duck-shaped pain

I've been coloring my hair for about ten years, more or less. I started doing it right after I got out of high school. I would have started doing it before, but when I was in school, I listened to my parents once in awhile.

My hair has been the whole spectrum of colors you can reasonably dye your hair when it's naturally dark brown -- meaning red, brown and black. I started out with red -- the brightest red I could get it without bleaching it and, when that got old, went to black. It was that color for awhile, but then I got tired of people thinking I was a) a goth chick or b) (puzzlingly enough) a ska chick or c) an art student. Well, I was actually an art student, but it's not good when people can tell that from 100 feet away. I was never any of the others, though, despite what the majority of people I ran into thought. So, away with the black hair.

But anyone who has ever dyed their hair black knows that you can't just get rid of it on a whim. Black dye is incredibly resistant to shampoo and bleach and anything short of cutting it off. I tried bleaching it, once. My roots turned white and the black part turned dark brown -- not the effect I was looking for, but the faction out there that liked to think I was a goth chick thought it looked pretty cool.

Finally, I grew it out and turned to red again. Then purple, sort of -- not an obvious purple. Then blue, which can be nothing but obvious, then black - again. It seems I didn't learn my lesson the first time.

So, I've been living with black hair ever since. The proportion of black hair to other hair decreases with each haircut, and I think the next time I get it cut, it will all be gone, finally. Slap me if I ever dye my hair black again.

So, this time I dyed it dark brown. A much more attractive dark brown than my natural color, which I hate. Now, though, after unnecessarily dyeing my hair for years, I've found a real reason to -- I have grey hair. Already. I have a big streak of grey in the front, which might look attractive against the dark were I to ever let it grow out, but that's not likely anytime soon. I think I'm still a bit too young to deal with having a big grey streak.

Work is going okay, mainly because I have a new co-worker. She's an improvement over the old one, if only for the fact that she doesn't smoke (or if she does, she's very good at hiding it). Smoking in itself doesn't bother me -- it's the lingering smell on clothes and hair and breath that does. Every time I am around someone who smells like smoke, it makes me want to write letters to everyone I was ever around when I smoked, apologizing to them for smelling so bad. It's not a scent that many can carry well, I must say -- although, on the right combination of person and place and mood, it can be sort of appealing, maybe arousing.

The arrival of the puppy has caused a big schism in the backyard. Hoover is not thrilled with the new arrival in any way. He's stopped sulking in the corner of the yard, which is good, but now he and Hank (the puppy's name) are duking it out for King of the Backyard. It would be easier if Hoover wasn't so skittish -- he's afraid of nearly everything, but tries to hide it by being all loud and gruff when other dogs are around. Now he's completely freaked out by the puppy, who basically just wants to play and run around with him. I don't know if this is going to work or not.

I went out in the backyard yesterday and found the puppy walking around with a metal bucket, the one I use to water the plants, on his head. It was one of those isn't-that-horrible-but-it's-so-funny kind of moments. I have no idea how long he had been walking around bucketized, but he didn't seem to be impaired by it. He was going up the stairs, running around the backyard, doing things as normal.

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