Wet Feet

FYI

I thought you might want to know what my hair looks like now. Voila. It's blue. And magenta. And green.

Every day, people on the street tell me they love my hair color. I never get tired of it. My hair is fucking rad.

I love having blue hair. I feel supernatural, like a faery, or something that's nearly human but not quite.

The only downside is that it's nearly impossible to go incognito. People remember the blue-haired chick with eyes on her back who's name is Kateri. Anonymity is the impossible dream. 

Soon, I think I will color over the blue with transluscent blue-black. I'm not there yet. We'll see.

And FYI: the color I use is semi-permanent. That means it stains the cuticle of the hair and only lasts a month because it does not penetrate the cortex. Normally it would run and bleed in the shower and in the rain, which is a pain in the ass to say the least. I have discoever than using a demi-permanent glaze prevents fading and bleeding. I highly recommend that if you try this at home you follow it with a glaze. It's colorless and it seals the cuticle for four to six weeks. I used a product called Shine Happy, available at drugstores. That enorsement wasn't paid for. It's the god's honest truth.

Equinox

There are ten bags of trash on my sidewalk today. I am chucking literal and metaphorical shit out the door. Again.

I've come to the point where I can't believe in my own transformation because I've made the effort so many times before. How many times have I shucked off the excess only to gather it around me again more quickly than I could have imagined?

Something feels different this time but I am quick to downplay the significance. I am tired of disappointing myself. I am tired of letting down the people who dare to have faith in me.

My house has been such a catastrophic mess that the last week has been soaked in bleach and loss. I've cleaned messes that I can't even tell you about. I've let go of accumulated clutter I've collected for years, sentimental perhaps, but excessive and unnecessary.

I have finally come to that breaking point where I must remake myself or die. I know that sounds dramatic. I can't go on in the way I've been; there needs to be a fundamental shift. My default setting seems to be self-destruction and someday I will know why that is. Not right now. Right now I need to get things together, for me, for my babies, for everyone who loves me. Self-destruction is an indulgence I can't afford. Through the diligent practice of building (rather than destroying) I may discover why I have always been so driven toward self-sabotage. That is the only way I will ever find the answer.

I have done this before. I have been on the brink before. Maybe not this particular cliff in this specific location, but I have been close enough to the precipice of so many cliffs that I know what it takes to direct myself back to safe ground. I have done this before and I know I am capable.

Every time you come to a cliff it seems like the steepest, the most treacherous, the most irresistible. That's just perspective. This cliff is no different than others I have already conquered. It is just a cliff; the only thing I need to do is walk in the right direction. I know I already have the strength I need.

Fancy meeting YOU here

"Hi! Wow, it's been ages! How've you been? Oh my god! That's so interesting! I, um, have to go, um, wash my hair or something! Yeah, I have a headache! Yeeaaaaaah. It was so great to see you! Take care! Byeee!"

Jesus gay, I'm sorry, blog! But that's the treatment you've been getting from me whenever I see the link to post in my bookmarks. The same greeting I would give someone I met one night at a bar and promptly forgot about.

You deserve better, blog. I put so much energy into you, in the yesteryears. And now when I see you I treat you like a cheap one night stand. I'm horrible.

I would love to say that there's been some wildly emotional and poetic reason for my protracted silence but there's not. Burning bridges doesn't leave much time for writing. Acting like an asshole doesn't leave much room for self-reflection.

But the leaves, they are a-turnin'. The trees, they are a-fallin'. 

Literally, actually. Not just because it's nearly autumn but because the tree outside my house fell down last week.

This tree has been slowly dying for years. Last summer it produced a few green leaves, this year it produced none. Fungus crept up the trunk.

The rain drenched the trunk until it became spongy and the weight of the dead branches pulled it down into the street. There it sat, blocking cars from using the alleyway, until the city cleaned it up six hours later.

This tree began dying around the same time my marriage did. "We should just chuck it out and plant a new one", one of us said. "Maybe with some care it could be healthy again" countered the other. I don't remember who argued for which side and knowing us we switched roles every time. It was a recurring discussion.

Every year the tree got sicker, leaves sparser, fungus more plentiful. And I wondered when Nature would finally do away with this albatross, this poor dying tree. The tree figured into my dreams regularly because the nearest branch almost brushed the bedroom window next to which I sleep. It came to symbolize my baggage, all my problems that just wouldn't die. 

Sometimes I imagined it being set ablaze in a thunderstorm. I wondered if it would fall apart in pieces or just keel over, and if it would cause property damage on the descent. Every time I looked at that tree I imagined and wished for its demise.

And when I sat reading in my room on that rainy day, when I heard that whoooosh I didn't have to look out the window to see what happened. From the relief I felt in my bones I knew: the tree had finally kicked it. 

I am not silly or superstitious enough to think that the tree dying will really change anything. I am savvy enough to know that if I want it to mean something it will. 

Since the tree died I gave my kitchen the scrubbing of its life and revamped the bedtime routine to involve less yelling and more reading. I have been consciously redirecting my attitude (a near constant battle against old habits, believe me) toward being compassionate instead of impatient and frustrated.

Naomi's heading into a hard year of school and this is no time to be selfish. I am very aware, perhaps more aware than most, of the kind of damage a bad year of school could do to her self-esteem. She will be seven in a few weeks, the age of reason, and this is the kind of parenting I've been waiting to do ever since I began thinking of parenting all those years ago.

Before bedtime every night we read a few pages of A Tree Grow In Brooklyn. Naomi is captivated by the language and the imagery, we are both enthralled with the magic that can live within such hardship, and I am inspired to be as tough a mother as Katie Nolan.

Multimedia message

That's the back of a boombox circa 1985. And that's an Ipod hooked up to it. And up top there is the foot of a hipster who has gone too far.

Multimedia message

has figured out how to blog from her phone. Stay tuned...

-- ================================================================== This mobile text message is brought to you by AT&T

Multimedia message

three in a hammock. i am the luckiest :)

Multimedia message

Lunch on the deck

Multimedia message

Testing mobile blogging capabilities because it appears that i will never again have a computer that works.

All in a day's work

Today, as followers of Cecily's blog already know, I did her color. I will now walk you through what happened on my end. refer to her post for pictures because she took much better ones than I did.

She's an ideal client, especially for a student. "Hey, do whatever. It's impossible to fuck up my hair!"

So, okay. Let me try this layering method I just read about and thought would be fun. 3 r/v on the bottom, 6 r/r on the top.  In laymans terms, that's a dark red violet layered with a medum true red. A few foils in front to break it up. Let's go!

Oh, wait. Except there's one formula for the roots and another for the colored hair. Don't forget the gray, and the developer it requires.  And those zig-zag partings? that's a great idea, it surely will make the color blend nicely, and they make a special brush for that. You don't have it? well then paint like Michelangelo, and make sure you don't overlap the formulas!

Perfectionist, IGNITE!!

Four formulas, four applications. Cecily was serious when she said this took HOURS.

The biggest difference between student salons and regular salons is that everything takes twice as long, at least. We are slower and we require frequent checks to make sure that some horrible oversight hasn't been made.

When I am doing something new, as I was doing with Cecily, I will ask for instuctor assisitance as often as I can get away with. One reason is that I don't want to fuck up Cecily's hair. The other reason is that I have tremendous respect for my instructor and I know that whenever she comes over to check on my work I will learn something new. It helps that she also has respect for what I do. I can tell she likes instructing me.

"whenever I see you you're getting color" says the blond 17 year old jersey girl classmate in the dispensary.

I tell her about the idea, the existing color, the gray.

She blanches. "Good luck!" , rolls her eyes and saunters away.

Later, another classmate joins me. 20 year old PA suburbanite. "Your client FREAKS ME OUT. what's up with HER EYES? she looks ANGRY!"

I laugh. I tell her Cecily is a writer friend of mine, and she's one of the most awesome, powerful women I've ever had the pleasure to meet. Intense, yes. Angry? No, not really.

"oh my god you KNOW her?" and I can tell she's thinking she put her foot in her mouth. Who cares? Not me. Not Cecily.

The color comes out exactly as I planned. But the highlights are still ahead.

I place seven foils, all face framing, all chunky slices. Foils are harder than you'd think. You have to get them close to the scalp but not so close that the lightener bleeds out as it processes. Heavy enough to have a strong effect, fine enough to not scream "skunk!".

Because we are trying to lift out fresh pure tone color as well as exisiting color, my instructor recommends a high volume develper with the bleach. 30 volume. If left to my own devices  I would have gone all the way to 40 volume but I go with what my teacher tells me. I apply it and wait. and check and wait. I put on a cap and a towel to heat it up and wait some more. And try to keep myself from checking. It's becoming a compulsion. I show Cecily the results and pray she says it's light enough. Thank god she does because by now it's 3 PM and we've been at this since 9:30.

Jesus, this is taking forEVER.

Finally, I take the foils out, shampoo, condition deeply, and blow dry. My blow outs have been on the bad side of mediocre lately and I'm glad this one goes well. I am careful, I take my time. Because I have been substandard with the blow dryer lately I know they are watching me.

In the end, even though the lightening pattern wasn't at all uniform, it turned out cool and funky. I loved it. And Cecily liked it too.

After she was gone and I was cleaning my [tornado mess of a] station several of my classmates complimented me on my day's work. Nobody in my class has had a chance to really explore the creative side of color and they were all watching, from a distance, to see how this one turned out.

There are things I would have done differently. I would have section her hair so that more would have been the darkest color, especially in the back. But all in all, a good color service and an excellent learning experience. Thanks, Cecily. Please come back soon!