Beauty and the Peanut Gallery

OK, so this is easily the most frivolous thing I've ever posted about, but I have to do it.   I'm on a  quest for shiny hair in the perfect shade of naturalness for me, only without resembling at all the colors that actually grow out of my head, and the time, expense, and sheer weirdness of the quest are mounting into something truly epic.

My hair is brown.  Or rather, my hair was brown, a lovely shade of it I think, but I started dyeing it way back in high school and I've grown so fond of the rituals and the suspense involved that my virgin hair has not seen daylight ever since.  I haven't been particularly adventurous-- mostly blonde and briefly bright red being as far as I'll go in the spectrum--but I think I've tried nearly every store-bought brand and many salon ones as well.  Perhaps out of revenge, my hair started shooting out wiry lightning bolts from my temples when I was 19.  Since then, the lightning has claimed more and more head real estate, most recently and egregiously laying claim to my part, which often makes it look like I have a tiny white mohawk standing up between two sheets of various shades of brown. 

The thing is, most dyes have ammonia and other chemicals in them and over time they've dried my hair out considerably.  Plus I live in the desert, and my city recently confessed, in tiny print at the very bottom of a newsletter, that its water is violently tainted with farm chemicals including arsenic way above the levels acceptable by the FDA.  So between the white hot sun and the chemical dousings, both intentional and unintentional that I subject it to, my hair is in a terrible state and should probably be congratulated for the heroic job it does just hanging on to my scalp.

All this is to say that I'm trying out a ban on chemical dyes and reverting to my first love, henna, which I was introduced to in Saudi Arabia.  Henna is a plant dye that imparts red tones and leaves hair wonderfully silky and shiny, but mixed and applied, it tends to look like big, heavy glops of excrement.  When I'm home alone this isn't a problem-- the same perverse 10-year-old qualities in me that made me want to do the Mud Run make henna dyeing good messy fun-- but with Pants around, it's more difficult.  He likes to play Peanut Gallery to my various beauty rituals, taking particular delight in my wet toenail polish duck walk and my yelps of pain from facial wax.  Last night he kept poking his head in while I was slathering my head with greenish poop-like mud.  When I finally came out with the concoction wrapped in a high, pointed mound on top of my head, he asked me to sing the Oompa Loompa song.

Next time he shaves the tops of his shoulders I'm going to have a song request ready...