Fall Hair ...

With the change in the weather comes the change in my hair color. Blondey blonde doesn't work in the fall. The sun-kissed look seems artificial when the daylight wanes.

And with a trip to New York looming, I needed to pay a visit to J-D.

So today was the day. He put two colors on in foils, then spritzed some strange, gold-colored stuff in places, the glopped on color on the hair that was outside the foils, the glopped on another color on other hair that was outside the foils.

That's right, boys and girls, I have five colors on my head. At one point, late in the coloring game, I looked at myself in the mirror and burst out laughing. It is just simply insane, what women go through. J-D gives me a great rate, but I still pay a rather ridiculous sum for the privilege of letting him glop chemicals on my head.

When the color goo did what J-D wanted it to do, he led me to the sink where he pulled out all the foils and had me lean back, and proceeded to smoosh all my hair together. I told him that it seemed illogical, to spend so much time putting color in very specific places on my head, only to take the smooshing step. It's like, I told him, putting your dinner in neat little piles on your plate, and then, right before digging in, mixing it all into one big glop.

He warned me, as I was getting up to go back to his chair, that this particular color looks darker when it's wet. "So I don't freak out if my hair looks black?" I asked. I told him not to worry, that after all these years, I trust him, unequivocally. But it didn't look black. It looked rich. I really liked the color, wet. And I like it dry, too.

When he was first finished styling, I didn't think I did. When I went to pick up Dave after, I said, "I think this is the first time I don't like what he's done."

"Oh," Dave said, in a tone that meant, "Now, don't say that. I like it."

And now that I'm home and I'm seeing it in my light, I like it, too. It just took a few moments to get used to. It's been so blonde for so long, it seems a little strange to have a somewhat-dark-haired woman staring back from the mirror.

But I'll look fabulous outside, raking leaves.

OK, L.A. Dave has weighed in and thinks that I need to smile more in these pictures. It always feels weird, smiling when taking pictures of myself, but his point is well-taken. The other shot looks a little stiff. So I mussed up my hair a bit and said cheese. L.A. Dave, this one's for you, darlin'!