A Bit of Chaos

This may come as a shock to some of you, but I color my hair. When I found a gray hair at 18, it was cool. Maturing, you know, wise beyond my years. That lost its cachet pretty quick.

The other day, I happened to look in the mirror and saw that my gray roots were a good half-inch long. It was 11:05. My writers group meets here weekly at noon, so I had plenty of time to color before they arrived 55 minutes later. I painted away the gray.

By 11:40, I was ready to rinse. I turned on the water and…nothing.

“You’ve got to be kidding me!” I said aloud to no one.

I raced to the kitchen. Same thing. Nothing. The downstairs bathroom? Nada.

A month ago, there had been an incident with the hot water heater, and 40 gallons escaped faster than I could wet-vac it up. But I had a new heater, and all was well. That couldn’t be the source of my dilemma that was escalating by the minute as color saturated my brain.

Like a chicken with its head cut off, I pounded back to the upstairs bathroom, magically believing there would be water this time. There was not.

I sprinted back down to the main level. “Okay. What have you got?” I opened the refrigerator, and spied about a quart of iced tea. I usually make a gallon every other day, but I was low.

I zipped downstairs and pulled a plastic dishpan from the utility room cabinet then dashed back up to the kitchen. I was in my right mind enough to know I wasn’t going to pour cold tea on my head, so I poured it in a bowl and stuck it in the microwave. When it was warm enough, I climbed on a chair, bent over the dishpan in the sink, and drizzled the tea over my hair.

I poured the now toxic tea from the dishpan back into the bowl, then over my head again.  Did I really think this thickening darkening tea would work miracles and get this dye off my hair? It had to. I repeated the rinse cycle.

After squeezing my hair fairly dry, I darted to the old refrigerator in the furnace room. Weren’t there a couple bottles of water in there among all the canned sodas? Yes, two. I heated one up in a clean bowl and rinsed and rinsed. The water looked like oak stain. When I thought I couldn’t get any more out with that murky water, I heated up the last bottle. A few more rinses, and that was it. It would have to do.

I dried my hair with a tea towel, then cleaned up the mess and was still on the phone with the water company rep as the front door opened and the first writer came in. Turns out the water company was working in the area, and I should have water back by 2:00.

“It could be rusty looking, but just let it run for a bit,” the rep said.

You’d think that would be the end of my water problems, but a couple days ago in the late afternoon I moseyed to the mailbox and pulled out an official letter. The water company said there had been a change made to my account. If I didn’t make the change, I should call immediately.

I had changed nothing, so I called and a robot said it would be an hour wait to speak to someone. Better to call the next morning. Of course, I borrowed trouble and thought that someone was trying to steal my identity by becoming a contact on my water bill.

The next morning when I talked to a rep after six minutes on hold, I discovered that the phone number had been changed from my former land line to my cell…by me…when I’d called during the hair coloring fiasco.

You might think I’m a little gray-haired lady losing her short-term memory, but you’d be wrong. My hair is brown.

Callie’s Song

A Country Music Star and a Local Girl–Years ago singing star Trey, aka Morgan P. Rutherford III, paid for Blue Ridge Mountain teenager Callie Duncan’s college education. At her graduation, he sees Callie’s metamorphosis, and now he’s back at his summer mountain home to see if he can get her out of his mind. Callie Duncan learned long ago that superstar Trey and Morgan Rutherford are two separate identities for the same person, but she equates Morgan to Superman and Trey to Clark Kent. And she’s fallen for Morgan, but all her life she’s heard “Summer people and year-rounders don’t mix.” Now she doesn’t want to believe it, but a family secret just may reveal that it’s true.This award-winning novel is now available as an e-book.

Callie’s Challenge: Her Secret 

Secrets and Survival–Morgan P. Rutherford, III, known to his country music fans as Trey, is in a freak accident. His wife Callie is his main support through this awful ordeal, but as he gets stronger, she seems withdrawn to him. He wonders if he’ll ever sing again, and is concerned that something more than getting to know the father she didn’t know existed until last summer is bothering Callie. But what?This is a sequel to the award-winning Callies’ Song.Download your copy today!