Thanks for the advice! I'll ask the person at Sally's about the hair color--my sister said that 4N would be the neutralizing brown to add to the reddish brown of the 4R (I'll just use 1 ounce of each added to the developer).

And I'll look for that brown-hair conditioner. I know that all of my swimming doesn't help the hair dye stick around longer than five weeks before fading tremendously (I hate using a swimcap, so the chlorine gets to the hair more than it would otherwise).

I'm letting my hair get longer, trying to grow it out to bob-length. Post-surgery, it's really curly, much more than before (it was wavy before), and I think a flapper-style bob would be really cute.

I just dyed mine last night, brown, and this time the grey is a more natural looking golden/red than last time, when it was a really odd red that I did not like. I use the semi-perm.

Over the summer, I went for a long time without putting any color in. My friend's teenage daughter asked me if I had put a grey streak in. Ha! She thought it was cool. I don't think it's solid enough yet to be a cool grey streak, so it gets covered. There's a lot more grey now than last time I let it go. Ah, well. I think when I let it go, it will be pretty, but I'm not ready to let it go yet.

I am waiting, WAITING, I TELL YOU, for my hair to come in all white, instead of this scattered thing. I like the white hair (and there is more of it every time I look), but I do not like the ashy mouse brown natural color around it. So I'm not giving up my blue-black dye until I have ALL WHITE roots.

But I am pretty happy with the pink Bride of Frankenstein streaks I gave myself a few weeks ago.

I am intrigued by the growing in the grey as I notice it more and more.

Me too! My grey is pretty silvery white so I have hopes that it will look cool with my slightly lighter than I currently dye it dark brown hair.

I doubt mine is completely silver based on my Mom and brother's hair even though it looks like there is a ton of silver in there now.

My hair is about 50% grey now. It's a silvery-grey and I like it, but I'm not ready to have grey hair yet! Besides, with my skin being so fair, I feel like if my hair and brows aren't dark, I just fade away.

I have fond hopes that my hair will eventually get all white, like both of my dad's parents did, and not iron grey, like my mom's mom.

Dad's hair is all white. I have no idea how much white hair Mom may have had, because she was even more vigilant than I was about hair dye upkeep.

I can deal with the gray. It's the wrinkles that are distressing.

In our family, our parents have avoided any major hair issues. Mom's red hair is staying a rather mousy brown instead of going grey, so she's been dyeing it since her mid-30s, and Dad's hair has been very slowly going grey since his mid-40s (he's now 71, and it still is only about 60% white). However, all three of us kids have inherited our grandparents' hair--my sister started dyeing hers in her mid 20s, when she had a professional photo taken in which it looked like she frosted her hair, but it was the white hair that had been growing at her temples since her late teens. My brother had been developing the tonsure-style hair loss look before the alopecia he started to suffer from caused him to just chuck it all and shave the whole head when he was in his mid-30s. He's now 50, and still bald as a cueball, but if he ever grew his hair back, it'd probably be close to just the fringe on the back and sides of his head.

I had my first white hair when I was 16, and it just kept coming after that. It was never concentrated in any one area, like my sister's, but all over, making it look really mousy and dingy and me look much older. I prefer the dyed hair look!

It's the wrinkles that are distressing.

My eyelids are sagging. It's horrifying.