My Head Feels Like A Dead Squid

I shall attempt to explain. I'm dyeing my hair. This is not nearly the first time I've done this, although I've only been dyeing my hair for fun for a few years now. I was, for the most part, a hair dye virgin for most of my life. I did do highlights a couple times in junior high and high school, and once or twice after that, but I didn't do a full on dye job to a different color until about two years ago.

My natural hair color is kind of a really dark blonde/light brown color. Since I highlighted it when I was a teenager, it looked golden/dark blonde. Which worked out great, because I truly am a walking blonde moment. My sister actually calls me that, and I have an MSN Messenger emoticon specifically used for blonde moments, too.

I love being blonde. That's me all over, my personality and everything. But after I had Sammy and had been married a few years, I started wondering what I'd look like as a brunette. My sister-in-law was a Mary Kay consultant at the time, so we played around on the virtual makeover site all the time and I played with hair colors. And on the computer at least, I looked good with dark brown hair.

So I was talked into it, but instead of going way dark, I went with a medium chocolate brown hair color. And my hair takes a dye really well, so it turned out great. And it was even a few shades lighter than the picture, which worked out fine, since it was my first foray into the dyeing world.

That opened the way for me. Next I went red. And we're talking fake fakedy fake bright red hair that looked truly awful on me, but it was a hoot anyway. I did it for the Fourth of July, and went swimming the day after I did it, so a good deal of the dye faded out in my day in the chlorinated pool. Which was ok, since we went from a truly garish shade of bright coppery red to a more muted copper blonde color.

Going blonde next was probably not my best idea . . . I'm sure you can imagine. Orangey strawberry blonde anyone? Oh yeah. But at least that one looked better than my bright red attempt. And it faded out a bit and looked decent.

Next was another shot at blonde, which went just fine, and that brings us up to tonight. Now, it's been at least six or seven months since I dyed my hair, and tonight I took my two boxes of champagne blonde Revlon dye to my brother and sister-in-law's. Aside from making my brother a pretty darn awesome t-shirt to wear to work for the midnight release of the new Twilight movie (Team Van Helsing, we're Twilight haters), I got my sister-in-law to dye my hair for me.

And so, after a good half hour or so of gooping up and trying to untangle my hair when it was roughly the consistency of hair covered in half-dry glue, I was pronounced done. So I wrapped my head up in a plastic bag, and I was totally rocking the I Love Lucy bandana look. Hard to imagine, I'm sure, but trust me. I was a fat Lucy.

I had twisted my hair up and smooshed it down on my skull, and since it was basically like chilling Jello, it stuck really well. And since my gooey hair was kind of in gushy dreadlocks, it felt like I had a cold, dead squid on my head that kept dropping tentacles down over my face. It made for some pretty hysterical giggling on my part, and I finally got all the tentacles tucked up nicely and secured inside the plastic bag.

And now, I'm fresh from the shower smelling strongly of the special dye treatment conditioner that came in the boxes of dye, and the jury is still out on results. My roots look strawberry blonde and my ends look maybe a few shades lighter than they were before, so I guess only morning will tell. And when I emerge from my little bed cocoon with my dry hair twirling out of control in Roman-esque curls, we'll have to see what color of the rainbow I'm sporting.

Anyone want to take a bet?

Things Pete Does That I Find Annoying/Endearing

I couldn't resist. I really couldn't. After the post of things I do that are annoying/endearing about me for Pete, I just could not help the snickering and immediate sense that I am the devil when I started thinking of doing the same, vice versa. So here it is.

Things Pete does that I find annoying:
#1 - This is the biggest thing, hence, #1. You know how people, men and women young and old, tend to kinda leave things on the floor or bed or whatever, especially when they're getting undressed? Yeah, everybody does it, no biggie. Um, to a point. OMG. This man . . . sometimes I honestly think he looks over at me, dead to the world in sleepytown, and just gets this evil grin on his face while he leaves his pants and shirt from the night before on the floor, drapes his robe over the end of the bed, ditches his shoes right in front of the bedroom door, AND LEAVES TO GO BACK TO WORK. Oooooh. *Strangles* We've discussed this before. You know what he did? He smirked at me. SMIRKED! I threw something at him.

#2 - Puts the clean, folded blankets and/or sheets . . . on the floor. The FLOOR! The floor that the dogs lay on and shed on all day long! And I swear, it does not matter how much I sweep and vacuum, there is no escaping the dog hair. And the dogs know it, too. So then Pete, my darling beloved husband . . . puts the freshly washed and perfectly folded blankets on that grody, hairy carpet. It makes me want to gouge my eyeballs out with a rusty spoon, I swear. Also under this category . . . putting the towels on the floor in the bathroom. Same problem, only the towels are often damp.

#3 - This relates to the first one. My husband has this bizarre problem, I swear. It's like he actually has no physical ability to clean up after himself as he makes messes. Take, for example, something simple like having a bowl of cereal. There are four things involved, cereal, milk, bowl, spoon. I cannot list one single time in my memory where all four things were cleaned up within an hour of that cereal being finished. I'll always go into the kitchen afterward, sigh loudly, and demand for him to come fix it. He does this with Spaghettio's all the time. The bowl will likely make it in the sink, but there will be a thick layer of dried tomato sauce the next morning that has to soak for awhile until it comes off. Can we just mention how nasty that is to look at? Kinda like the condensed, scummy 1/4" layer of Nesquik goo in the bottom of his chocolate milk cups.

You know, those ones actually cover just about all of it. I'm sure later I'll remember a dozen other things he does that annoy me, but the majority is in those three infractions.

Now for things that I find endearing (there are way more than I could ever fit in a blog post, but we'll do some favorites:
#1 - His laugh. Pete's mom has one of the most distinct laughs I have ever heard, you don't even have to know if she's in the room, as soon as you hear that laugh, you go, "There's Rita." Pete is EXACTLY the same way. I've never heard anyone with a laugh like his. It's part Mozart's laugh from Amadeus (YouTube that, seriously), part normal man laugh, and part giggle and snort. Usually when I hear it, I'm laughing harder at his laugh rather than what was funny.

#2 - This would embarrass the crap out of him, but he'll never see this, so it's ok. So, he does this one thing when I'm doing whatever in front of the mirror and he's taking a shower. Out of the blue, he'll all of a sudden just do this whale call, and then I don't know how he does it, but somehow he poofs a spray of water (sounds exactly like a whale doing it) over the curtain and all over me! I have no idea how, since he's at least a foot lower than the top of the curtain, and I'm a good two feet away at the sink, but he still does it!

#3 - He has the worst potty mouth in the world when he is playing video games with friends. Every word in the book, from A to Z (if there is a Z), usually shouted at the top of his lungs when he gets a good shot or dies. It is hysterical to listen to. Especially when he plays with his sister and they are both running around the screen during Halo toting big guns and swearing like sailors.

#4 - This is one that he hates, it drives him crazy when I point it out. His facial hair on his right cheek on this one spot grows in a circle. Seriously, it looks like some kind of UFO alien crop circle in his beard. It is HYSTERICAL! He hates it, and he'll always bat my hand away when I sit there and trace it with my finger while taunting, "Growing in a circle." But I think it's awesome. Really, who else has crop circles in their facial hair?

I really could go on for ages, like about how his feet are like twice the size of mine and when I wear his shoes to take the garbage out I feel like I'm wearing clown shoes. And how he snores like an epileptic with sleep apnea and a head cold. How he, like me, beats his clothes and shoes into the ground but still clings to them like a baby to his blankie. And how he sneezes a different bizarre way every time. And he gets SO HIGH on even simple drugs like Lortab or Ambien, and once he tried to take our dog out in the middle of the night, in December, stark naked, while hopped up one some pills he got from the doc. Like I said, I could go on. But we'll stop me now, shall we?