Is it time to panic or get a hair cut?

I'm glad you dropped in because I have a pressing tale of woe to share with you and there is just no hope but to ask the interwebs for advice. It has been a very cold winter with a lot of snow and a lot of me sitting around unlike the rest of the year when, I'm told, I'm rushing from one thing to the next like I'm getting paid to be in a hurry. 

Therefore with all this time on my hands, I've had the pleasure of looking at my hair. A lot. When you have naturally frizzy hair, there just isn't any reason to sit and look at your hair. A bad idea because there isn't much to be done about the situation. Just not much at all. That's why this post is a disaster before it gets off the ground. But here goes. Put your life vest on. 

This is freshly washed hair. I did nothing to it. I took it out of the towel and shook it. This dry, not wet. 

That was Saturday. I don't wash my hair every day, which if you have curly hair, you know why and if you don't have curly hair you just think that's gross.











I straightened it today:

My goal is to get that top layer to grow out to my shoulders. I can't remember anymore for sure why this seemed like a good idea five months ago. The layer is now in a spot at which it only irritates me beyond my patience. It is almost to my shoulders when it's straight, but not when it's curly. Curly it hits my jaw, more or less.

So these photos illustrate where things stand right now. I have an appointment tomorrow with the brave person who cuts my hair. Here are the photos of past hair I wanted you to look at. It may seem like a bad ploy to get you to look at me, but it isn't. Not this time, anyway.

 

 



I think I like the shorter length the best. I was happiest with my hair in the black coat and light blue sweater. Let's face it, whatever I do is going to end up being a variation of one of the above and unless I cut off four inches of hair, no one is going to notice a difference.

However, I would love to have a hair cut like this one:

If I had straight hair down to my jaw, it would bounce up to the middle of my ears and look like a poodle. But this is tempting to try. As Grande said, it will grow back. But I'm afraid I will end up with this:

I HATE this hair and I know exactly what it would look like on me because I've had people do this to my hair in the past. The only thing about this photo that would look OK to me is the gun when my hair looks like this. It's fine on Helen...no, no it isn't. I don't even like it on her. Hand me the gun, Helen.

She's probably ticked off about the hair cut.

OK, so now I have another problem. I hate coloring my hair. My hair is darkish brown, in the family of filthy dirty dishwater, but there is a lot of red underneath it all. That's what I think is wrong. I color my hair, it washes out and I'm left with red, mostly red, streaks of red. Red is notoriously difficult to cover or re-create. I love the red , but I'm graying like a brunette would gray, so I think I'm really a brunette. Here is what people see when they look at me.

It doesn't look so bad in this photo, but trust me from what I hear, it's just hideous. Any advice for letting it go? If it matters to you, I'm 48. But the "you're too young to be gray" is probably going to fall on deaf ears because
1. I'm 48
2. I'm going gray
3. Therefore, I'm clearly not too "young" to go gray

Also, there are these fine points:
4. I hate pony tails on me, but love them on other girls
5. Curly hair can't successfully be worn short, so a super short cut is out of the picture. A shag, a pixie...all that is o.u.t. out. I will look like I have a cotton ball on my head.
6. I have a long face and a high forehead, so a lot of layers will make me be all face, which I do not like.

Also, did I mention that I'm super lazy and I only get around to coloring my hair every 3-5 months? Also, I hate coloring my hair and having someone point it out, which embarrasses me. It always has, although I've been coloring my hair since I was in my 20s. It was just so much simpler when I was doing for the heck of it and not because I had gray roots.