With my hair salon appointment looming tomorrow, I though I would venture a little into my hair-raising experiences with cuts, dyes, and control.

I'm currently a red head. And a darned good one too. Generally, my appearance fools people into think that I'm a natural red head. Of course, now that I've told you that I'm not, you'll look at the photo and say "of course you're not, who would think that?". Everything is clearer in hindsight, especially fake red heads.

But, yes, I like red. A lot. My first experiences with the color though were a little interesting. In college, bored one night, I mixed up a batch of henna and didn't bother to test it. I really didn't mind all that much what I looked like. It was October, and I figured if it turned out poorly, I could use the upcoming Halloween holiday as an excuse. Well, guess how it turned out.

Does my hair look like:

A) Gatorade

B) That girl from Fifth Element

C) Carrots

Yes, it was ORANGE. But I had a good laugh for several weeks and then went to the hairdresser, who mildly freaked out at what I had done, toned down my hair, and I ended up with a really pretty red that I kept until later that winter.

But red was hard to maintain, and I was feeling the itch to change things up again. (I like minor shock factors, FYI.) So, I went to my hairdresser and asked for [[drumroll please]]

Brunette! Dark, dark brown. It was a shocker. Really, I looked in the mirror and half wanted to cry. I had no idea of my reflection half the time I had brown hair. It wasn't as bad as it started to lighten up, but it was certainly a dramatic difference going from red to brown. Because, in reality, I'm a blonde.

And, like tomorrow, I will dye my hair back as close as possible to my natural color and leave it the heck alone for the summer months. It's not that I'm lazy (well, I am a little when it comes to beauty stuff), it's that the up keep between the sun, chlorine pools, ocean romps, and general hair-abuse makes maintaining a lovely colored mane pretty impossible.

It's also the season I usually let my hair grow, contrary to all other girls in this world. My season for haircuts is fall and winter. For instance, when I went to France, I went to their version of a SuperCuts and had six inches hacked off, and even got these angled bangs that proceeded to annoy me for the rest of my trip there. Really – I had this piece of hair that was always dead set on being smack dab in the middle of my face. Argh.

Otherwise, I get the whole/layered/collarbone length thing going on, and like it for the first two weeks until I really want to braid my hair, or pull it completely out of my face. Once again, not fun. Someone needs to remind me I don't wear my hair down and that I need to let The Beast (my hair) be long, blunt cut, and manageable so I don't make myself crazy when I'm spending hours at a computer typing or attempting to blow hair out of my face for the fiftieth time while rock climbing.