The definition of STUPIDITY

My natural hair color is something like this
(minus the termites)

For those of you who don't know, I color my hair. Oh, I know you guys are sooo shocked. People who have known me for years have seen my hair go from various shades of blonde to red to blondish-red to reddish-blonde. It's like a kaleidoscope of hair color. When people ask me if my hair is natural, I say something snappy like, "This is the color I was supposed to have..." I've been coloring my hair for so long, I don't remember what my real color is... I don't think my own hair knows what color it really is. All I can say is the color I see when my roots start growing out can only be referred to as "Tree Bark Brown." Booooo-riiiiing. Flat. Dull. BLAH. It's so dull, I would become invisible if I didn't color it. Sooo, to spare the world from my evil powers of invisibility (there's no telling what trouble I'd cause if I ever decided to go invisible) I color my hair.

SO, now you know. The cat's outta the bag. The color is outta the box. Whatever.

Now, the definition of STUPIDITY is when you decide, after having a couple glasses of wine, that it's a good time to color your hair. And even worse (or more stooopid) is asking your husband, who has also had a couple glasses of wine (we've found an excellent cheap brand of boxed wine here), to put the color on your hair. So I mixed up the color per the instructions given to me by my lovely hair stylist, Adriana, from Austin. I hand the bowl of color and the application brush to Joel and he proceeds to jam the brush into my scalp over and over, attempting to not only color the existing roots, but also the roots still located INSIDE my head. OUCH OUCH OUCH.

I inform him that yes, he's doing a GREAT job of getting the roots, but ask him to please angle the brush in such a way that the bristles aren't getting lodged in my skull. Slowly, but surely, he gets the color on and it takes quite a while... And per Adriana's instructions, the color is supposed to stay on 25 minutes. Hasn't it already taken more than 25 minutes to put this stuff on? I dunno. My brain was telling me not to keep it on that long, but the wine told me to keep it on longer. So I set the timer and waited...

Tick-tock-tick-tock...
DING!
Time to wash it out!
I went to the tub and wash and wash and washed until the water came out clean.
I toweled off my head...
and looked in the mirror...
and...

OH NOOOO!

Her hollow eyes always creeped me
 out... WHERE ARE HER PUPILS?

I knew there was a reason why
I love Happy Meals...

I looked like the illegitimate love child of Ronald McDonald and Orphan Annie.

Ohhhh nooooo. No no nooo.

Damn that boxed wine! DAAAMN!

It was so bad, the next day while I was at the Puppy Palace, one of our sweet volunteers -- a man from Spain named Carlos -- saw me and said, "Oh Jennifer! Your hair..." and all I said was, "Yeah, yeah, I know." And he said, "Oh, no! I mean, no, it looks good..." but you know how you can tell when someone was brought up to be polite no matter what? That's what his reaction reminded me of. As my mom always told me,“If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all."

I keep hoping hats will become the new fashion trend in Guatemala. Or maybe I'll start my own trend and wear a sombrero and tell everyone it’s just sooo much easier than putting on sunscreen every day. Or maybe I'll just suck it up and live with my SUPER DUPER FIRECRACKER EXPLOSION HOLY COW GRAB THE EXTINGUISHER BECAUSE HER HEAD IS ON FIRE SUPERNOVA RED HAIR.

*siiiiigh*

Until we meet again and/or until my color goes back to a color found in nature, stay thirsty my friends!