Story of Me in Hair & Glasses

Sometime when I was in school I lost my glasses, went without them for a year or two. I need them to see far away, but since I don't drive, and they were triggering my headaches, I wore them less and less. Anyway, one day I finally found them, and I was sooo excited, because I really liked them.

And then lost them only a few months later! I think I left them at the church basement where I had First Aid training, but without a car I could never be bothered to go all the way back to check. :-( So I went back to getting used to being without them.

Truth is, though my headaches are better with the meds, I still wasn't able to wear my glasses all the time. I still have enough on-the-edge days, like right now, where glasses/headphones/hats etc would definitely give me a full headache. But I would like to have glasses this year for Gilmabelfest. And Fernando needs glasses too. So must make the grand effort to get us off to New Look, get our eyes checked, get some eyewear.

It's just sooooo long to pick out glasses. I know exactly what suits me, but you have to try on so many pairs before you find the right size. Good heavens.

In other Appearance News, I've decided to grow out my bleach. I've continued to dye or bleach my hair all these years because it dries out my normally greasy hair, and therefore makes it easier to deal with. But I'm so lazy about doing my roots, I've finally hit my limit. And a few years back I stopped using dye because of animal testing, and switched to bleach. But bleach is much harder to control that dye. It's hard to get the colour even (and I'm too lazy to really try), and the colour doesn't really suit me, it's too blonde.

So. I'll grow it out. Check out how my white hairs are coming along. And if I get sick of my natural hair, I'll just go back to bleach. (There's one brand of dye that doesn't test on animals, but it's not yet stocked somewhere close to where I live and shop regularly.)

I was trying on a black turtle neck today, and it looked so good against my bleached hair, it was my first moment of almost-changing-my-mind. Against my washed-out-brown hair it won't have the same exciting effect! ;-) But I'm tired of the blonde. I don't like having the same hair all the time. And I never mind experimenting, cause it grows out fast. (I have no scientific proof that my hair and nails grow faster-than-average, yet I'm convinced of it. They're weeds, I tell you. Weeds!)

Childhood blondiness (you can see my eyebrows were light too)

Grade 3 or 4, you can see it got darker

1990

A few years later, and you can see it's even darker. I suspect this is the colour we'll be returning to, but with gray.

1998, not long after I started dying it blond.

This was the colour I got when home-dying it. It's closer to my eyebrow colour, so more natural looking. But a few years ago I fiiiiinally stopped being able to Live With Myself in terms of buying a non-necessary item that was animal tested, so I had to stop buying it. And those are the glasses I lost.

Haley eating my dyed hair.

When I first bleached it, I went for as white as I could. This took a LONG time. And turned my hair to the consistency of straw. It took a LOT of conditioner just to make it look un-insane.

And then I added the red.

But bright dyes wash out really fast. (That's why you see girls going around with vaguely green hair, which looks terrible.) And even re-dying it, I couldn't get it back that vibrant shade. Which is why I didn't continue to dye bright colours--too much work, not very satisfying.

Here you see the colour layer has become yellow.

These days I leave the bleach in less long, so that my hair isn't so dry, and so the colour isn't so white. But it's still an unattractive yellow colour. I've never been happy with it.

So this is what we're going back to baby!

Maybe I should just make splotches of blond, and become a calico like my cats. Anyway, so my hair is going to look terrible for the next month while I grow it out. Luckily I'll be on vacation much of the time. Once it's grown out enough I'll chop off the ends, and then decide what I think.