Supervolcanos and where to get your hair advice

I booked my shockingly spendy ticket to England this week. I was trying to use miles, but couldn't get there and back in a week before October. And I only have a week. And I can't wait till October.

The truth is, now that my dad is doing well, I need the vacation. I need to see Maude, my oldest friend in the entire world. I need to hug and kiss on her new little baby.

When Maude and I were both in school and had no money she bought CDs anyway. She said one could always justify the purchase of music. Because you need it for your soul. It's like that.

So I was searching searching for a decent fare. And not finding one.

And so then I thought, ah, screw it. If that Yellowstone supervolcano erupts, which it's supposed to sometime soon, we're all going to be wiped out. I'm not kidding. I saw it on TV and it was one of the most alarming things ever. Seriously. When it erupts, it'll spew enough ash to cover the sun entirely. And there will be acid rain everywhere. It will have a cataclysmic effect on life on the entire planet.

And here's the thing. It erupts something like every three gazillion years. And at this point, we're at three gazillion and 34 or something. In other words, eruption pending.

And so I said to myself, just buy the damn expensive ticket and visit Maude while you can!

Maude is really excited. It's been ages since we've seen each other. She just emailed and said that she has some free moments while her husband and his mother are out with the baby. And so she's decided to highlight her own hair.

I quote her verbatim here: "I have an awkward bob at the moment 'cause my last hairdresser was the opposite of Amber who gave excellent short haircuts but really challenged my self esteem when I started trying to grow it out (contrary to your blog on hairdressers I actually piled the makeup on and spent ages picking out an outfit when I went to her towards the end in a vain attempt to get a non soccer mom do)."

Apparently, all the hairdressers in Norwich give you the same trendy cut and blondify you no matter what you actually want. So she's taking matters into her own hands. As she has encouraged me to do many times.

And then she asked, did I remember the attempts to fix my orange hair after that terrible Halloween hair mishap?

I had come back to the US from my stint in the Peace Corps and happened to be in DC over Halloween - Maude's favorite holiday. She was of course having a party. And somehow I got in my mind that I wanted to be Cleopatra. Rather than doing the sensible thing and buying a wig, I started contemplating hair dye.

Maude had decided to be Pippi Longstocking, and so we went off to Victoria's Secret, which was just down the street, to find over the knee socks.

We wound up discussing temporary hair dye with the Victoria's Secret saleswoman. She told us that one of her sisters, who was blonde, had used a particular brand of black hair dye. And even though it says very clearly on the packaging (because we had inspected all the brands in CVS) not to use it on blonde hair, she assured us it washed out.

And so we traipsed off and bought temporary black hair dye. And stuck it in my long blonde hair. Because this random lingerie-selling chick said it washed out.

It never turned my hair black. Rather, it turned it a deep ruby red. Which, upon washing, faded to, oh, apricot. I washed and washed and washed. Someone said to buy Prell, because that strips your hair. I found some and did. I used dish detergent. I used everything but Brillo pads. And couldn't get lighter than pale apricot. Which brought out all my freckles. I hated it.

And then, because I was only in the US for a brief break, I headed back to South America. To the gay boyfriend, who pretended not to be horrified. And straight to a salon to see if someone could fix this tragedy and put me back to blonde.

In a country where just about everyone has black hair they didn't actually know how to get me back to a natural blonde. And so I wound up with hair that was apricot with almost white streaks. My hair looked like a Creamsicle.

I cried and cried. But I couldn't be mad at anyone but myself.

And so I learned a lesson that most people probably do not need to be taught. Never take hair color advice from a woman who works at Victoria's Secret.