Gray-Be-Gone

(Original posting date 12/24/07)

It's no secret that I'll be 43 in less than two weeks. I think I look OK for my age, if you don't look too closely at the wrinkles around my eyes, or notice that my ass droops half-way down to my knees. The gray, however, is a dead giveaway.

My mom was 36 when I was born, and already cultivating a good crop of gray around the front of her hair. By the time I was old enough to form an image of her that lasted, she was really gray in front. She refused to color it, saying she'd earned each and every one of those gray hairs.

That just doesn't work for me. I figure I lost about 15 years in my 20s and early 30s, when I should've been young and hot, but was busy being a mom and also morbidly obese. Now that I'm thin again and the kid is grown and gone and doing great on his own, I figure life owes me a decade or two, and I refuse to succumb to gray.

Unfortunately, I'm also poor. And cheap. Miss Clairol Natural Instinct does a nice job of covering my gray, thankfully. Because if it didn't exist, I'd be at least 30% gray around the front, too, like Mom was. This is Not Acceptable.

Early this summer, I went to the Waterfall Salon here in town, and encountered a goddess named Jolene. I have very dark brown hair. The Uber-Brunette. But I have always longed to be a redhead, which totally does NOT work with my dark complexion and very dark eyes. The Lovely Jolene, however, found a way to give me the ultimate dark auburn highlights, with dark lowlights and glowy-red highlights, without making me look like Bozo The Clown.

Sadly, since then, I have been too poverty-stricken to return to see Jolene. Hey, I have dogs (lots of dogs) who also require hair care, and MY hair doesn't leave giant radioactive fuzz-mammoths all over the floor, so Tara at Little Suzie's Pet Parlor has received most of the hair-care dollars I've been able to accumulate.

Now, though, it's the Holiday Season. I am the original Grinch, sitting here happily in a Grinch-green sweater right this second, but that doesn't stop me from accepting gifts. Preferably cash. And I have now accumulated enough of these generous gifts to schedule a visit with Jolene The Hair Genius for this Thursday! I will once again have hair that holds a curl longer than two hours, and splended splashes of auburn, and NO GRAY. The gray has been a particular problem lately, since I realized that a visit to Jolene might be in my near future, so I stayed away from Miss Clairol so as not to appear unfaithful.

I am also in desperate need of an exfoliating and deep-moisturizing facial and an eyebrow wax... but the good news is that my birthday is just around the corner!!!

Gray-B-Gone! I have no time for you! And I'm WAY too young to find you distinguished or charming or some sort of badge of honor! Just go away!!!!!