Random Acts of Hair-Related Stupidity

This Saturday was my friend Lindsay’s birthday party, which was being held in a club in Edinburgh.

“I’ll get ready super-early,” I thought. “Then there’ll be no last-minute rush, with Terry sitting outside in the car with the engine running, while I run around the house in my dressing gown and two different shoes. And if my hair turns into a giant frizz-ball, I’ll have time to tame it, rather than having to resort to a last-minute messy bunhead! And I’ll have time to take outfit photos that don’t completely suck! Yes, I will definitely make sure I get ready early!”

Then, having had that thought, what I did was, I sat on my ass all day, drank a lot of coffee, and completely re-built my Sim-self’s house in Sims Social. Time passed astonishingly quickly in this way, and finally, it got to the point where I really HAD to have a shower if there was to be any hope of me having time to do my hair, and make it good n’massive, the way I like it. So what I did THEN was, I built my Sim a swimming pool, and a deck with a hot tub. Then I went to have my shower.

What happened next was very long and traumatic, but I’ll boil it down for you quickly:

Remember the time I left a colour-depositing hair conditioner on for too long and it turned my hair bright orange?

Remember that super-awesome new conditioner I told you about a few weeks ago?

Remember when Geri Halliwell was in the Spice Girls, and she had those two blonde stripes at the front of her head, and the rest of it was red?

THAT. Only, on me, the blonde stripes were my usual colour, and the rest of it was REALLY, REALLY RED. Like, the type of red that does not occur in nature. THAT red.

In other words, yes, I made the same mistake twice. Yes I did.

In my defence, this was a different shade of the conditioner. (REALLY REALLY RED, I think it’s called.) I had used it last week for the first time, and it had made absolutely no difference to my hair colour whatsoever, so I figured it would be safe enough to leave it on for a bit longer this time. Um, even though the instructions specifically tell you not to do that. (I know, I know…) And obviously I didn’t apply it properly either, because, as I said, my fringe was left untouched, while the rest of my head looked like I’d spilled ketchup on it.

“No worries,” I thought, worrying. “It’s a wash-in, wash out colour. It’ll just wash right out!”

The conditioner is supposed to last for three washes. People, I am here to tell you that NO. IT DOES NOT. I stopped counting somewhere around five. And of course, the problem was that I am stupid each time I shampooed it, my wet hair would be too dark to really tell whether I’d got the stuff out or not, so I’d have to start blow-drying it, only to find that whoops, nope, still the colour of a post-box! And then the whole process would have to start again.

I spent what felt like hours hopping in and out of the shower. By the end of it, my hair was like straw (I did put on some deep-conditioner, but by then I didn’t have time to really let it sink in), I was running late, and I STILL had a huge patch of ketchup on the top of my head. So I ended up with a last-minute rush, with Terry having to leave to pick up our friends and drop-off Rubin with my parents, while I rushed around the house in my dressing gown and two different shoes. And actually, I had planned to wear a completely different outfit, but by that point my confidence was shaken, so I went for my fail-safe standby: the little black dress. The dress you reach for when you know that if you don’t reach for something, your husband will probably just march you out of the house in your dressing gown. GOD.

And after all of that? No one could even SEE the red patch in the dim light of the club.

(My Sim house looks AMAZING, though, seriously.)