Hair update: the end!

I have many, many Redbook posts to update you on, but you guys! Look! LOOK AT MY HAIR!

This is the entirely natural color. There is no more artificial color in there.

It's entirely too short right this moment--I don't think the shorty-short bangs do much for my narrow face (I' m not fishing for compliments, here)--but within a couple of weeks I'll feel significantly less exposed. I'm so used to super-short hair that I don't stress too much over that naked-head sensation.

I want to grow my hair down to about shoulder-length now that I don't have to worry about hiding tell-tale roots and the like, but I actually love the color. It feels like me. Which it is. I am me!

Also I coordinate well with Charlie, now, and I think that's the most important thing, don't you?

Hair update #2

Enough about the new site. Let's talk hair.

First of all, this growing-out process has taught me something new about my hair: it doesn't grow unusually fast, like I thought it did. I was convinced my hair grew an inch a month (as opposed to the normal half-inch). It turns out that this was a lie I told myself, for no apparent reason. It actually grows at the same rate as everyone else. I'm learning so much about me! It's like adolescence all over again. My body is a wonderland.

Here's an interesting thing about growing out your haircolor when your hair is short: when you have all these layers, it's easier to hide the growth. At least in some parts. Take the above picture, where it looks like I have no gray at all. Meanwhile there's about two inches of gray underneath the inch of the faded auburn blech on top. Look here:

I have a gray undercoat! I'm just like my cat. Who stared at me while I took pictures.

The tall one has gone insane. Perhaps she will die, and I can finally eat her.

Around the part area, you can see even more gray. Here you go!

Finally, here it is in different light, where it almost looks like I'm going completely white:

Oh, another thing I learned about my hair: I'm not as gray as I thought I was. Since I've been graying since high school, I assumed I would have a shining silver mane lurking beneath all the dye, but it seems like the end result will be far less dramatic. Nonetheless, I really like it, so far.

I haven't gone for a haircut yet, but I did, well, cut my own hair. Scott looked truly alarmed when I told him this. He seemed to think this was evidence of mental illness, Oh, men! Just because I have no haircutting experience whatsoever and maybe laughed a little too maniacally after telling him about my haircut! But listen, I had just trimmed Henry's bangs, and I was feeling confident. And it's not like I used the kitchen shears! Sheesh.

You're seeing the results here, and I think it looks perfectly fine and not at all insane, SCOTT.

Look, everyone, it's my hair. (Yawn.)

All right, all right.

Listen, I didn't really want to put up pictures because I'm pretty sure someone's going to get all mad about my stupid face. I don't take these comments seriously, as I am perfectly aware that I am a vision, but it does give me pause. My appearance seems to anger people so. You may recall--and if you don't I will remind you--that last year, when I was on the Today show, a thoughtful reader told me that all she could see was my "enormous ass and teeth."

Well!

But this is only my hair, so at least you will all be spared my ass. And of course the teeth. The misshapen, unfortunate teeth.

The first thing I learned, while trying to take pictures of my gray hairs, is that it's harder than it seems like it should be. The light in my bathroom's all buttery and lovely but it doesn't work when you're trying to show the horrible divide between the graying roots and the oxidizing awful of the rest of it. Here's my first try. Where are the gray hairs? They're right...right there! Oh, can't you see?!

A little closer, reluctantly. I wasn't really anticipating a close-up.

Okay, look over here, it's really gray--no? Crap. It really is. Damn it.

Fine, I'll lower my head. THERE. Now do you see?

Here's the back of the head (look, you people asked for these), where you can't see anything at all. Take my word for it, it's gray. Darker than the front, but definitely a steel-gray kind of thing.

The other side. Because my hair is longer on top than the sides, the gray's way more apparent around the ears. Which I like to think makes it look like I have a coppery toupee squatting on my head.

Now I'm looking up even more. I'm so whimsical!

In my zeal to expose the white-ness of my roots, this happened.

This is the kind of hair I have: I can yank my hair upward, and it stays. This is an advantage for silly pictures and/or to amuse my son when he's crying, and a disadvantage every morning, in that I wake up with the craziest bedhead ever and if I forget and answer the door, I terrify the meter reader. Jealous?

Now I'm just making faces. But look, in this mirror, you can see the gray hair a little more clearly.

I am the epitome of loveliness.

Finally, just to piss people off: my butt. Sweet fancy Moses, how did anyone let me on television?!

No! No, not the teeth! OH GOD CLOSE THE MOUTH CLOSE IT

Over here

School has started! OMG! LOL! I am writing things like that, now. My brain is entirely gone. I spent last week giggling into my balled-up fists.

Our son denies it, but he's pretty happy as well. If you ask him directly, he'll claim that school is torture and he despises every minute he has to endure there, but if you avert your eyes and stay quiet and still, he'll eventually walk right up to you and volunteer all kinds of happy news about his classroom and the lessons contained therein. Then if you lose all self-control and shout, "See, you DO like it!" he'll run away and you might find him eventually behind the washing machine, snapping and growling.

Henry's feral, is what I'm trying to say. It's about time you all knew it. I am not ashamed. I love my feral boy.

I would be a lot happier overall if seasonal allergies were not trying to kill us all dead. I spent the night pleading with Scott to roll over on his side; he's much happier when he's on his back but this means that his allergy-related congestion leads to snoring which leads to me engaging in homicidal fantasies. Scott told me this morning that whenever I was asleep, I was snoring just as loudly, if not more so. Instead of angrily shaking me awake, Scott just shrugged and gazed at me tenderly. Well. I find his side of the story hard to believe, as I am far too delicate and feminine to do anything like that. This is all to to say that I am now quite sleepy, and would like to go back to sleep, please, yes, okay.

What else? My graying-hair adventures are proceeding apace. I don't know how anyone does this who doesn't cut their hair crazy-short. My hair is, at its longest, 3 inches (oh yes, I measured) and about half of that length is gray. I am not liking the orangey color the rest of my hair has faded to. Mostly I'm concerned that someone out there probably thinks that I think this looks good. So from now on, anyone looks at me, I'm going to shout, "I KNOW WHAT I LOOK LIKE." I'm sure this will clear things up right away.

Oh! If you keep up with me on Twitter, you probably heard all my ramblings about the Park Slope Tornado of 2010. In case you didn't: we had a tornado. At least I think it was a tornado. In Brooklyn! It was five minutes of sheer chaos, with the dog going cuckoo-nuts while the three of us stood around and tried to make sense of what we were seeing out the windows--or to be more precise, what we weren't seeing, which was anything, because it looked like we were going through a car wash. And then the wind died down, and we saw this:

This, my friends, was the table we had on our roof deck. The large, heavy table. Taaable. The storm picked it up and dropped it down to the street below. What's amazing is that it didn't hit that white car, nor did it hit any people, with its jagged edges and enormous nails and so forth. So the dinky little lanterns on the roof deck and feather-light folding chairs, those stayed up there, but the table was blown off the roof. Oh, weather. You confound me.

Eden and I finally got around to updating Let's Panic, so you should really go over there. This week: More Things Pregnant Women Shouldn't be Allowed to Do." I'm going back to sleep now. No I'm not. Maybe I am.