So here is my beautiful sister Em with her old color:
It's actually more vibrant than this but you get the idea.
Right before we started:
Isn't she adorable? I mean, ahem, totally cool?
Anyway so the game plan was to bleach her hair as white as it would go and then put the blue dye over it to get an icy blue sort of color all over.
We applied the bleach and waited...and waited...after about an hour we figured we should probably rinse it out and this is is what we got:
Not quite as white as we wanted...that red was so stubborn! So, we had Mim go buy another bleaching kit... We applied that and waited...and waited...but it had faded all it was going to fade, so the plan had to change. We decided that the blue over the red would make purple and she was ok with having blue roots and purple tips, so on we went.
Right as I was putting the blue dye on Em had a stroke of brilliance and thought it would be awesome if we left a little bit of it reddish orange in the front, so I sectioned off some and left it while the blue dye did its thing.
So originally it was going to be all blue but I think this turned out much cooler:
Some reddish orange in the front with blue roots in the back and a frosty purple on the tips.
My sister is SO Rock 'n' Roll!
Now, short rant:
When I was Em's age I would have LOVED to have blue hair. Or really any color other than my own. But Dad was so strict...he didn't want us wearing any makeup or even nail polish, let alone dye our hair. Finally Mim convinced him that it would be ok for me to dye it a little, and so I got to dye it a slightly lighter shade of my own natural hair color. So exciting, I know.
Anyway, now that Dad is out of the picture (mostly, anyway) Mim has seen the light and relaxed and realized that it's FREAKING FUN to have crazy colors in your hair, and is a lot more lenient with Em and Jorg than she ever was with me and Kwiddens.
Totally not fair.
Just another gem of a memory from my childhood.
Rant over.
being an only child, i only witnessed the sib divide from arm's length, but i think what you described with your younger ones is more common than it seems. in my friend's case, it was twofold; first, there's a 17-year age gap between her and her little brother with no one in between, but second, her dad died three weeks after her 21st birthday, so the baby was basically raised in a single-parent household until her mom remarried.
ReplyDeleteher folks were strict when we were growing up, but after her dad passed, it went NUTS. so instead of the loosening-up you describe, the screws were turned 200% harder. in my case, when my mom left, my dad got super-strict... until i went away to college, at which point he dropped basically all the rules and developed a real adult relationship with me. it was nice.
i guess my point is that parenting seems to be a total hit-and-miss thing, and the mistakes made on the older ones are either corrected or FAR worsened on the younger. sigh.
Yeah, there's me, then 2.5 years, then Kwiddens, then 5 years, then Em, then 2 years, then Jorg. So basically the gaps are way smaller than your friend's.
ReplyDeleteThe nice thing was that Dad was the neurotic, uptight one in the relationship and that rubbed off on Mim during their 17 years of marriage, so once he left she chilled out and became herself again. And I love having an adult relationship with her. She's my best friend first, and my mom second, and I wouldn't have it any other way.
Anyway. I know what happened and why, but it doesn't stop me from being extremely jealous.
(They are allowed to play video games, too. I never was. Boo.)