I can see clearly now

I've been fretting about the white/gray threads that have been stepping up their assault on my hair of late.

Alison -- she of the uncommonly beautiful locks -- keeps telling me to just let it go. "Go natural and see what happens."

The picture to the right is what happens. Due to a scheduling SNAFU, I'd failed to make another hair appointment back in July when I had last teamed with Julie Lett to disguise the Gray Creeper. I think she threw up a little in her mouth when I sent her my current state of, uh, hairs, as September rolled in.

Ali was 6-years-old when she noticed our hair wasn't perfectly matched and thought that it should be. She was 14 or so when she discovered that unlike my six siblings, I only inherited the skin color and temper of my red-headed tribe.

I didn't go red until shortly before I got married, but I've been a shade of red since 1996 or 7. It was about a decade ago that Julie worked some magic to get me closer to Alison's hair. (Ali's hair most closely resembles the locks of my sister, Debra Strahla, or my niece, Jaime Weir.)

When I advised Julie, by text and photo, that I was thinking of just giving up and going totally gray, she said, "You be thinking about that."

I used a fun app to see what different shades would look like, and when I shared the photos. Ali re-thought her suggestion. Julie, God bless her, had my regular goop on standby. We compromised by taking a baby step. "You won't match Ali anymore," Julie warned me.

The picture to the left is what we ended up. It's designed to slow walk the terrible march to full-on Barbara Bush.

In other news, and still speaking of hair, I had a conversation the other day with a plumber. Ali and I shed like mangy cats, and I was tired of it taking 15 minutes or more for my sink to drain.

The plumber, working on separate project, had noticed Jeff's stockpile of Drano-type chemicals. I told him that Jeff used it on my sink on a regular schedule. He said we were wasting our money.

"None of that stuff really works," he said. "You've just got to get in there and snake it out." he said

You notice his use of the pronoun. He didn't want to go in after whatever was living in my pipes any more than I did. I tested his theory over the past few weeks. I emptied every container of what looked like stuff that could eat away grossness. He was right: none of it worked.

Last week, frustrated with issues related to re-formatting my book, I took a break from it and went to the sink. I used a pliable, rubber covered wire to fish around below the sink plug.

You know how you wash your hands during the day and your face at night and don't really notice what's slipping off with the soap and water?

You really don't want to know happens below the stopper.

This photo to the right shows the partial results of more than a month of ignoring my slow drain. The photo does not do justice to the depths of its gross-ness. And that's not all of what I dragged out.

The hair had trapped other gunk, which must have multiplied like some primordial creature-in-the-making. I swear to you that I am not that dirty. I've been pouring bleach down there by the cup-full to kill whatever else may linger. Ali is fascinated by chemistry right now and would probably have kept the stuff in a Ball jar to see what happened next. I am both repulsed and afraid of whatever it already is and have no interest in what may come next. (Hence: the bleach.)

Here's a fun fact, though: none of the hair that lingered in my drain was gray. Those bastards are hanging tight.



I leave you with one of the more fun shots of our summer at Victory Field. I met Jeff after work for a play-off game. We won that night but lost later, so the season is over.

He was still in work clothes. The park wasn't full, and he stretched out at one point, glanced down and said: "I look like I would be in danger of shriveling up if a house fell on me."

Ha!

#RollTribe