Cloudy Skies with a Chance of Rain

Name Today: Cloudy skies with a chance of rain

Ah, what a perfectly gloomy day it turned out to be. It started out with a bit of sun, but quickly became muddled with dark clouds. It was one of those days where a nap seemed like a perfect fit. I'm a product of the light. I'm my most creative on days with glorious sunlight streaming through the windows. On shaded days of gray like today, my creativity seems to hibernate, waiting to come out and play until warmed by the sun.

The Muses love the morning. ~Ben Franklin

The Sun Also Rises

Today's Prompt: Write about your various relationships with your hair.

Hmmm...where to begin? I love my hair NOW. But as a child, it was always super blonde and thin. I wanted luxuriously thick, exotically dark hair. Then, when I began puberty, the color started to change. It grew dark. I suddenly became very attached to my childhood color. I didn't want it to go away. I apologized over and over to my hair for wishing it dark, hoping that I could will it with my words to stay light. No such luck. By the time I was seventeen, it was a myriad of mousy browns. I decided to dump a whole bottle of "Sun In" on my hair, in a desperate attempt to stop the blonde from leaving me forever. I got orange instead. A brassy, coppery orange. My mother had to fix my hair with a box of Clairol Hair Color called Winter Wheat. From that point on, I colored my hair. I never thought anything of doing it myself. In my twenties, I was penny pinching, so along with 10 packets of Raman Noodles for $1.00, I would buy a box of hair color and continue the process of damaging my hair with harsh chemicals. Of course, I didn't know that's what I was doing at the time. Looking back at the pictures from the era, I always had these brassy roots and really bleached out blonde ends. 


One day, the store was out of Winter Wheat. I bought some sort of Ash Blonde color. It turned my hair blue. Marge Simpson blue! I spent all night running back and forth to Walgreens buying different colors and trying to fix it. Nothing was working. It was staying blue! Finally, I had enough and went to a salon. I had my hair put back to the original color and all the dead chopped off, which, was pretty much most of it. During this time that it was short and light brown, I didn't feel like myself. And, I had to style it everyday. Screw that! I'm way to lazy when it comes to my hair. Blow drying/styling/flat ironing/curling...not for me. If I had to do that stuff on a daily basis, I would shave my head! I began growing my hair out, taking care to go to the salon and see Edina, my stylist, every few months for a trim. I like to give Edina credit now for "growing" my hair, for now it's long, healthy and a variety of colors and tones, a nice mix between my original blonde that I was born with and the brown that I now have as an adult. The only downside is having to sit in the salon chair for three hours every four months to have highlights done. I totally despise that part of my hair routine. I love having my hair long for I don't have to blow dry it or style it save for special occasions. I'll never have short hair again. In fact, I tell people that I will go to my grave with my long hippie hair. :)