How To Highlight You Own Hair & Start Your Own Career

These instructions are mostly for those who were born blonde and now find that there hair has become ....that other color. If you have darker hair you may want to wait until October so you can enter your local jack-o lantern contest.

1. Pick out a box of good old fashioned pull through cap style highlighting kit. That is how you get more  unique highlights that don't look like racing stripes.
2. Go home and read directions on box.
3. Skip the part about the pre- color test, who wants to mess with that.
4. Put on the flimsy little cap that tears easy, because you are too cheap to go over to Sally and buy a nicer one.
5. Put on your glasses, check mirror, laugh and hope the house doesn't catch fire.
6. Proceed to pull hair thru holes. Make sure to pull more thru some than others so you have several  unpredictable widths, not uniform ones. This is also a good test of coordination as you learn whether you can sit in a sink holding a hand mirror with your held tilted back and peer upwards with your eyes, trying to keep your vision within the area of your glasses while desperately trying to see the holes on the back of your head and poke a stick thru them.
7. Mix bleaching stuff and begin to apply.
8. If you have colored before,  ignore directions about carefully applying only to previously un- highlighted parts. Who has time for that.
9. Put plastic bag on head, remembering to stop at hair line is entirely up to you.
10. Feel that funny cold sensation in a few areas on your head. That will be the places the cheap cap tore a little and left a bigger hole and the bleach is leaking thru. You will have some very trendy orange polka dots in these areas.
11. Set timer. Amuse yourself.
12. When timer goes off you now have two choices. First risk getting near a window or venturing outside to see what color your hair is. If it is still a goldish orange color you can stop now and do the trendy thing with spots and stripes. Or you can leave on until very pale yellow. This will result in gorgeous blonde highlights for about 2 weeks, then they will break off about a quarter inch from your head and you will have a very edgy, spiky thing going on.
13. Next rinse. Remind yourself to take off pullover sweater before coloring next time. Rinse and remove cap.
14. While letting the moisturizing shampoo soak in for a few minutes, you may contemplate your hair feeling like a birds nest that has been out in the rain.
15. When hair is dry, spend some time trying to part hair different ways to cover the spots.
16. Get in the car and go to Sally. If your spots are small or only slightly yellowish you may look for some good old fashioned Roux Fanciful temp color like your grandmother or great grandmother swore by, in white minx or champagne, and apply every 2 days for 3 months. If they are very bright you may want to get one of those ten minute permanent hair colors in an ashy shade to give you the lovely color you were trying to lose in the first place.
17. Repeat these steps every few months for years and years. Or, before Nicole hires a detective to find out who I am and track me down so she can slap me. Go TO A Trained Professional.

Disclaimer: Do not do anything I tell you to, except this part: Go To A Trained Professional

Beauty/Career Biography
This guide brought to you by Motpg. Ms. G managed to get out of high school by the time she was 17, even though she didn't pay much attention to grammar. Having devoted herself to music and trained since she was 12 with a vocal coach to be on Broadway someday, Ms. G wasn't quite ready to head there yet, so was doing some more school. She was always happy to attend her Art and Literature classes but sometimes forgot to attend the others. She began to waiver and think maybe she would be an Artist instead and also as a back up plan began writing a historical novel that unfortunately was never finished. ( Any resemblance to her middle daughter is purely a coincidence and means nothing : )
 Her mother thought maybe she should learn to do something that would provide an income other than theirs, just to be safe. Ms. G's hairstylist suggested she give beauty a try & she said...... Ok. After spending nearly a year training in cosmetology so she could feed herself if necessary and approximately 2 weeks before she had finished her on floor hours and was ready to take her state test, Ms. G had a lovely young  girl with beautiful thick, luxurious, straight, coarse black hair that fell to her waist sit in her chair. She wanted a change. It being the early 80's she thought she would try that new style that cut up high above your ears in front and was a little longer in back. Ms. G. said......Ok. Later that day Ms. G decided the last thing she ever wanted to be responsible for again was somebody Else's head. And so she became......
You got it!

An Authentic Beauty School Drop Out!

 Her parents were thrilled. Ms. G then got a job as a clerk/asst. manager of a dry cleaners where she couldn't mess much up and dithered about what she actually wanted to do and concentrated on enjoying the then legal drinking age of 18 and eventually meeting her husband. She began working for a Large/Eventful Corp. type place that some people might think would be fun to work for but it wasn't and hated every minute of it which was fine because they didn't like her much either, but she can't divulge what it is because her mother worked there for A Long Time and  some other  people with whom she is associated still work there, so yeah....anyway. She continued for awhile and then they changed the drinking age to 21 and a lot of the places she liked to go wouldn't let her get in anymore even though she was married and had been going out for 2 years, and the state said she still could, but they could drink beer at home which gets boring after awhile and they didn't have much to do so finally

God said: Here..... Do You Think You Can Finish This?

 & gave them a baby. And Ms. G said Does that mean I can quit this job?, .....I mean Ok! and then at one point she said, Oh God I hope so, and now is happy to say, Yes. I finished that....one anyway. And that is how Ms. G got where she is today which is not on Broadway or doing your hair but she helps run two businesses and doesn't make much but saves a lot of money by not having to pay for her family to get hair cuts. (she doesn't care if They cry when she's done: )  And that's Ok, cause Ms. G suspects she really doesn't want to work that hard. ( Any resemblance to her middle daughter is purely a coincidence and means nothing ; )

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Don't Ask Questions.

What you say to your daughter at 5:30 AM when she walks out of her room to find you wandering down the hall towards the laundry room wearing a fleece jacket and your underwear and carrying your shoes in your hand.



© 2010 All Rights Reserved

Level:3 The Punk

Part 2 The Beginning and The End and The Yin and The Yang (Sort of)
An outline with emphasis on the dating decisions that helped shape my daughters choices.

The first day of ninth grade Biggest was in the courtyard of her new high school when she saw a sight that changed her life forever. Striding along with confidence, his tall Mohawk evilly glinting with deadly sharp tips. She gazed at his dog collar in shock and viewed his black combat boots in awe, as he proudly displayed his total rebellion against society within the circle of his Anarchy tattoo, her little preppy heart began to beat with terror.....or no ...it was

Love.

A shy, quiet girl she was in the throes of being tortured by a group of people she had thought were her friends.  Here, there was a way out. Here, she would be safe. Here, they wouldn't bother her, and they didn't, ever again. Here, they couldn't hurt her and no, they never dared.

And that's when we began our journey into hell.

When you read or hear the words  "Sudden change in appearance, new friends, different music, falling grades" they aren't kidding. They lined up like dominoes and proceeded to all fall down. It started with a new girl friend. At first I was glad. She had been hurt and lonely.  Not for long. I call this friend the Evil One. I don't feel bad for that, I met her mother, she was trying.  Next she was all in black and trying to look as scary as possible.
But this is about the boy. The Punk. He was part of the training crew that led this merry pack of little troublemakers  along the way to the counseling center affiliated with the school. It was there that this clique practiced their skills in manipulation and playing the system. They thought it was a joke. They compared notes, made stuff up, shared information on what would get the biggest rise out of parents and teachers alike. When they went to school that is. You see my little poem at the top of the page. Sometimes kids are just being rotten little jackasses and their parents have nothing to do with it.  Sometimes parents are losers. Like the "mother" who was letting these kids hang at her house and party during the day, providing them with beer and drugs, and trying to sleep with the boys.  Some of these kids obviously were living hellish lives. They turned to each other to create family and a sense of love and belonging. They did not believe that parents could really want the best for you. What I find puzzling to this day is that the ones whose families did care fell into this belief to fit in with this group. Some, like my daughter, at first felt pity and being ostracized by their other peers, welcomed the sense of belonging they found there. She didn't have to feel anxious or impress these friends. But to really belong, you had to know that parents and school and even counselors were the enemy. Only the tribe could really be trusted. And this boy taught her that society was crap, she didn't have to take it from anyone. And he was a drummer in a punk band. Who could ask for anything more. The one thing she did learn was to rant and rave. I think she had held in every angry thought for 14 years so she did learn to vent a little bit and express her anger.
   My child quickly learned that we have no power. All she had to do was tell us F U and walk out. All she had to do was make some threats,  break some stuff. Punch some walls, physically attack and look...There they are. Just like her friends said. The people who don't care about you. They expect you to be accountable. They don't love you for who you are. If they did they wouldn't try to control you. They would never expect you to do something you didn't want to do or try to interfere with what makes you happy. One of the most dangerous signs you can hear from your teenager is this: Their friends call themselves a family and have a hierarchy with parent figures, brothers and sisters. Another is: You expect me to be perfect and what you want me to be. You don't respect me for who I am so why should I respect you. This is a  system of behavior that is being used to manipulate teens by other teens and then used on family.
   But one story at a time. She dated The Punk for awhile. Then he apparently dumped her. Which caused her already damaged self esteem to spiral downward. She spiraled deeper with it. We took her out of the school. But it didn't stop the problems. Over the next two years things continued to deteriorate. Every time we made some headway we were bashed back. One of the things about a peer group like this is that they don't really care about you. But, if after an extended period of time you are not seen they start to come out. I call them the cockroaches. Just when we would get her on her feet the calls would start. And it would start again. And she met another boy.
  The Soul Destroyer. This one was self centered, abusive, and respected no one. This is when the drugs got more serious and really out of control behavior began.  I don't judge his mother. She was on her own and did the best she could. She felt guilty for having to raise him alone. But the fact is she held him accountable for nothing. In the years I knew them he never did anything that wasn't really Someone  Else's fault. We even tried to help him. Tried to point him in the right direction and encourage him. It wasn't what he wanted. During these years I watched my child turn in to someone I would avoid if I saw them walking towards me on the street. During this time she would sometimes be missing for days at a time, come home filthy, weighed  barely 100lbs. Had black circles under her eyes that looked like she hadn't slept in days, sometimes she hadn't.
This is around the time we made our final attempt at having her hospitalized. She was hanging around a lot of street people and drifters. Then she met a different type of wanderer and was introduced to a kinder gentler rebellion.
  Just before  she turned 16 she ran away again. Well, she said I'm going to a Rainbow Gathering in Ocala Fl. And we said no you are not and she said F U, yes I am and left. We did the usual & went down to report her missing. By that time I think they had a rubber stamp with her name and address up at the police station. While she was there, something weird happened. She had told her friends she had heard about this gathering and they decided to go.  They were going there to party. Biggest noticed more than the partying. She noticed a sense of peacefulness and community. She was, dare I say it, embarrassed by her friends behavior while they were there. She started to participate in the event. I don't really approve of everything she picked up there, but..... My daughter walked out of here a Punk, and came home a hippie. Peace and Love dude, well in less she drank too much and you really pissed her off.
   The Peacemaker. I call him that because he was the one that allowed her to have peace with her family. I am saving the full story for another post but he fit in better with her new style of dreadlocks, sarongs & going barefoot. She shed the Soul Destroyer. She couldn't safely leave the group for us. With this new relationship they backed off. They went away. Something we had never been able to accomplish.  He was older than we would have allowed in a normal world (20), but we weren't in the normal world. And he had a real job and basically normal life. She would report to us from time to time that she heard something about the Punk or the Soul Destroyer. They fell deeper into the pit. One day we learned the Soul Destroyer had been arrested for armed robbery in another state. The Punk, well he had disappeared. Been gone a long time. No one knew where he was. During those 2 years she continued to grow up and grow more rational.  Maybe too normal, shortly after she turned 18 the peacemaker ended the relationship. We all felt the loss.
  But Then. We had a time of uncertainty. Because of her past there was a real fear of Biggest falling back into the pit. The only people she had to go back to were her old friends. For a little while things were shaky. Then we noticed someone was dropping her off at the end of the road and never coming up to the house. Alarms went off! We confronted. We demanded. She said, "it's Ok. I promise." Not good enough. Who?
  The Punk.
  No Way. You have got to be kidding me. If he comes in my yard I will shoot him! Well, yes he knows that which is why he is dropping her off down the road. Then we hear a story about how he left town to work for his uncle and got straightened out and has his life together. About how they ran into each other at someones house and found out neither of them really wanted to be around these people anymore but didn't really know a lot of other people who weren't from the past. So they had been hanging around each other instead. And it was really Ok!
"I've heard that song before. You are 18. The 1st time you come in my house wasted you are out on your rear. Do not bring him anywhere near my home."
" But you don't understand. "
"Damn straight I don't."
 
  A few days later an audience is requested. No joke. I want nothing to do with it. My husband walks outside to speak to The Punk, who I notice doesn't have a Mohawk anymore. He's wearing jeans and a tee shirt and sneakers. They had a guy talk. They came to an understanding. My husband said we had to give him a chance. Yeah right! Over my dead body. He could be nice but don't expect me to.

That was almost 5 years ago.

So does anyone have a good suggestion for a blog name for my son in law because The Punk doesn't quite seem to fit?

Nowadays he is more like Decent Guy who works hard at a good trade and likes to go fishing.

When she is angry and ranting and raving about something we like to tease him and say we are glad he came back to take responsibility for what he created.

Well.....he did.



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