Before

Today is the day of the long put off hair appointment. While I still have no real clue exactly what I want, I've enough general guidelines - and an easy enough attitude - that the stylist shouldn't have too many issues figuring out what to do.

This first, fuzzy picture makes me go, "Hmmm, that doesn't look so bad after all. Sure, it's a little long (thank goodness we've had an abnormally cold summer, or it all would have come off in June) but it doesn't look so bad." It's only been about eight weeks since my last trim - believe it or not, it was almost four inches longer at the time.

The second picture shows more of the truth - fly aways from breakage, uneven ends. The fuzzy section in the lower left of the photo is an extreme close up of hair, inadvertently caught while I tried to aim the camera.

Hey, you try to aim a camera over your shoulder into a mirror and frame the subject matter you intend to frame.

The true color of my hair? Errr...Not as almost black as it looks in the top snap (taken without flash), but nowhere near as golden brown as it appears in the lower one (taken with flash).

What color will it be later today? Um...Brown? On the darker side of medium brown, most likely with a golden cast rather than a reddish one. I've learned the hard way that although I enjoy having auburn hair, a golden tone actually looks better, particularly with the olive skin tone passed on to me by my Sicilian relatives.

You know, this would be ever so much easier if I could find a piece of fabric in my stash that is the exact color I want for my hair.

Hey: if they can do it for mixing paint, they should be able to do it with hair color.

Right?