So, I had originally planned to dye my hair blue right after vacation in September… bought the dye right before we left, figuring the stuff would be there when I arrived home.

Except it wasn’t. One of the packages was shipping a lot slower than expected.

But that turned out to be OK, because by the time everything arrived, I learned of a posting for a UI Designer position at work. So if I had gotten my stuff on time, there’s a good chance I would have been in the uncomfortable position of interviewing for the job with freshly-dyed blue hair. (In many jobs this wouldn’t be an issue. I’m not sure it would have been one in this situation either. I work for a very conservative financial company, but they’re a very conservative company that’s well aware they can’t do a thing to you for hair color. On the other hand, this was an interview, and one does like to make one’s first impression as an individual of relatively sane tastes… even if one is a bit looney.) So the hair dye got put off a few weeks… and as soon as they said you got the job, I started making plans for the bottles of blue dye in my cabinets.

I learned a few important things this time that I hadn’t learned last time, such as:

• Everyone who said the hair is brighter when you bleach it first is correct.
• The blue hair dye itself really doesn’t damage your hair (in fact, in a sense it strengthens it because it fills in cracks in the hair cuticle) but boy the bleach beats the crap out of your hair
• It takes a damned long time to bleach one’s hair properly, and it’s not easy — so much so that if I do this again, I’ll pay someone else to do the bleaching bit.
• I really really REALLY REALLY don’t like the way I look as a blonde.

My hair is naturally mouse-brown. When I look in the mirror as a brunette, I think “meh, I could do better”. When I dye it red, I’m usually grinning before it’s even dry. There’s something about red hair that, when I see it in the mirror, makes me recognize myself. I’m that girl with the red hair. Only sometimes, maybe once every year or two, when the red has been fading for a while and I’m frustrated with life in general, I need more than just red to pick my spirits up.And when I’m in that frame of mind, blue suits quite nicely.

(Why blue? Dunno. But I can tell you this – I’ve been writing short stories and novels all set in the same universe since I was 13. And in every one of them, since I was 13, the protagonist’s hair was blue.)

Strangely, when I bleached my hair, which resulted in a relatively natural color that most people would have accepted, I HATED it. Hated hated HATED it. Even when I got compliments from the neighbors, who thought it looked great on me. HATED. Every time I looked in the mirror there was this freak staring back. So when I dyed my hair blue this evening, watching my hair go from blonde to purple (the color of the dye) was extremely relieving.

Yes, that’s right, I’m more comfortable with blue hair than blonde. Extremely more. I can live with that.

Anyway, for all y’all who have been harassing me for pictures, here you go:

Friday’s faded-out half-brown red hair
Friday night I bleached it, took the pics Saturday
Saturday night was time to go blue

It’s worth noting that all the pictures were taken with a light directly above me, AND the flash on. The blue is much closer to black when it’s not sunlit. (It’s 1000% awesome either way.)

We are 7-days-and-change from National Novel Writing Month, when I’ll be spending a month in the same universe as the blue-haired characters I started developing when I was 13. I, for one, feel prepared.