Hedgehogs and the case of the vanishing eyebrows

Hello there!!! Remember me? I am back and I have some yarns to share… grab yourself a beverage and get comfy.

Among the comments I get here, on social media and elsewhere, is how amazing our life is and how perfect it all looks. This always astounds me, as I can see so much room for improvement in everything that it makes me ache. But I do tend to be a little bit ‘Sally Sunshine’ sometimes, editing out some of the uncomfortable (and frankly boring) stuff… but in the interests of KEEPING IT REAL, I feel the need to share a couple of recent ‘moments’ from my life.

The case of the beautician balls-up

One of the delights of living in our rural community is that I have an AMAZING hairdresser who also does my eyebrows for me. Post-chemo Melissa was able to style my wicked white regrowth into something that made me feel human and feminine again (no mean feat) and who found the PERFECT colour to tint my patchy eyebrows to help them regain a little of their former glory.

Now Melissa knows perfectly well how much I rate her skills – and I adore that she does her best to fit me into her farm-based salon (complete with dogs, poddies and ponies and cheeky cockatoo) whenever I happen to be near town.

I am absolutely hopeless at both styling my own hair and shaping my own eyebrows, so most ‘selfies’ I take (when I feel relatively okay about myself) are post-visit to Melissa.

A week or so ago I was visiting one of our local Big Towns, and despite a list a mile long of chores, I found myself with 15 minutes to spare. So what did I do? I made the rash decision to visit a beautician on a side street for a ‘quick eyebrow tidy up’. How hard could it be?

As I entered the empty salon, I was pounced on and enthusiastically welcomed by two petite, pretty ladies with very charming accents. I wondered how much English they spoke but thought: that’s okay – as long as I am clear about what I want, all will be good. So I asked for ‘just a tidy-up underneath my brows’ and a tint – I was answered with much smiling and nodding, ‘sure sure‘ reassurances, so I lay down and closed my eyes to enjoy my little bit of pampering.

Murmuring as she worked, my beautician swept wax under my rightbrow. Then above my right brow. Then between my brows. Now you need to remember I have only just recently grown these brows BACK – I lay there in disbelief feeling the warm wax soaking into my hard-won brow hairs and wondering if there is any way to remove it without removing the hairs too.

As I wondered, she ripped. Rip-rip-RIP.

My stomach began to churn as I tried to calculate how much brow had vanished. It felt awfully above my eye rather than at the edges. What do I do now?

“PLEASE.” I begged, “ONLY UNDER the brow. Not AROUND.”

‘Sure, sure’, she murmured.

She swept wax under my left brow. I opened my right eye (now watering under a denuded right brow) and gestured with my hand UNDER the brow. She leaned in to add more wax.

“NOT ABOVE!” I said in panic. She lowered the wax paddle.

“But you uneven!” she said. I was smiling grimly but adamant.

“I only just grew them back!” I was already mentally colouring in with my eyebrown pencil. My voice had a small quaver, and she shook her head as she picked up her tweezers. Pluck, pluck PLUCK. All around my left eyebrow.

“Can I SEE?” I sat up to make the plucking stop.

Sure sure, she murmured. She held a mirror high and I gasped. My right eyebrow now started much further RIGHT … it seemed to be sliding off my face. My left brow was slightly better. But not much.

‘THAT’ll do thanks!” I said. She shook her head at the crazy lady on her workbench.

‘You need lip waxed too!’ She told me.

Well, not really, I protested, a bit blindsided. A couple of hairs plucked maybe, I relented.

No plucking! she argued – had I ever had threading done?

Well no… I hesitated. She pounced.

Having never been ‘threaded’ in my life, I had no idea what to expect. She leaned in close above me, and her hands were ALL over my face, working the taut tangle of cotton all over the lower portion of my head. I could feel hairs and bits of skin getting caught in the frantic action. It was terrifying. I signalled that I had had enough.

I sat up to go (slash escape) and then – despite this prelude – I mentioned out loud that I was there for a brow tint too. Sometimes I really could just kick myself.

‘What colour?’ she asked.

‘I don’t know exactly what it’s called, but it’s not brown really, more ashy,’ I explained.

Sure, sure, she nodded, as she rifled through a small drawer of little pots.

I lay down again, reassuring myself that the process could ONLY improve. She painted the tint VERY carefully on, and left me to ‘cook’. Now when Melissa tints my meagre brows, it takes 30 seconds to a minute at most. I was lying there, at the Big Town salon, at least five minutes and could feel the liquid starting to burn. Tick, tick, tick…

She came back to check closely, and then held a mirror up for me to check the colour.

I almost died.

For there, it horrible clarity, was my left brow. And it was now LIGHT, BRIGHT YELLOW. Clearly she had interpreted my ‘ashy’ as ‘blonde’. Oh, my, GAWD.

I sat up clutching at my head and the words ‘WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?’ escaped my lips.

‘I FIX I FIX!’ She exclaimed in panic, no doubt terrified I would gallop off down the street with one yellow eyebrow and one still plastered in dye. I can tell you, she was right to be concerned. My adrenaline levels were going through the roof. She practically shoved me back on the workbench.

She cleaned off the remaining mixture before reapplying (painstakingly slowly) from another pot, as I lay there trying hard not to moan, imagining my new faint brows falling out from excess chemical. Just breeeeathe, I reminded myself. They are only eyebrows, only eyebrows. I breathed. She painted. My brows tingled. Breeeeeathe….

After several applications of dye, some 20 minutes later, my eyebrows were once again darkish. Sure, they had a definite orange hue but by this stage I just wanted OUT. Breeaathhheeee…

I paid and stumbled back out onto the street – a wiser and much more orange woman than I had entered the salon 45 minutes earlier.

My husband couldn’t quite comprehend the depths of my anguish – I felt seriously violated, even as I tried to calm myself down. I kept chanting to myself: ‘First world problems, first world problems’.

Violet took one look as asked ‘WHY are your eyebrows like that Mum?‘. My expression told my husband all he needed to know to change the subject very quickly. I shoved large dark sunglasses onto my face and they stayed firmly in place until we called into Melissa on the way home.

I took no photos of the myself or my glowing brow. THAT is how traumatised I was: I couldn’t think straight enough to take evidence! Here are the best before-and-after’s I can muster:

It took Melissa two sessions to tone my poor abused eyebrows back to some kind of colour I could live with. She agreed that yellow or orange does NOT go with silver-white hair.

The case of the sudden Hedgehog: a very short (spiky) story!

This weekend I attended the Ekka and a Gala Ball in Brisbane. I pencilled in my right eyebrow at the start of each day, and headed to a city hairdresser to get my hair done before the ball. I asked for some ‘funk’ and a bit of ‘lift’ …

What I got was pure ‘hedgehog‘. This is the toned down (or frantically watered-down) version.  Seriously – this is TAME.

Sure,I am still smiling… (Look at the dude next to me – who wouldn‘t be?)

That hair though? Having a party all on it’s own! (Go back to top pic in this post to see how well my OWN hairdresser styled my #grannyhair head.)

And those eyebrows? THANKYOU Melissa and eyebrow pencils – right brow coloured in both ends!

This is deeper into the night. The gorgeous Pip Courtney (ABC Landline host) and Georgie Somerset (Agforce VP) posing with me. As we were ALL off-duty, I partook in a few glasses of pinot gris and some serious socialising – these helped ease the stress (and increase my ‘glow’)… Hair remained on high alert, eyebrows slid slightly, but still relatively in place.

I have always scoffed at celebs who have their own ‘style people’. However I can now say, hand-on-heart, if I ever win Lotto, Melissa, you are being kidnapped for every event I attend. You have been warned.

Here endeth the ‘Keeping it Real Report’ for this week.

😉