Neal and Ang made an appearance yesterday for dinner. I fixed a fancy, gourmet, crock-pot dinner straight from the freezer aisle. Honestly, it received rave reviews. Naturally, I took all the credit.
But even more pleasing than the tasty beef stew was the fact that Angela agreed to highlight my hair.
Now, aside from the few hair gurus I’ve had who actually work in salons, there are only a handful of people whom I’ve allowed to dye my hair.
- Aaron and I had a lot of fun the first time I went to visit him in law school bleaching my hair and then attempting to put black streaks in and THEN attempting to bleach the scary black streaks out and turning them orange.
- I believe that Molly may have assisted me in retouching my head before I went to work the next day.
- And I’m pretty sure that Lea and I did some non-permanent hair coloring via mousse back in the day.
But now I wouldn’t trust just anyone to be able to handle the complexity of the task. In fact, the only other person who crossed my mind was my sister. But, I have to admit, when thinking through all of my pals and their varying levels of detail-orientedness, Ang won out hands down.
I think she was a little nervous about the task once she agreed to do it. But I had complete faith. She couldn’t possibly mess it up the way Aaron and I did. And just for reference, I paid to have this fire-engine red streak put in. (And I adored it.)
I also know that Neal was a little concerned that if she did poorly they wouldn’t be invited back for other Crock-Pot Classics from Banquet, not to mention that I’d never speak to her again. But I can’t say it enough times: it could never be as bad as a coloring experiment that involved black.
So we began.
First we had to locate the proper equipment for the job. As I did not have the proper equipment necessary, we had to improvise.
- A lovely rice bowl from my set of dishes made a fantastic keeper for the goo.
- A pastry brush acted as a the highlighting tool.
- A wooden bamboo skewer served to separate the pieces of hair and get the foil in place.
- Bobby pins kept the hairs we didn’t want colored out of the way because I didn’t have the proper hair clip - until I started holding them up with my hand.
- A comb to tame the mane and improper clips to hold the majority of the extra hair out of the way.
Then Ang proceeded to foil the locks. This took about an hour.
Post foiling, I sat by the space heater and waited an additional 30 minutes to process - even though the directions said to wait 45 minutes total at most. Whatever.
Upon determining that I had processed long enough, Ang noticed that I had what she termed “zebra stripes” on some of the hairs that should have remained brown.
She also noted that it was “really, REALLY blonde.” I think she was attempting to cover the fear that she had totally screwed up my hair. Again, I refer you to your imagination and the thought of me with white hair and two frightening black streaks.
I took the foil out and it looked WAY cool. I was SO excited.
Ang was frightened.
I think she calmed down a bit after I rinsed it out and she saw that I wasn’t wigging out. I am really impressed with the way it turned out -even without makeup and my glasses. And I feel at least five pounds thinner.
But then I saw her eyes glaze over and the stylist in her immediately went into analyzation mode: “Do we have any color left? I could add a little more here…and here. I could fix the zebra stripes and this part that’s a little orange. And the back…you have this spot that’s blonder than the other areas…I could fix that too.”
As it was 10.45 by this point, and I was completely happy, I wouldn’t let her do anything else to it, but I could see that she was already scheming about how we’ll do it next time: “I think I’ll leave another row of hairs out of the foil so that you get more contrast.” And she’s already assured me that she has the proper clips and a comb that won’t require us to use the bamboo skewer in the future.
Seriously, what are girlfriends for?
Oh, and, the one little spot that threatened to be a little orange? Took care of that with some purple shampoo. It cleaned up that “brassiness” and no one but Ang and me will ever be able to tell where it was.
And the best part? l got all this for a frozen crock-pot dinner.
What more could a girl want?
