The life of a blond

I recently found out that my mom started highlighting my hair when I was about ten years old. Yes, you read that correctly. I have vague memories of sitting in her bathroom with a tattered towel draped around my shoulders while she did a “conditioning treatment.” Little did I know what was really going on. Apparently I was a dumb child. When I discovered this little nugget of information and called her out on it she said she did it because in my awkward years, I just “needed a little help”. Now before you call Child Protective Services on her, I have to admit she was right. I had these humongous coke bottle glasses that covered my entire face. As my husband likes to say when I take my contacts out at night and don the frames, "you can see the future with those things". He says that about the 2009 very advanced technology “thin” lenses that I have. You can just imagine what I looked like back in the early 80's. I keep laughing about what Mrs. Holloway must have said to her friends in the teachers lounge on the days I came to school sporting fresh highlights as a 10-year old.

Honestly at this point of my life twenty-something years later I don’t even know what my true hair color is. My parents funded my highlighting addiction until the day I graduated college and then I was on my own. Ouch! It is expensive but after college with no mortgage, husband, children, etc. I continued to highlight until my heart’s content. There was a disastrous time that I tried to do it myself but quickly realized it is something better left to the professionals.

Fast forward to now. We have some friends' wedding coming up and I am in need of a serious touch up. Originally I made an appointment at my usual salon, but then my children’s summer camp tuition came due and the expenses for traveling to this summer's family reunion hit, and my son’s birthday party costs started piling up, and so on and so forth.

So I decided to do my part in this time of economic turmoil and make an appointment at a place that isn’t a shi shi salon. I recently read an US Weekly article about all these stars who go to SuperCuts or something in L.A. Really if it is good enough for them, it is good enough for me, right? So I started checking into such places - but apparently they don’t even offer highlighting. Maybe I should be happy about that and now the more I think about it I think it was only men in Hollywood who were getting their hair done at these cheap-o places.

Apparently I was trying to go too ghetto on my first hair expense cost cutting excursion. I spent like 2 hours research salons in the surrounding KC area to see what their pricing is and what reviews I could find for them. Seriously this is hard work, if my hair looks horrible when I'm done with this exhausting venture I'm going to be miffed. I think in general highlighting is an expensive addiction. But probably not as expensive as a drug addiction, right? Oh I like that justification, I'm going to use it when my husband complains about bills.

I didn't find anything as low priced as I wanted but I did find a place whose top tier stylist was about $30 less than my normal place's bottom tier stylist. Why do they have different level stylists anyway? Are they saying you are risking your locks if you pay less and go to a lower tier stylist? Doesn't that seem like a strange business model? Or maybe it is genius because how can you complain when you know going into it that the person you are using is sub-par?

Anywho, I'll let you know how it goes. Kind of ridiculous timing to try this experiment as we haven't seen some of the people attending this wedding in a long time. Oh well, if it looks like hell, I'll just drink too much and make a fool out of myself so no one will notice my hair.