Discovering what red is

All I said was that I wanted more red in my hair. That's all. The weather is warming, and I want brighter hair. It's been too dark, and I want some of my red back.

Apparently, I need to learn to define "red" more precisely.

I need to employ words like "auburn" and "copper." Not "red."

My hair-girl's new boss put in her two cents on how to mix the color for me. "It'll be gorgeous," she said, playing with my copious curls.

Put simply, my roots are red. And a few highlights match that hue. The shade is something like the hue of this pic.

But this is a cartoon. I, dear diary, am not a cartoon. We should have nothing about our appearance in common. Especially not colors in our hair!

Hair-girl touched up some RED spots that framed my face, using brown. "Wash it a few times and it'll fade," she said. "It'll be nice. Don't worry. Give it a few days, and if you don't like it, we'll redo it."

I've washed it six times since yesterday. It's fading all right. My roots and a couple of highlights are becoming something like this.


I am a professional woman! This is not a look I want. To boot, today was Meeting Day. Boss is in town on Wednesdays, so I met with him face-to-face today. He's shorter than me. He couldn't see the roots. The beauty of curls is that I can fluff and arrange and cover up the roots, pretty easily. That'll do until hair-girl can fix it.

For a moment, I thought about Greg. I'm supposed to see him in about 10 days. He's not shorter than me, by a long shot. He'd notice. I thought of his funky tattoos. He might actually like the red-pinkness.

Then, last night, I was at a friend's house, where she was doing a cooking demonstration. I explained my multi-colored hair to the other gathered friends. They cooed and soothed at me that my hair was lovely and they couldn't tell anything was amiss. I relaxed. Afterwards, I gave a friend a ride home. As she got out of my car, the interior lights shone right over the top of my locks.

"Oh, I see it now," she said. And she grimaced. "Yeah, you're going to want to get that taken care of."

Hair-girl is getting a call....