Mischief (Almost) Managed

I waited a day before re-coloring my hair. And as anyone with coloring experience knows... I am still looking a little patchy. At least now the patches are in shades of brown and I can go out of the house without wearing a hat. Ha Ha.

Seriously, this experience was beyond funny and I laughed at myself all day long.

But now I have to figure out the best way to correct the coloring. I'm tempted to go to my hairdresser and cut it shorter (the bleaching process did a number on my hair) and have her try and color correct it at the same time. Maybe the answer is lots and lots of highlights and lowlights. I imagine that will be an expensive little visit. I'll have to think about this. Another option is to go and buy jet black and just be really dark for awhile.
Or... convince my daughter to help me do highlights and lowlights all over.

OMG! I turned my hair CALICO!

Have I mentioned that Paul is out of town again? He's been gone for three weeks and will be gone until Thanksgiving. Clearly, this gives me too much time to find stupid things to do... LOL
So, I found my first gray hair at age 17. By the time I was 30, I was coloring my hair to cover the gray. Recently I've been curious as to how much gray I now have (compared to the dark hair). I found a product at Walmart for removing artificial color from hair.

Yesterday, I bought a box of the stuff (and after reading the caution on the back of the box), I also bought a bottle of a new color, just in case.

The instructions INSIDE the box tell you that your hair is going to turn orange.. that this process is for removing excess color so that you can put new color in your hair. One would think that this statement would be enough to deter me. NOPE..

I did the little patch test and the results looked very promising, so I proceded to apply the product to my hair. I discovered that there isn't enough product in the box for my length of hair. So I did the best I could do, combing the solution all through my hair. Then I waited the 50 minutes.






















I now have calico cat hair. ... layers of orange and dark. There is no way in this mess that I can tell how much gray I have. So. .the experiment was a failure. I'll be coloring my hair later this afternoon. I guess if I want to know how much gray is there, I'm gonna have to do this the old fashion way and just let it grow out.

File this under... lessons learned: hair color foibles.

The Medical (almost) ALL CLEAR

Last month I had a bit of a scare. I blogged about it late one night and then deleted it before anyone could read it.

My health history is not without it's little bumps here and there. I smoked from the time I was 13 until I was 30. I stopped smoking for 8 years, gained 50 lbs and started smoking again. Lost the 50 lbs, quit smoking and gained back the 50 lbs. I started smoking for the last time when Paul was deployed to Afghanistan. It was a way to relieve some of the stress of waiting for him to come home. It didn't help that my new next door neighbor was also a smoker. We'd spend quite a few mornings, smoking away on her balcony. It was great, but it couldn't last.

I quit for what I hope will be the last time July 2006.

I'm pretty sure you can see where this scare is leading.... During August I developed a recurring sore on my lower lip. At first I didn't really think too much about it. But early in September, I finally became aware that it just never really healed and went away. Then late one night, I found a lump in my right breast.

I have been spending the last couple of weeks having various tests done. The specific tests that have given me the "all-clear" is the mammogram and most of the blood work. While there is a "fatty tissue" lump in my breast, it is benign and not anything that needs to be removed or otherwise played with.

All my blood lab work came back normal, except one. The RBC is low and the doctor has some concerns about iron deficiency. He believes that this deficiency could be the cause of the lip irritation. So.. we are continuing tests to rule out that as the problem.

It'll be another couple of weeks before this next set of tests are done and I review them with the doctor, but since he never said the "c" word with respect to my lip, I'm gonna keep a positive outlook for these results.

Re- animation

I feel like a refugee. It's gonna take me a bit of time to get this all together, but what is life but a "series of challenges to be met and mastered."

I will be back later to offer up a full report,but for now... here I am.. same blog, same me, new location.