Chop, Chop

Back in January I made an ill-advised attempt to lighten my hair from deep brown to dark auburn using an at-home dye kit that was advertised as being specially formulated to do just that. Despite the number of times that I have had major hair fails using boxed dyes, I had high hopes that this time maybe something would be different.

You see where this is going, yes?

Well, I ended up with bleached roots, and hair that was *slightly* lighter than when I had started. I was so embarrassed by the roots. It was pretty bad.

A couple of days later I had an appointment at a salon in Oakland that has excellent reviews when it comes to color correction procedures. In late January I was sitting in a new stylists seat telling her the History of My Hair, and what I had most recently done to precipitate a visit to her chair. I sat there for over two hours while she gently stripped the dark brown/black dye from my hair to determine what the next step would be. I was calm the entire time, but she was not. She told me afterward that she kept waiting for me to freak out, especially when I told her that we were going to Las Vegas in a couple of days. I think maybe she's used to really high maintenance clients? I figured the absolute worst that could happen was that my hair would become a terrible mess and I'd have to cut it all off and start over. As I'm no stranger to super short pixie cuts, I knew that solution wouldn't be ideal for me, but it wasn't a deal breaker. As the hours wore on, we were both inordinately pleased to see that when she stripped the black dye from my hair that a beautiful shade of red was left underneath. I can only guess that it was from when I had been coloring my hair with henna, while she was confused because she expected something much different. She put a glossing layer on top and away I went, my next appointment scheduled for early March.

During this in-between time we visited Vegas and Hawaii and the chlorine and salt water from the pool and ocean during our vacation did a number on my hair. In addition to my roots having grown in quite aggressively, the ends of my hair had started to look like I spent a good amount of my day chewing on them.



The night before my salon visit, I met up with some friends I hadn't seen for many months for dinner and because I didn't want to look like a hobo, I put on make-up and made an effort to make my hair all pretty and nice, including spending about 30 minutes using the flat iron on it. It didn't look terrible, but it took a lot of pomade, leave in conditioner, and ironing to have it look this sleep. Basically, it took too damn long, so I knew something besides just a root touch up needed to be done. I considered getting it cut really short again, and even debated doing so on Facebook. By the end of the night I had decided on maybe just a trim.

Well, that's not what happened.

After she took care of my roots and then brightened up the rest of my color I was feeling a bit spunky so I asked her for an asymmetrical bob. It was a departure for me but when I walked out of the salon I really loved my hair.



 

It's been a couple of weeks since then and the color has faded a bit more than I had hoped, but I am really enjoying the cut. If I want to be lazy and not blow dry it, it still manages to have some style. And when I go all out, it looks really chic. I think maybe I won't be attempting to grow it out anytime soon.