The Hair Dilemma

I have spent the last 1.4 years weaving my own hair. Now, when I say 'weaving' I mean foiling my hair with low lights and high lights. This sounds much easier than it is - mostly because of The Back of my head. For about six years I added high lights to my hair with gloved hands and no foils, before I discovered that I could actually do the low lights also - if I learned how to use Reynolds Wrap. This was extremely difficult initially, but eventually I felt like it was at least Do-able. (Here's a link for wikiHow on foiling hair.)

It worked OK sometimes, and sometimes it didn't work so well. But, I always had a backup: another stay-at-home mom that had been to beauty school and worked out of a 'beauty parlor' in her small living room apartment charging somewhere around $30 for a weave.

Normally, I could get away with highlighting it myself, or foiling with low lights and highlights for about six months or so, but never have I gone for this long without professional help. Yesterday, I felt like it was honestly too scary for me to attempt to fix - alone. But, there I was again, at the beauty supply store, asking for assistance. A lot of it. The cashier gave me multiple little samples of colored hair for me to hold up to my roots while looking in a mirror. We discussed at length the color and the end result I was envisioning. She recommended different products and wrote down the mixture ratios of dye, bleach, and developers for me. I spent $14. The closest beauty school to me right now starts a weave at $75.

Even though I have done this multiple times, I still needed lots of advice from the cashier. This is because I would rather have my hair look like this:

than like this:
But, it always turns out like this. My husband likes blonde, so I always add a little blonde but then immediately dread the imminent Incoming Roots. That's why, I guess, I'm in this whole mess with the beauty supply store. Plus, I like to take my stress out on my hair, (Reminder: birthday party is today).

As I walked out of the beauty supply store yesterday, I felt empowered - again.

That was all nice, until after I spent 1.2 hours in my bathroom, after my kids were asleep, surrounded by mixed dyes and developers, Reynolds Wrap, brushes, heavy fumes, and then viewed The End Result. Most of it looks all right (ignoring the back which I don't have a mirror to look at anyway, so that is helpful), that is, EXCEPT for the pleasant looking, overly-bleached, large yellow spot in the exact center of my natural part, directly on the top of my head.

And, rather than other things, I will just say this: I will be so excited if I can ever afford to get my hair highlighted by someone else - or rather, a professional stylist - again.