Hair Dye History

Those of you that have known me for a long time are probably well aware of the fact that I can't stand all the gray hair that I have. I'm not gray by choice. At times I have embraced my developing salt and pepper locks, but lately, all the gray has really bothered me. It especially bothers when on my lazy days when I throw my hair back in a headband and look pretty much like a skunk. So here's the hair dye story if you haven't heard it before...

I've dyed my hair on and off since I was 18ish. I usually opted for reddish hues. An old roommate somehow convinced me that bleach blonde was a good look on my very short hair at the time. I wound up looking like Bon Jovi instead of Eve from Dawson's Creek. (She was roomie's coloring inspiration). I spent 4 hours in a salon trying to fix the Bon Jovi disaster...I think I was a sophomore in college. So that was my life's first hair coloring disaster.

 

My second disaster was in the form of the world's worst allergic reaction. I pretty much always had MILD reactions to hair dye. Usually a little redness around the hairline. Sometimes a bit itchy. For some reason, shortly after Larry and I were married, I literally wanted to die after coloring my hair. (no pun intended). The rash was not just around my hairline, but pretty much anywhere that the dye had touched...my wrists from where it dripped, down my back from where I rinsed in the shower, my ENTIRE scalp. It was more than a rash. I had horrific blisters everywhere. My eyelids were red and itchy. On top of that, the lymph nodes behind my ears were the size of golf balls. My head itched uncontrollably. I was miserable. I had to sleep with towels on my pillow because my scalp was literally oozing fluid. Sexy, right? Well, this catastrophe literally wound me up in urgent care more than once and at an allergist at one point for several rounds of prednisone and steroid injections to help me get through the worst 8 weeks of my life. I basically continued to react to the dye until enough time had passed for me to cut it all out of my hair. Fricking sucked so gray hair definitely sounded more desirable than going through THAT ever again! I actually freaked so much about letting the hair dye touch me for extensive allergy testing to find out which exact ingredient was so horrific for me, that I skipped out on my last allergist appointment and just decided to NEVER dye my hair again.

I found one hair product about 5 years ago (Clairol Loving Care, semi permanent...no ammonia, no peroxide.) I didn't react to that which was great but it only lasted about 6 washes. Lame. They ended up discontinuing it but I was bummed because I could at least darken my hair up for special occasions (weddings, photos, birthing a new baby). 

My hair dresser was convinced that she had two products that were "much more natural". She did two test patches on my inner arms about a year ago, swearing that no one in her 20 years of being a hair dresser had ever reacted to. I went back the next day to show her the quarter size patches of inflamed itchy rashy redness on both of my inner arms to prove to her that I wasn't crazy. She was flabbergasted. Yep, gray it was.

Well, over the past year "some gray hairs" has turned into "A LOT of gray hairs". Several people have noticed and mentioned "wow, you have a lot of gray for being so young". I'm not sure if such people are aware of how much it really bothers me deep down to have such heavy patches of gray. Lazy hair days with headband and ponytail reveals a lovely developing skunk stripe right in front. Grrrrreat. I decided while off this summer that there is no way in hell that I am the ONLY person in the world THIS allergic to hair dye. My research began and my research led me to Light Mountain Color the Gray.

 

Meet my new best friend!!!! Well, my high maintenance new best friend! It was quite the process. I ordered it from Amazon and was super eager to get going when it arrived in the mail yesterday. While it is a two step process using only pure henna and pure indigo, I still did the patch tests. No reaction.  Good start. The reviews stated over and over how messy it was and how much time it would take. The super stinky powders had to be mixed with hot distilled water using non-metallic supplies and the colors has to "cure" for 3-4 hours. Then I was ready to start after lining the bathroom with trash bags and putting vaseline around my hairline to make sure I didn't stain my face. So the four hour extravaganza began. I felt like I was slathering mud all over my head and it was like a scene from Encino Man in my bathroom. 

 

Step 1 with the henna was complete after about an hour and a half. Emma woke from her nap during this time and looked at me like "what the hell are you doing". I rinsed the smelly, gritty crap out of my hair and embarked on the two hour journey of applying the second step and "letting it cook". And alas, I rinsed out all the stinky and underneath it all, I must say I was sooooooooooo happy with the results. Golden/reddish highlights where the gray used to be and overall shiny, silky NON-GRAY hair. Finally. But I don't know if I really want to go through that whole process again before the baby is born.

Grumpy Mama

Well, this WAS going to start off as a happy post of all of the fun things Emma and I have been doing together (birthday parties, playdates, Sea World, beach). However, I have now decided to make it the grumpy mom post because that is how I feel today. My emotions have been relatively even keeled during this pregnancy but I've gotta keep it real. My shit is unraveling today. Here is a list of my bitches of the day:

1) My pinchy neck is killing me. My neck has been all outta whack for the past two weeks. Should be an easy fix with a visit to the chiropractor, but he selfishly decided to take a vacation for crying out loud. He's got some nerve going to Norway during the summer. Sheesh. The only reason my neck hurts so bad is because of the glory of sleeping on my side all the time. Hooray. He said I could make an appointment with another doctor in his office while he was gone, but quite honestly, I'm not really a doctor whore. It takes me awhile to get comfortable with people so having Eugene Levy's creepy look alike adjust me while pregnant just makes me nervous. Needless to say, I am pillow shopping in the meantime. Please don't suggest some sort of preggo body pillow either. They suck. So many people rave about them. I tried one while pregnant with Emma and hated it. And I super hate it still. And Eugene Levy still creeps me out.

2) Well my neck hurts and I have to pee all the time again, so I am not sleeping very well. Fortunately I'm not working right now, but it still sucks to feel dang tired all the time.

3) The office explosion is making me insane. If you've been to Casa Lui, you have likely seen the "office o throw up". Not having a garage is great for the additional living space but sucky when it comes to storage. We technically have a four bedroom house but use the third bedroom as a spare room and keep the office open for storing random shit. Well, obviously Mr. Oliver will be occupying room #3 so the office needs to become habitable again. I don't know where to start. There is just so much shit. It's a sneak peek into my life on an episode of Hoarders. Except I'm not a Hoarder. Let's just say that Larry still owns shirts from when we first started dating. Yeah, that was thirteen years ago. Nuff said. The office needs a major intervention. Don't worry, there isn't any food or fecal matter to be found in there. (And this isn't an ACTUAL picture of the office, which I'm too embarrassed to post on here!)

4) Emma's daycare drop off was a bit rough today. =( After a wonderful first week at her new school, today there were almost tears. When I picked her up last Friday, she said, "Mom, I love my new school! It's so fun." Today, not so much. More like "Mom, please don't leave me. I feel scared." To her credit, her teacher wasn't there this morning and she had never seen the sub before. And here it goes, if I'm going to keep it real, I'm going to say it....she fit the stereotypical bill of a true east county woman, missing a few (or more) teeth from her grill. Nice as could be BUT a little scary. After 10 minutes of heavy clinging, she ventured off. They mentioned to me when I picked her up that she had a bit of an emotional morning. Yeah, so did I.

5) After getting home from crappy drop off, sitting in the middle of the office crying at the disaster before me, the doctor's office called. F*@$! I KNEW this was regarding my one hour glucose test from Friday. Yep, failed. Awesome, get to go back Wednesday for the 3 hour. Hooray.

So those are my bitches and here is how I problem solved them.....

I said eff it to any organizational tasks and plopped my ass on the couch and immersed myself into episodes of "Parenthood" on Hulu. Pretty good show. The kid with Asperger's made me briefly think about WORK, but then I stopped and went back to vegging out. I vegged until I decided I needed a milkshake to cheer me up. I am usually pretty partial to Carl's Jr. Oreo shakes, but the Java Cookie shake from Jack in the Box has been rather delicious lately. So to celebrate my glucose test failure, I set out for a milkshake and am now happily snuggling with my pumpkin on the couch. Life isn't bad, but life isn't ME without a little bitching sometimes. =)

Busy busy busy!

It may be vacation time, but the past week has been VERY busy at the Lui house. Friday was Emma's last day at St. Paul's. She's been there since she was 13 weeks old, so while I was ready for the change, it was also a bit emotional for this hormonal mommy. (And in regards to hormones, I will say that I have been WAY less hormonal carrying this baby than I was with Emma!) She brought doughnuts for all of her teachers and made fruit cones for her classmates. She really loved her Dragonfly teacher, Ms. Sharon, but she is ready to start with her new teacher, Ms. Sue, on Monday! In the meantime, we have just enjoyed a wonderful week at home together!

I had my 24 week checkup this week. I have gained TWENTY-SIX pounds already! Holy smokes! (The skirt hides how big my ass has gotten!) The doctor is not concerned since I "was on the skinny side to begin with", but she anticipates that I will gain between 40-50 pounds. Eff me. Considering that the baby weighs barely two pounds at this point, 26 pounds is ridic. LOTS of "maternal fat stores". Lol. I think I gained a total of 38 with Emma, so Oliver will have her beat since you're supposed to gain a pound per week and I still have 15 weeks to go. Ay ay ay. I do realize that this is partly my fault as I have not turned away ANY food and purchased more milkshakes that any one person needs. Oh well. Here is me and my dress up queen. 

 Oliver is still sitting very low. Belly feels heavy already. Interested to see how the rest of this pregnancy goes!

 My sweet girl always likes to give kisses to her brother!

So there's a story behind the following pictures. If they were an art piece, I would call them "House Alarm Shenanigans".

So, long story short, around midnight the other night, an obnoxious ass beep would go off with a computerized "Low battery" voice EVERY 15 MINUTES. This is characteristic of our house alarm when a sensor battery is low or something. Well, by 2 am and after sending Larry out of the room repeatedly to turn it off, I was getting rather annoyed. I mean, how hard is it to shut this damn thing up? He assured me that if it beeped again, he didn't know what else to do to make it stop. Honestly, in my tired state, when it beeped again, I thought, "Seriously, he's such an idiot. IIIII will go take care of this!" Well, I don't know how the hell that thing was still beeping either. All of the batteries had been taken out. The control box was in pieces. The batteries were OUT of the sensors. The pinchy box wasn't even attached to the wall anymore. Okay, poltergeist. So I decided to sit in the hall and stare at the wall until it beeped again. Of course Emma woke up right before it beeped and I was walking down the hall to her room so couldn't pinpoint where the effing sound was coming from. "Mom, I have to pee. And I had a bad dream about beeping." LOL. After taking her to the bathroom, I decided to sit in the living room and stare at all the pieces again for the next 15 minutes to see which one was possessed by satan. Mind you, my brain as a mom and while pregnant functions at 15% capacity on most occasions but it occurred to me suddenly that the house alarm "voice" was usually a dude and the "voice" tonight was a woman. Eff me, it wasn't the house alarm. Right as I pulled up a chair in the hallway and climbed all 151 lbs of me up onto the chair to pull down the smoke detector, the mother effer beeped right in my hand "low battery". Ugh, smoke detector? Really? Well, at least the house alarm isn't possessed. Of course it won't work anymore, but I'm glad to know I don't have to sprinkle my house with holy water. At least we can laugh about it now!

Finally for the week, my older brother Gary came down to SD to visit for a few days. Emma was excited to have someone else to play with her. (Clearly my slow state is starting to bore her!) We braved an outing to the San Diego County Fair the evening before it's last day. Bad idea as far as traffic was concerned, but she had a great time. She "let" uncle go on a few rides with her but pretty much insisted on doing everything by herself. *sigh*. Here's a few pictures from our 7 hour adventure!

She let uncle ride, but he sure as hell wasn't allowed to help her spin it!

Waiting patiently to ride the ferris wheel....by herself.

 Um, yeah, THIS made me a bit nervous!

One of the few photos where she was actually willing to look at the camera.

That's her and uncle climbing up the stairs to the top of this GIANT slide.

 Ay ay ay!

 They caught air on the way down, but she loved it!

 Aw, so cute!

 Although there were signs everywhere about "No pregnant women" going on any of the rides, I zipped up my sweatshirt and joined them on our last ride on the ferris wheel before spending two hours trying to get home.

And what's a visit with uncle without a little dress up action. I love love love her!