The Chewbacasaga

 

 looks like: long, brownish yellow, fuzzy and it’s acrylic content is likely above 80%

My inspiration for this post and most recent near-miss occurred last weekend when after a bottle of wine, I thought I’d move my scented candle from the kitchen to the bedroom, or should I say boudoir… you know to set the mood! Mesmerized by the flame I leaned over the candle breathing in the delicious scent of ‘fifth avenue’ (whatever it is it’s awesome) and the aroma all of the sudden mingled with burning hair… dammit!!!

I’ve been through a lot this year, marriage, job changes, moving multiple times, nursing mother back to health after traumatic accident, life changing 3 month adventure to Honduras, seriously this is just a brief synopsis. The list goes on. One thing that we should discuss is my hair. I went from having quite long, curly, dark, split ended hair at NYE 2011 to 5 inches shorter streaked/sun-bleached blonde limp and minorly wavy hair shortly after NYE 2012.

December through May my poor hair endured dark dye, dye stripper, (haha I just said stripper) blonde streaks throughout, and one trim leading up to our wedding day. During the day everything was fine. It stayed where it was supposed to be thanks to a full can (bottle?) of spray and despite my hiring a makeup artist to style it because I had procrastinated booking a hairstylist looked pretty great. Things got a little dicey as the wedding day progressed into the evening. I was drinking, my wedding guests were enjoying hair accessories (Royal wedding ‘fascinator’ knockoffs) compliments of my mother and sister… and then someone brought out sparklers. You know, those things that moms put on young children’s birthday cakes that are fascinating because it is like a firework on a stick but doesn’t burn you and is virtually the safest form of fire on earth?

So, I have this sparkler in my hand and see everyone dancing and having a great time with a dollar store fascinator jauntily perched on their heads and decide that I, the bride deserve a special fascinator of my own. It had to be the most fabulous one of the entire party because by this point I had been the center of 120 peoples attention for about 8 hours and wasn’t going to take a backseat anytime soon. I tucked it behind my ear and the sparkler became my fascinator, and was awesome until I turned to show it off to my beautiful dancing bridesmaids  and saw in their faces absolute shock and awe. Yes, I had accomplished my goal of being awe inspiring on my wedding day.

I quickly realized that the most fascinating thing about it was that my hair was in fact on fire and my right-hand-women were slapping my head and screaming OH MY GOD HEATHER! After the initial frenzy my best- girl Jennifer slowly moved her hand out of my peripheral vision and into full view, clutching a clump of dye-stripped highlighted hair.

 
I am thankful that the entire can of hairspray did not catch. Naturally after this we all took turns pretending that the clump was a moustache on our faces and posed for photos for the next 10 minutes, after which the clump lay forgotten on the hall floor and we continued our dance party into the wee hours. I retrieved the clump during clean up the next day and the ‘lock’ of wedding day hair is now secure in my wedding day barrette and a fixture in my memorabilia trunk.

Months later, at one of my bi-annual haircuts, in my stylist friend’s bathroom she had the misfortune of finding the bald patch and uncomfortably trying to tell me that it wasn’t her. Of course she was horrified to hear of the blasphemous destruction of my bridal hair, but hey- what’s a girl to do?

The next major episode occurred in Honduras. I had been there for close to 2 months, using the minimum possible hair product and throwing it into a ponytail everyday (seriously white people can do no fashion wrong. this is another topic that deserves it’s own post). I had recently had my new husband delivered to the beautiful island Utila, famous for it’s scuba diving. We used it mostly for it’s hotels and beach front bars. After one night of celebrating, we took a long walk to the beach to soak up the sun, and soak in the salt water. I found the water especially refreshing and was convinced that it was the perfect hangover cure. Another night of drunken debauchery and I had my sights set on that water. The long walk was not on my wishlist however, and so we went to a dockside bar conveniently owned by a friend to relax in the sun.
 
This on the water bar enjoys a close proximity to the main wharf of the island, where the ferry and cargo boats come in and out all day and from where we were lounging I was watching some local children playing in the water near the wharf.


They were in the water, what was stopping me from going in? I thought… my hubby did not entertain the idea for a second, and was firmly planted on the end of the dock. I investigated the ladder off the dock into the water and saw a lot of algae and a small red crab.. so that option was out. I went to the other side of the dock as far away from the crab as I could get and cannon balled into the brown murky water. When I surfaced, from water level I noticed the sheen of gasoline on top of the water as far as the eye could see. Crap. Oh well, I was in the process of curing my hangover and on the bright side was simultaneously getting a chemical peel. I floated for about 30 seconds, tried to stay underwater where everyone knows the gas would not penetrate and then felt something brush against my leg. I quickly surfaced and saw ripples on the water where a creature had surfaced for air and I was on that ladder faster than you could say ‘holy shit did you see that?’

Well, after this my hair went from split ended curly dryness to crunchy, and almost crystallized frayed endedness. Over the course of a few weeks I tried multiple Honduran hair products, stopping only when I read placenta on the ingredients list of the bottle, I tried not using ay hair products at all until I just couldn’t bear it and the first chance I got had the bottom 5 inches cut off by a Latina with a cotton ball taped to a zit on her chin while she gossiped with the stylist behind us and talked to her child on her phone. In my broken Spanish I told her my hair was bad (she agreed) and told her to do whatever she wanted to fix it.

Upon my return to Canada, I realize that I am a long hair person and am focused on growing it out – the right way this time. and by the right way I mean finding home remedy hair masks on pintrest (egg yolk and canola oil) and getting it trimmed at First Choice Hair Cutters (i know, sad.) every 6 weeks. no split ends for me! My hair is still limp and lacking curl, but I can drag a brush through it no problem for the first time in… my entire life and other than an unfortunate incident with some burrs (the vegetation, not family) things have been going well.  This may surprise you but the burr incident deserves and will get a post of its own, just as soon as I recover from the trauma.

we found enormous sparklers in Honduras for our fireworks extravaganza at new years