Whoop there it is...

I admit it, I'm slacking off big time when it comes to keepin' up with my over-all "look." (By "look" I mean giving the impression that I give a shit about my appearance.) I've let my roots grow out (and turn frighteningly gray... ), have let the leg hair get a lil out of control (and by "out of control" I mean I look like Bigfoot from the knees down), rarely bother putting on make-up anymore before leaving the house (because the odds of me running into anyone I know are, like, ZERO)...

I've pretty much kissed all of my previous standards good-bye and have done everything I swore I would never do except go to the store in my pajamas. (Wait until winter... that might change, too.)

Yeah... It's real sad, y'all. Real, real sad.

Anyway, I was sitting here on the couch checking my face out in a hand mirror (I refuse to confirm or deny that I may or may not have been checking for chin and mustache hairs) when I happened to notice that there was literally a solid inch of gray growing out from my scalp.

Shock and horror people. Instant shock and horror.

(It's not that I wasn't aware of the fact that a whoooooole lotta gray has been going on underneath the 200 layers of hair color, but I've managed to remain in denial because I've never gone this long without covering it up. Dear Dani, Here's your Big Fat Clue: You're becoming your mother. Love, Your Reality Check.)

Fortunately, I am one of those people who always has hair color on hand, so I grabbed a tube of something (5AR... whatever, it's better than gray) and a bottle of developer, found some latex gloves, sawed off the bottom of a water bottle, mixed it up and washed that gray right out of my hair. I completed the ensemble by putting a plastic grocery bag over my head and informed Dan that I was dying my hair. (Just in case he missed the fact that I was wearing a plastic bag on my head for a reason. Because you nevah know.)

Dan: "Why are you dying your hair?"

Me: "Because I had like 5 inches of gray roots." (I'm all about extreme exaggeration... it makes my point like nothing else.)

Dan: "Your hair isn't 5 inches long, Dani."

Me: "Even so."

Dan:

Me: "Right?" (Because sometimes, there really isn't anything else to say.)

Twenty-five minutes later my hair was a luxurious rich shade of brown (whew!), my gray was but a distant memory, and as I blow dried, fluffed, moussed and sprayed I noticed that my eyebrows looked even lighter than usual now that my hair was once again really dark.

Sidebar: I have really, really, really thin light eyebrows. If I don't fill them in with brow liner I kinda look like I don't have any eyebrows. Like the Mona Lisa, only without the mystery. (Though personally, I've never thought the Mona Lisa looked mysterious. I've always thought she just looked kinda bored. And having sat for a portrait painting before, the only mystery is how to keep yourself from falling asleep or slitting your wrists... anything to end the misery.)

And then I had a massive brain storm: I decided to dye my eyebrows with the leftover hair dye!! Brilliant! Genius!! I grabbed a Q-tip, slicked the goop across each eyebrow and headed back out to the living room, planning on leaving it for 5 or 10 minutes before wiping it off.

Except I got really engrossed in the Deadly Women marathon on Discovery ID and completely forgot about it.

For over an hour.

Whoops.

I just happened to catch my reflection in the bathroom mirror when I headed in for a potty break.

I looked like I had two black fuzzy caterpillars crawling across my forehead.

Here's what I learned: Hair dye does not wash off of skin after it's been sitting there for over an hour.

Having very thin light eyebrows is better than having the appearance of eyebrows that are over half an inch thick.

If you have the brilliant idea of using a harsh exfoliating facial scrub to remove hair dye stain from your eyebrow region, don't waste your time. A) It doesn't work and B) it just makes the already stained skin look redder and angrier.

Now you know.