Hopefully it'll look good when it matters

On Friday night, my family will be going to get a picture taken of all four of us. It's for our church directory, and it will also provide us with photos to hand out to various relatives who want to save this moment in our lives forever.

I would rather shove forks in my eyeballs and eat a fire sandwich than go have a family photo taken. I know that in 20 years we'll be glad to have it blah, blah, blah, but I will still dread every minute up to the appointment. I absolutely hate the idea of trying to make everything perfect for a photo.

When I called to make our appointment, I was picturing late April, with plenty of time for me to forget about the impending experience before it arrived. But there was only one appointment available that meshed with my husband's work schedule, and that's now. There is no time for denial.

Conveniently, we've all had haircuts recently. I found clean clothes that coordinate well enough so that we won't look like our photo accidentally happened to four people who just coincidentally wound up in the same place and time as a photographer. But there's the issue of my hair color.

Last week, I dyed my hair with a new dye. This in and of itself is no surprise. I buy whatever's fairly cheap in the right color. I can't remember what kind I use each time. But previously, I used dark brown (instead of my normal medium brown) and liked that because swimming so much makes my color fade pretty quickly. And since my main interest in dying my hair is to have any color that isn't gray, my system has mostly worked for me.

This time, however, I got this foaming color stuff. It's supposed to be easy to apply and less messy than traditional hair dyes, or so I have heard. It turns out, what I've heard is all lies. That shit got EVERYWHERE. And, like any good hair dye, it was invisible until it developed, so when I got out of the shower I got to play a fun game of "find all the stuff you ruined with brown dye." And then I followed that with a round of "scrub the crap out of that to try to save it."

Meanwhile, said dye colored my hair, scalp, forehead, and shoulders in a most thorough and annoying fashion. I've never had my scalp stained for a week before. What a treat!

And then, to add insult to injury, when my hair was dry I discovered that large sections of the underneath part DID NOT GET DYED AT ALL. This has never happened to me while using non-foaming hair color. So I had to go out and buy a root coloring kit, which I convinced Husband to help me apply (he kept saying, "I don't know how to do this," and I kept saying, "Do you see gray hair? THEN PUT DYE ON IT!"). Maybe if I keep making huge messes and employing Husband to help me fix mistakes, someone will give me a year's worth of hair coloring sessions at a salon.

Yeah, that's probably not going to happen.

So tonight, after a long day, I was sitting at the table and I asked Husband if he thought my hair would look OK for the picture. Both he and The Girl looked at my head and said, "Well, not right now." I gave them a blank look until I realized that chunks of hair were sticking out of my ponytail much like I had stuck my finger in a socket. The Girl followed it up with, "Yeah, it's a little messy."

I'm pretty sure I said, "I meant the color," and silently added, "you morons." At least, I THINK it was silently.

"Oh yeah, the color is fine," they agreed.

Whatever. Maybe I'll wear a hat.

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UPDATE: We survived! And the Boy, who has some bizarre vomiting virus, was cheerful, well-behaved, and non-barfy the whole time. The Girl was also well-behaved and kept all bodily fluids to herself. Next time I get my picture taken, though, I'm not wearing a white shirt. I look like a boat. But my hair looks awesome, so there's that.

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