Yesterday

Yesterday,  all my foibles seemed to congregate.

The silvery gray hair I have coveted for several years seemed like such a good idea that I called my stylist and asked her what she thought. Not only did she think it was a great idea, due to a cancellation she could do it at three and I would be out of there in time for dinner with my daughter and granddaughter at five.

It turns out there is nothing natural about my hair. It is not colored or permed, or even sprayed with anything other than water, but it is just as I expected. It has a mind of its own and evidently it does not want to be silvery gray.

The stylist washed it. She lightened it. She tried light gray, dark gray, even blue gray. It came out copper, gold, yellow, lavender and purple! It was like a nightmare from the gold lagoon. She tried redoing many of these things with small alterations like heat and heat under plastic. She tried consulting other cosmetologists and different concentrations of all the above grays.

Some of my hair acquiesced but not the middle. I looked like a granny gone bad with a rattail, or squirrel tail, or some other rodent thing running down the middle of my now leathery scalp. I finally settled for a sort of pinkish gray I could live with for a few days and then she cut my hair. The plan is for her to come to my house and use a product they are not allowed to use in the salon because it isn't their brand. She swears it will work.

So, I went to pay (for just a haircut) and the words on the credit card machine looked out of focus. I wasn't too surprised. I felt unfocused at that point. My back and neck ached from so much time leaning and perching in tense mode for nearly seven hours! But it turned out to be more than that. The lens had fallen out of the right side of my glasses!