Fun with hair color

Bug (Busting through the door coming home from school):  "My shoes are soaking and you (accented with a dramatic finger point) have reallllly red hair..."

I ask her why her shoes were so wet and she starts explaining only to interrupt herself..blinking

Bug:  "Wow mom.  I'm sorry, but that is really red hair."

Yes, yes it is.  See, I've been coloring my own hair for years (and years, and even more years).  And for all those years it's been red.  Why?  Ever try going red?  You can't really go back.  Besides, I like it.

Anyhoo, this particular box of hair color ("Power Reds" it proudly proclaims) has been hanging out in the bathroom for over a week now.  A conversation about hair this morning with a friend reminded me that those grays were really starting to show.  Besides, I'll take any excuse to put off housework.  This particular box wasn't the one I usually buy.  Just so happens this brand normally costs like $5 more, but it was on sale so I thought hey, why not give it a try?

Clue #1.  In addition to the color and developer, there was an "aromatic ampoule" (no that French spelling variant is not mine, it's what it was called in the directions) whose sole purpose as far as I could tell was to make the glop smell better.  If you have to add chemicals to cover up the nasty as..er horrible stench of the chemicals you should reconsider.  Of course I didn't.

Clue #2.  Not only was there an ampoule (ampoule?  Ooh, la la) there also was a little tube of something called "color booster."  Cool.  Because one thing about red is that it fades, so boosts can't be bad, right?  Hm...this color booster looks a lot like food coloring.  Red food coloring.

Clue #3.  This should have been the final tip off.  Booster duly added and I'm shaking up the bottle.  Only, the contents in the bottle are turning dark...pink?  Yup that is for sho pink goin' on in there.

At this point I had a little debate.  Go for it or not?  But the grays are there and the color is all mixed up and I've paid money for this.  Enh.  What's the worst that can happen?  So I start squeezing the gunk applying the hair color and all of a sudden it looks like I'm bleeding from some sort of massive head trauma.  The more I add the worse it looks, kind of a pinkish-reddish-thickish ooze, and I'm trying to remember where I've seen something like this before when it hits me. 

Me (out loud to the cat):  "Holy shi...stuff I just colored my hair with fecking finger paint!"

Yup.  Some type of gelatinous oozy paint you'd find in a kindergarten supply closet.  Tempera maybe?  This.  Is not going to be good.  Because once you start with hair color stopping is not really an option.  So I gloop the rest of it on my hair and wait the 25 minutes until I can rinse it out.  Fish in the box for the tube of conditioner that you are supposed to use when you rinse it out, only to find a tube of "rinse shampoo" there too.  Those directions say rinse the color, use half the tube of shampoo (and half the tube is more shampoo that I normally use in a week) rinse and repeat.  My fingers are stained pink and the first foaming is bright pink so I rinse extra long.  Second lather should be better right?  Marginally.  Pretty pink frothy meringue going down the drain.  Condition, done.  The mirror tells me it's not so bad, but we still have to wait for it to dry...

Oy.  So, I wouldn't exactly call it Ronald McDonald, but...wine!  That's it!  The color of my favorite Merlot.  Or Cabernet.  Or...yeah. Dark fecking pink.  Next time?  Maybe I should just go with the food color and save money.  But hey, red fades, right?

And Venus isn't even retrograde.

Red, red wi-i-ine..