678 My Hair Is Strange

Sunday, May 7, 2006

There are men on the roof again today, four of them. They're removing the shingles from the back half, and making a lot of noise. Miss Thunderfoot has glued herself to my ankle (Mommy! Mommy! There are huge rats in the attic, and they're scaring me!)

It's pretty cold in the house. It got down to 60 overnight, and is just 63 now. There's not enough sun to warm things up, which is bad for me, but good for the roofers, I guess. I may have to give in and switch back to heat, or at least throw some logs in the fireplace. The air conditioning hasn't gone on since last Tuesday, when I made the switch. (Oops - just realized the roofers might not appreciate wood smoke pouring out of the chimney, which is in the middle of where they're working. Ok. Scratch that idea.)

My hair is getting weird. Before Jay got sick, it was medium-dark reddish brown with a quarter-sized white patch right on the top of my head (which I often dyed to blend) that I'd had since my early twenties. Just before he got sick (when I was 53), I started growing some scattered white, and then during his illness, it suddenly went almost completely white in a wide band from the top of my ears to the temples and around the back of my head. The lower back and the very top of my head stayed brown with gray. It looked strange. So I started lightening the top, using the palest blond hair dye I could find. It blended in nicely.

It continued to turn, until finally there's just a small dark patch right at the front top. Sorta like Jay Leno's dark patch. (The lower back is still darker, too, by now it's dark gray, but that looks ok.) Most of the rest of the top of my head was almost white.

I was looking forward to the dark patch getting smaller and lighter, and then I could finally stop touching up the roots.

But the strangest thing is happening.

This past year, the whole top of my head is gradually getting darker! And it seems to be spreading back across the crown and the back of my head. When I look closely, it looks like blackish hairs are multiplying and mixing with the white and the few remaining brown. Used to be I could mix up a few tablespoons of the dye and touch up the roots when they got an inch and a half long. Until then, the difference wasn't very obvious - it blended and looked like just a trick of the light or something. Now, suddenly, a half inch of root looks terrible. I have to touch up every two weeks.

I vaguely remember that ingesting some metals can cause hair to change color, but I haven't been exposed to anything unusual, and haven't eaten anything unusual. Certainly not on an ongoing basis. About the only thing that's changed in the past year is my weight and activity level, and ... um ... sex life.

Can that do it?

Am I getting younger?

And what on earth can I do with this hair!