All righty, then. The girl's a redhead. I mean red, dark auburn, and no mistake. I sat down in the salon chair and said I needed a new haircolor. Masako exitedly said, "Red! You are a natural redhead!" I'm not, actually, although my hair tends to grab the red in any haircolor and hang onto it long after the original has faded, so she's half right. I suspect she's been secretly longing to do this. It took us forever to get the color right, though. The ends of my hair still had layers of color from previous ventures into chemistry so they took the correct hue, but the upper third of my head had reverted to my natural shade of heavily silvered ash brown and it took three applications to get everything the same shade. The first time the ends were copper and the top of my head was a bright, carroty red.
"I have never admired the Lucille Ball look," I said drily. Masako rushed around mixing a new combination of dark auburn and medium ash brown. An hour later I had two thirds of the color I wanted, but the top of my head was now a vibrant pinky rust. Finally, three and a half hours after I walked in we were both satisfied. Masako chattered all the way through the process. It was pretty funny, as usual, although exhausting; my only respite from her manic conversation was the time spent under the hair dryer. I was amused to hear she was putting "portein" in my hair. I was even more amused when she was telling me how sad she was about the death of "Charles Shorts." She is a huge Snoopy fan. She had on another amazing outfit, sporting striped black and sparkling silver leggings underneath a black and sparkling silver fuzzy top with a wide silver belt fastened by twisting two enormous metal carp. Her tennis shoes had five inch soles. The laces were sparkling silver. Of course.
For the rest of the day I startled myself every time I caught sight of myself in a mirror, amazed at the dark red hues which seemed to make my hair look much, much longer. You can't tell from my photo, but the ends are a good two inchs past my collarbone, and suddenly this seems to push my hair length from medium to long. I'm so tempted to cut it all off, do a Roaring 20's bob like I used to, and start wearing bright red lipstick again, but I won't. It looked cuter before I had jowls.
My tickets to Don Giovanni arrived today. In an email to Sei I despaired at how much money we'd spent; by the time I had enough money in my bank account to buy two tickets, the only seats left for weekend matinees were in the orchestra section. She suggested we plan to enjoy ourselves twenty percent more instead of regretting our dilatory ways. Nice spin. I put the June opera tickets in the drawer with the April tickets to Cirque du Soleil and the May tickets to the Marlowe play. I felt like such a patron of the arts.
More tulips. Two in bloom, two in bud.
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