Fall Color

Have you ever noticed how something that's a dramatic change to you may be something other people don't even notice?   I remember when I was young and I got new white shoes.   They were so bright and white they seemed to make my feet stand out and shout to everyone, "hey, look at me, I'm new."    No one seemed to really notice though.

A example would be fingernail polish color.  If I have clear polish on (which I have done a lot of of late) I don't even notice my nails.   If I change that color to a dark eggplant color, I notice my fingers all day long for at least a day until the color gets integrated into the hand map in my brain.   In reverse, if I change from bright green back to clear, I notice the absence of color for a while as well.

But this isn't about fingernails or tennis shoes (I've never played tennis, but that's how I've always referred to athletic shoes).   Instead, this post is about hair.

I've highlighted my hair for years.   Adding two or three different colors in small amounts to add accent an lightness to my hair suits me.   To be clear, I have someone who knows what they're doing highlight my hair.   I would only bungle up the job.   Highlighted hair looks bread, but it's burden as well.   When it grows out (even with my slow-growing hair) it's noticeable and it has to be maintained.

Over the summer months I highlighted it one step lighter than I normally do.   People noticed it, or rather noticed that I looked different or that I looked "good" that day.   No one said, "hey, you added one lighter level of highlights to your hair, didn't you?"  But there seemed to be something people could tell was different about me.

That extra level of lightness annoyed me.   Yes, I loved it the week I got it done, but the demarcation line as it grew out bothered me.   So, I decided to set it back to zero, or at least closer to zero than it's been for a long time.

My hairstylist dyed all the hair a color that closely matched my hair color.   That was fun.  I haven't had my hair completely colored in, well, honestly I don't remember ever doing it.   I asked her questions about what she was doing because she had a different solution for the un-highlighted hair at the roots and the highlighted sections.  

When that was done we agreed, it was a good color.   But I wanted to add a bit of fall feel to the color, knowing the color she'd just completed was going to fade some.   This was going to happen because those highlighted strands were going to become lighter over time.   So, she added in a low-light and darkened some of my hair a bit from my natural color.

What's interesting is while this is a dramatic departure in color from what I had this morning to me, people aren't seeming to notice it.   My husband did—and for that, I'm proud of him.    None of our friends at dinner said anything and our friends in the neighborhood that I saw outside this afternoon didn't say anything either (and these were ladies, who usually notice hair-type things.)

I like the new color, but I predict when spring comes around I'm going to add some highlights back in.

The Big Boy Update:  My son was very excited about the new children's kitchen appliance set my husband got them at Costco today.   He and his sister played with the coffee maker, the blender and mixer, all of which worked with colored water and mimicked the things adult appliances do.    He and his sister played with them for close to two hours happily together.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:   My daughter's was in the kitchen today when I heard her go running off to the bathroom, saying to herself, "hold it, hold it".   That's what we tell them when they need to go potty and are in jeopardy of losing it.   She was telling herself the same advice.   She almost made it too.