After a busy summer visiting family and rusticating on our island in New Hampshire, I am back in the land of running water and hot showers. Everyone around me is pining for cooler fall weather, but I’m soaking up the heat and loving every minute of it. Perhaps they should spend a week or six sleeping in a tent with nighttime temps dipping low enough to necessitate the use of L.L. Bean’s finest winter-weight sleeping bags. Or taking a bath in water that makes one gasp on first contact. Anyway, I am happy to be home in my bungalow by the sea, enjoying the sun, and walking on the beach every day.
The deadline for my first sale to Bell Books was September 1st, so I was pretty busy finishing that project my first couple weeks at home. I also had my writer’s chapter checkbook to balance and a monthly treasurer’s report to submit, a meeting to attend and two doctor’s appointments. In a rush to get to one of those appointments on time, I grabbed a bottle of shampoo my sister had passed on to me and proceeded to squirt a healthy dollop onto my head.
Those of you who’ve been following this blog awhile might recall the post about my sister who celebrated her arrival at the big five-oh, by opting to color her hair. NOT coloring to cover the ever-increasing gray, but to add a flamboyant and totally unnatural tint to her locks. It’s been orange, purple, green, blue and pink. On the day I wrote of earlier, Sarah arrived on the island in a downpour, by rowboat (of course) with rivers of blue running down her face and into her shirt.
So perhaps you can imagine my horror when I gazed down into the sink to see this:
Sarah’s not the type to pull pranks, but just what was in that bottle of hand-me-down shampoo? I know I’m old enough to be in the “blue-hair” set, but please! Not this shade of blue. A glance in the mirror wasn’t reassuring. I snatched the bottle off the counter. “Color enhancing” read the label. “Helps to remove dulling residue to reveal luminous silver strands.” Well, that didn’t sound too threatening. I started to breathe again. I rinsed, praying I wasn’t going to have to show up for my annual physical with a blue do. My doctor is a very patient man, but explaining my sister might take more time than he had to spare. The conditioner was far duller than the shampoo, but still very definitely blue. I rinsed thoroughly. And rinsed again. Rinsed a third time. I have white towels – no need for everything to turn blue...
To my everlasting relief, my hair came out pretty much as it always does, a heathery mix of sun-streaked blond, hints of my once rich brunette, and far too much gray...I mean silver. Silver sounds so much nicer than gray, don’t you think? Maybe I should keep the stuff after all.
