in a city I love, and I won’t complain. So I’ll go downtown today as planned, I just have a little more time to shop with money I don’t have, right?

—————–

Chicago bloggers: whatcha doing this evening?

Dear General Motors,

For the record, I do quite like my 2005 Pontiac Vibe. I like the way it handles and I like the cargo capacity. I like the sunroof and power features. I like that it’s cute and zippy. The gas mileage is superb.

But really, what were you thinking when you made a car where you have to buy the rear windshield wiper blade right from the dealer because it simply does not exist at AutoTire, O’Reilly’s, AutoZone, Midas, or any other auto parts store on the planet (or at least the Metro St. Louis Area)? Why on earth do you think it’s okay to make it so that only the factory blade attaches correctly and all other blades are too small to fit into the clip? And why, above all, must said wiper blade cost $30 when any other 11″ blade would cost $6?

Furthermore, why do you make the stereo such that the Pontiac Vibe is the ONLY GM vehicle that requires a $110 harness to install a new stereo? You read that right. The Vibe is the only vehicle in the entire GM lineup that has this problem. Trust me. I asked. A wiring harness like this for everything else costs $22. And when I say everything else, I do mean everything else, from Acura to Yugo. For the Vibe it costs $110 – before, of course, the cost of the stereo itself and the fee for installation. The people at Best Buy actually said “Yeah, your car sucks for this stuff. You’re pretty much screwed, price-wise. And by the way, no one has that $110 harness and it’s on backorder.”

Now I am forced to use an inferior FM transmitter in order to listen to my iPod. I have a road trip coming up and this situation is unacceptable.

All I want to do is buy a windshield wiper and install a stereo that has an auxiliary jack for my iPod, both at a reasonable cost comparable to what I might pay for these additions on any other vehicle made by any other manufacturer on earth. Or even any other vehicle made by GM, come to think of it. I don’t think this is too much to ask of you, especially since all of your other models accept standard wiring harnesses and wiper blades.

For this reason, I vote against Washington bailing your ass out (you know, if I had a vote in that) because it’s brainless moves like these that incline your would-be customers toward smarter manufacturers. Had I known about them, these would have made me much more inclined to purchase the competing Toyota Matrix than my little Vibe.

All the best in your bankruptcy proceedings,

Rebekah