Eye of the Tiger

I came up with all sorts of topics to blog about today, but the only one that is sticking with me is this rule:

If you ever handle hot peppers, even mildly hot peppers, with your fingers DO NOT attempt to put in contacts with those same fingers for at least 12 hours.

Same goes for removal. Get some good hydrating eyedrops and sleep in the suckers.

See the thing is, in these trying times, my roots are still going grey and so I'm trying the at-home hair color thing in the interest of saving $60-80. The Clairol worked well but the color was bland. I found a funky auburn (aka red) color from Loreal so I figured I could try that.

But first I had to get allergy shots (all five!) and then I was starving. I went to a cheap Pho place and along with basil, lime, and beansprouts, I got sliced jalepenos to stuff in my soup. Or perhaps they were a stronger pepper. The only utensils were soup spoons and chopsticks. I'm good with chopsticks but they don't really lend themselves to cutting. So with my fingers, I tore up a couple pepper slices and tossed them in my soup. I figured the whole slice would be too strong to eat at once and I was right. They contributed a nice lip-tingle burn. I added a small dollop of the red pepper paste to move the burn more toward the back of the mouth. It was pretty good.

Belly full, I came home and started mixing up the hair color only to realize that I was wearing glasses and that maybe wasn't such a good idea. So I took the Kate Spades. Then I took the protective gloves off and rinsed the glove powder off my hand and tried to put in my right contact. I'm pretty sure I didn't have ammonia or anything like it from the color on my fingertip. But I sure as hell had something on there and given past experience with peppers and contacts (which I would have blogged about had I been blogging then - the day I tested whether red or green peppers off the same plant were hotter than the other and 6 hours later tried to take out contacts... memorable day) I'm pretty sure I still had hot pepper oil on my fingertip. Which I stuck back in my eye to retrieve the contact figuring it wouldn't help to leave it there.

You know how when you get water in your eye it kind of stings unless it's salinated or otherwise buffered? And when you read the warnings like "run water in eye for 15 minutes if you get product 'Blinding Toxin' in your eye" and you think about how much that raw water on your eye will sting? Not so much. Raw tap water on the inflamed eyeball is in fact quite soothing for a while. I was fortunate to also have a big bottle of saline that I switched to after the blinding pain reduced enough that I could cut back the volume.

In the meantime, my dye was chemically reacting so I got out my older glasses and put those on. I'm sure I could do it by touch but I wasn't looking forward to a purple forehead. I can only see clearly for about a foot, maybe less. (Just under twice as far as a short eyeliner pencil is long.) The Loreal upmarket variety of dye actually seemed weirdly dry when I put it on. Normally, I get big gloppy paste on my head that holds all my hair up, but in this case, it kept falling down and leaving dark streaks on my neck. It also tingled a lot more than the Clairol (which I don't remember tingling, but will have to check my blog history) meaning I'm probably more allergic to it. So I'm not loving it. I do like the Loreal conditioner a little better though.

I'll have to see what the color looks like in the sun tomorrow. If all goes well, the highlights (raw color on grey hair) will match my red eye.