Operation Silver Fox

I read about Anne Kreamer's book Going Grey in either Time or Newsweek. Then 2 weeks before that, my local paper carried a story about the same book.

So I took that as a sign.

I had a hairdresser appointment scheduled on Halloween. My original intent had been to have my roots covered over with a color rinse.

But then, when the newspaper story came out, I took it as a sign that I should give in to the little niggling in the back of my brain and seriously consider going back to grey.

I had never been one to be swayed by the dictates of vanity or even current trends. Sure I colored my hair. But while many women were camouflaging their grey, I was off in other territories having my hair colored in ways that were immediately obvious that I was not interested in concealing my true age.

After all, what woman approaching 50 would be interesting in getting bright pink highlights in her hair?

I wasn't interested in obscuring from the world my real age. I could not care less. If anything, I wanted to flaunt the fact that not all women my age choose to stick to safe and normal colors and look as though they leaped out of an L.L. Bean catalogue.

There were some of us who didn't give a rat's patootie over age. There were some of us who wanted to have fun ~ 50 be damned. We did not believe that once we reached a "certain" age that we all of a sudden had to act in way that society expects of that age.

Whose society was that anyway? Certainly not mine!

But still, every few months I would hear these words, "Mom, you gotta do your roots."

Well, roots be damned as well!

As much as I loved my extreme hair color, getting those damn roots taken care of was a bitch. And even though I would let months go by in between hair appointments, it was still an expensive undertaking ~ especially to get the color that I was interested in having.

Let's face it. I'm an artist. One-dimensional color is oh-so-boring. It does not speak to my creative side.

So finally, I decided (thanks to Anne Kreamer) ~ once and for all ~ I was going to let it all hang out. I'm going to go grey.

And why not?

If I can pull off having bright pink hair, and if I can pull off having my hair buzzed to 1/2" length, I can most certainly pull of having grey hair.

So, on Wednesday ~ Halloween ~ the first phase of Operation Silver Fox began.

And who would have thought that that would have cost me far more than it would have cost to just have my roots covered over.

I suppose that I could have avoided all that cost had I simply decided to let my roots roots grow out and have Ariana buzz the rest of my hair with dog clippers. After all, it wasn't the first time that I had Ariana buzz my hair.

But no, I did not want to give up the length of the hair that I had. After all, my hair was getting close to my being able to have a "pob."

I did not want to set myself back several months from achieving that goal by buzzing my hair down to half an inch ~ that is not to say that I haven't done that before.

Despite my desire to keep the length of my hair, I had an even greater desire to get down to the "root" of the matter.

So just before I started my new job, I did indeed have my hair buzzed down to the roots.

Let the pob wait and unleash the silver fox!