I've had highlights in my hair for the past few months now, re-highlighting them once somewhere in the middle, and slowly the color has changed from light brown/honey to crayola yellow. I think it had something to do with the sun. This morning in front of the mirror I decided the zebra look wasn't for me and trooped off to Target for a box of color. At the suggestion of my sister-in-law (who's own natural hair color is miles beneath her color-treated surface) I bought L'Oreal's Excellence Creme in Dark Chocolate Brown. On the box it looked a lot like my natural color. On the box...

After taking my kids for a picnic in the park, I got to work on my hair. First thing, I laid out all the contents and took stock. Conditioner: check. Color treatment: check. Gloves: check. Towel: check. Hubby's raised eyebrows: check. Vomit in the back of the throat from nerves: check. The application bottle looked so small that I freaked out about the possibility of not having enough liquid, and then as I began applying it I realized I had more then enough for my entire head. I would squirt a little here, a dab there, a glob there...

The problem wasn't the tiny applicator bottle, or the drops on my bathroom rug, or the fact that I had ruined one of Hubby's t-shirts... no the problem was the smell! The stench of the chemicals was so bad I had mascara running down my burnt eyes onto my cheeks (I double checked to make sure it mascara and not dye), I had the bathroom window open and the bedroom window open and I would occasionally run to the bedroom window and literally press my face up against the screen gasping for fresh air. I'd gasp in some big breaths and troop back to the bathroom to finish another layer. Back and forth, to and from the window I went for the entire fifteen minutes it took me to apply the glop.

Then I was supposed to "loosely pile" my hair on top of my head for 30 minutes. Yeah, right. My hair doesn't "loosely pile". It's got short layers throughout, it's heavy and thick and was stuck in clumps because of the dye-goo. So I ended up turning on Day's of Our Lives and rotating my arms to the top of my head, helping to "loosely pile" my hair. For 30 long minutes I had my arms up.

The time came to rinse out my hair, which was fine because Sami and John were having the same conversation over and over as characters do on a Soap... and then the real drama started. I turned on my shower to a warm temperature (per the box instructions) and assessed my surroundings. Hubby came in to check things out. "Do you want to take the shirt off?" He asked. I declined, explaining to him my brilliant plan of leaning very far over into the stream of water and that I'd remove my clothing after and take a shower to finish up.

So I leaned forward letting the water cascade over the top of my hair, and soon the bottom of the shower pan filled slowly with brown liquid water. I was leaning very far forward so as not to get my bathroom rug wet. All was going well, but then I had a not-so-brilliant idea of turning the spout more directly on me. The water started going over my ears and around my collar, and over the top of my forehead. I blindly grabbed a washcloth to cover my eyes, but it was soaked through in a matter of seconds. Then the outside water line from the sprinklers on the lawns turned off and all of the sudden my shower increased in pressure and turned very HOT! I desperately clawed the tiles on the walls reaching for the cold spout, found it, and gave it a good yank. With my arm still extended on the cold spout this gave the water a new incentive, and before I knew it I had water running down my arm, into my shirt, soaking my bra and receding to parts south from there.

Apparently I was hooting and hollering because suddenly Hubby appeared and asked if I needed help. I was blind from the stinging brown liquid, I had a drenched washcloth covering my face, my clothes were soaked through, and the bathroom was trashed. I raised my face in his direction and very calmly said, "Could you hand me a towel, please?" I wiped my face as best as I could, and with Hubby's assistance removed the excess water and dye from my hair. When we were done, and I was standing there like a drenched dog, Hubby asked, "Why didn't you just strip and take a shower? Wouldn't that have been easier then... this??" He gestured toward my body. So I showered.

Looking in the mirror afterward I found several stained spots of dark dye on my clothes, forehead, arms, toes (don't ask) and rug. I also found I had a mesh imprint on the side of my cheek from me pressing my face against the window screen for air. Then I looked at the color. Great, instead of a zebra I was now Snow White: pasty white skin on my no-makeup face and dark, dark brown hair. After I let my hair dry I went back to the mirror and re-assessed. Something was missing... makeup! Bad move! Snow White meet gothic chick. I give up.