Shining, Gleaming, Streaming, Flaxen, Waxen

I beg you, if you haven't yet, read the previous blog. It's disgusting but a little illuminating. Otherwise I'll make less sense than usual.

When last we checked in with me, I had looked down at my daughter’s hair and noticed a certain citrusy hue. The next morning brought daylight and hard truths; my daughter was the color of a clementine. More alarmingly, she was an inconsistent clementine, oranger in spots than others. The fact that the lice comb offered up no new little bastards in any life-stage was interesting but not enough to console me for having made my daughter into a tortoiseshell cat. Why? How? Huh?

I’m going to explain how this happened and let’s see if you figure out where the problem was. When timing how long to leave on the dye, I factored in her virgin hair. Which is to say, there was no color on Daughter’s hair. Virgin hair gets more time under the plastic cap. Last year, for nine months, Daughter played water-polo. Five nights a week, she would spend anywhere from an hour to two and a half hours in a pool. She had a swim-cap, which she would wear for up to fifteen minutes before tossing it to me, complaining it gave her a headache. After two months, Daughter's hair had the texture of her Barbies after she’d give them spa treatments with dishwashing soap. Many, many oil treatments later, her hair almost didn’t resemble packing material. She stopped water polo in June, and I didn’t think about her hair until December when the little bastards arrived. I didn’t have to think about it; it looked and felt better, so I assumed it was better.

Because, as anyone who reads this blog knows, I am very stupid and it’s a wonder I don’t just fall down from stupidity more often.

So as I have come to learn, chlorine-damaged hair doesn’t quite come back, even if you oil it every night and scream in a maternal way “JUST KEEP THE SWIM-CAP ON, A HEADACHE WON’T KILL YOU!” And when you apply semi-permanent hair-color to damaged hair, the hair grabs the color like it’s the skids of the last helicopter leaving Saigon and nothing removes it.

Which brings us to the end of December and January, the Time of Magically-Multiplying Haircare Products.

Dawn didn’t remove it.

Red-out didn’t remove it.

Daily oil treatments for continued smiting of little bastards didn’t remove it.

Color-correcting shampoo didn’t remove it.

Other oil treatments didn’t remove it.

Other color-correcting shampoo didn’t remove it.

Color-correcting conditioner didn’t remove it, but tinted my hands a festive lilac for a day or so.


Which seemed a little cruel.

The bathrooms were starting to resemble beauty-supply shops and the only difference I could see was to my discretionary income.

I had options and nearly all of them were embarrassing. I could leave her to grow out, only her hair is longish and Daughter wants to grow it long; we’d have years of people squinting at her head and saying delicately, “Is it me or is your Daughter’s hair the color of a Nerf football in places?” And then within weeks we’d have roots, in case there was a single naif on on the planet who thought my daughter’s hair was naturally habanera.

Or I could try coloring her hair again to correct it, because that went so well last time.

Or I could take her to a salon and know that every other person in the place was looking at us and thinking, “Oh, look. Pageant people” while batting issues of Cosmo from my daughter’s inquisitive hands.

(Daughter’s vote in this was “I vote for whatever it takes to end this phase of my life where you keep coming after me with a bottle of oil and a fine-tooth comb.”)

And then about two weeks ago, we were walking someplace, talking of things not nit-related and I looked over at her and I thought She’s a healthy, sane, fundamentally happy individual. Yes, her hair is a little off the beaten path, but I should just chalk this up to the adventure of being alive and just take pleasure in this time with her and stop attacking her with product.

And then I looked at her hair and thought Wait a minute. Are those orange highlights turning acid green?

The salon was able to work us in the next morning.

(I'd like to thank every person who left a nit and lice-removal suggestion. The wonder of the Internet is that long after we are all on to a far better place, some parent will Google "Home lice removal" in a panic and find your suggestions. You've raised the level of lice-discourse.)

A Home for the Fleas, A Hive for the Buzzing Bees

The following story was cleared by Daughter before being published.


One afternoon back in December, Daughter was studying with her math tutor and I was doing what I do when she’s being tutored, which is find horoscopes online and choose to believe the ones which tell me next month will be very profitable for Leos. After her hour was up, she walked out looking ashen. I assumed this had something to do with polynomials. As it usually happens, I was painfully mistaken.

“Mom,” she whispered, “My head kept itching and I scratched it and...I think I have lice.”

No rabbit hearing the yip of a nearby coyote grew more still and alert than I did at that moment. On one side, the odds were small. She home-schools, she doesn’t share hats with anybody, we made it through four lice-scares in pre-school with nary a bug. On the other side, EWEWEWEWEWEWEWEWEWEWEW. I knew intellectually that lice come to the worthy and the unworthy equally and had supported more than a few friends during their hour of need, reminding them of the irony that lice actually prefer clean hair, but when the bell tolls for thee, it’s hard not to wonder if someone from the state is going to come, take your child and place her with competent parents.

But before the gagging would come the confirming. I whisked her off (without actually touching her) to the nearest pharmacy, where I bought a lice comb. I paid cash so the cashier wouldn’t know my name and shout something helpful like “GOOD LUCK WITH REMOVING VERMIN FROM YOUR CHILD!!!!!” I tore the comb from the package, we huddled behind the car and I combed her hair.

Yep.

My mind raced. Not only was I now driving a minivan’s worth of living things, we had tickets to see the Rockette’s Christmas show in (I checked my watch) two hours. I wasn’t taking those little bastards to the Staples Center with us. Daughter looked miserable. Suddenly, from the blue, I remembered what my ever-informative friend Veronica had told me once in passing about lice.

“The shampoos are really toxic and don’t really work anymore but you know what does? Hair color. Just get a color which pretty much matches your kid’s hair and you’re done with them.”

I did a quick search online which seemed to corroborate what Veronica said. I explained to Daughter what we would be doing. She looked delighted which would have been incongruous were it not for the fact that she’s being arguing for highlights since before she could tie her shoes. We tore back into the pharmacy and flew into the hair-color aisle and were confronted with a language only slightly less illuminating than runes. Was she a “Honey amber brown” or did she answer to “Golden tawny oak”? Where was the “Brown with yellowy bits” bottle? Time was passing. Rockettes were warming up. I could only assume lice were making more of themselves. I vetoed Daughter’s suggestion of “Marilyn icy blonde” and grabbed “Golden brown.” We dashed home, but not before I put a beach towel between her head and the back of the seat.

Consort has gotten used to us running in the door mid-adventure, but I think he would admit this was a new level of insanity, what with me screaming TAKE ALL THE SHEETS AND THE TOWELS AND WASH THEM IN A HOT CYCLE AND FIND ME SOME RAGS YOU DON’T MIND SEEING STAINED AND HERE PUT THIS COMB IN ALCOHOL AND THEN RUN IT THROUGH YOUR HAIR AND SEE IF THERE ARE BUGS IN YOUR HAIR OKAY BECAUSE I CAN’T HELP YOU BECAUSE I HAVE TO DYE YOUR DAUGHTER’S HAIR.

(There weren’t. Bugs in his hair, I mean. Mine, either. We’re still puzzled by the infestation, because none of her friends have them right now. A friend even told me December isn’t the usual time for lice. All I can note is that I got an Academy Award nomination at ten and my tonsils out at 24. My people do things on their own schedule.)

Within minutes, we were over the kitchen sink and I was mixing bottle A to bottle B. In my entire life, I’ve only had colored hair for a year in total so this was something of a novelty for me. As long as I forgot that a) my daughter in the plastic cap was ten and b) my daughter was in the plastic cap because little bastards were walking all over her head, it was kind of fun. We chit-chatted.

I vetoed a pink stripe on the underside of her hair but felt good enough about being on top of this little domestic drama that I swore we could revisit the subject when she’s fourteen.

The timer went off. We rinsed. We rinsed some more. I thought about bugs and then rinsed a few more times. I sent her to her bedroom to get changed for the Rockettes, confirmed that our linens were nearly being boiled and went off to change for the night. Considering Consort was driving us to the Staples Center and I didn’t have to drive, I had a glass of wine.

Because honestly, if not then, then when?

The show was delightful. The women were identical. The fake snow came down in an adorable way and for minutes at a time I forgot about the previous two hours. The lights came up and Daughter and I went to leave. I glanced over at her as we walked up the aisle and thought, “Huh. That’s funny. Her hair almost looks orange. Must be the lights in here.”

Yeah. That must have been it.


Next time: It starts getting real.

We Have a Winner!

But, really, everyone is a winner. Here's the first chapter for those who aren't currently eagerly anticipating their very own autographed copy. Everyone, thanks so much for playing. You pleased Sara and me no end. And we won't even mention how happy the cat was.