When every day is a bad hair day

OK, right away I will mention that I haven't undergone chemo, and whining about bad hair seems pretty insensitive when half the women I know are going around with scarves on their heads (instead of around their necks where I'm sure they would much rather be wearing them, if at all.)

But I'm going to whine about my hair anyway, because at the rate things are going, I'll be wearing scarves on my head sooner or later. I mean, it just seems inevitable at this point. Doesn't it? Almost like everyone's fifteen minutes of fame?

So on to the burning issue of my hair and why it drives me crazy.

Because I am not as young as I used to be (by the way, dear Reader, I can tell without looking--call me psychic--that neither are you--but I digress) my hair is dyed. Because it is dyed, it is fried. (Hellooooooo Dr. Seuss!)

So what I have is a mess of medium chestnut brown hair with some of it highlighted lighter (so as to escape that "I poured a bottle of brown shoe polish on my head" look) and some of it low-lighted darker. My hair dyer assures me this adds "depth and a look of extra fullness," but we're all going to have to take her word for it. It's possible, of course, that this depth and fullness is going on behind my back where I can't see.

So anyway. I'm sitting here with it wet, and I can feel it drying into little wiggly frizzles. Now pre-chemicals, my hair was as thick and straight as a horse's tail. So I breezed through the 70s and 80s pretty much wearing it long and straight or short and bobbed. I bought a can of mousse, developed a faint competence with the blow dryer, and all was well.

Now, however, those choppy layers are in style. And I hereby curse whoever the hell it was who did that to Meg Ryan in the first place. Also the person who did that to Jennifer Anniston the first time around. Because now we all have all these damned layers cut into our hair, and I, at least, have no idea what to do with them.

So for the moment I have two kinds of hair: the envy-producing professionally- colored and blown-out just-left-the-salon high-maintenance look. And the starting-to-show roots, madly frizzy, ineptly-blown-out-at-home look.

Unfortunately, since I loathe beauty salons and only go when things have gotten really, really bad, the ratio of the first to the latter is about 1 in 60.

Speaking of which, I had better go apply some product and blow my hair out now, or I will spend the rest of the day cringeing every time I pass a mirror. I've truly enjoyed ranting, but I have my public to consider.

-P.