Gray and Proud (OFF TOPIC!)

WARNING:  If you are one of the two's of people who read this blog, this is not about FISH! Run for cover........

This post is about Gray Hair. Yes, I "transitioned" several years ago to a head of mostly silver, with a good bit of brown in the back. You'd not think this was a subject worthy of a blog post, but, sadly in our world it is notable. 

I pulled my first white hair from my head in 7th grade, and have slowly been sliding towards silver ever since. My father began going gray at a very young age, around 18 or 20, so I come by it naturally. I spent most of my young adulthood coloring my hair, not necessarily to cover the gray but for fun and to change my look frequently. I stopped coloring when I was pregnant, both times, but resumed soon afterwards, especially after the last pregnancy when the gray was really evident.

My husband, Rick, began to make noises about me perhaps letting my hair go gray, and I laughed - are you kidding!?  In this day and age to take a step to actively make yourself look older when everyone else is clamoring to look younger?  It was counter-intuitive.  Then I began to really examine why I did not want to let my natural hair color grow in. Do I have something to hide? Am I really fooling anyone? Is there a good reason I should not look my age?

My hair grows very quickly and that gray stripe began to appear about every 3-4 weeks, when I'd break out the good old headband, scarf or hat and soldier on until I could get a touch-up. The coloring treatments can be expensive, and since my hair was relatively long it was difficult for me to do it myself properly, though I certainly did plenty of times when cash was low. It would come out uneven in the back, where I could not see, and I got sick of the mess and chore of it. Professional dye jobs can be exorbitantly expensive, as most women know, and this was starting to seem like an unnecessary expense.


Then, and this is a demonstration of my rebellious personality, I began to be offended that society was telling me I had to color my hair, and I was doing it willingly. I was living the hardcore punk rock life from my teenage years to my early 20s, and I don't like being told what to do, from WAY back, as my mother will tell you. I don't even like an automatic transmission in a car deciding when to shift - I'll make the decisions when I'm behind the wheel, thank you!  Here I was, going along with this social norm because I thought I should, and I was vain enough to think I would no longer be worthwhile or valued if I had gray showing. People go to such great lengths to cover their gray, after all; the consequences must be DIRE! 


The older I become the more annoyed and now offended I get with the ageism in this country (uh oh, here she goes....). We value the young, which is fine, but we'd prefer to let 18-year-olds make decisions for us, apparently, because everyone is desperate to look 18, so 18 must be the age when we've got everything under control, right? As a former 18-year-old and the mother of a 19-year-old, all I can say is, "HA!" The older we get the more we know, and the more we have to offer. We're still the same person we were when we were 18 and looked 18, except we are so much smarter, and have learned so much about life. This is not recognized, but it is reality. I am mainly speaking about life as it pertains to women, mind you. I'm not really a feminist, but it is certainly true that you fellows can go gray and still achieve plenty of success in your professional lives, but women might not get that promotion or get that new job based on looks, specifically if she looks "old." 


"Old" means worn out, out of touch, unhealthy, closed-minded, apathetic, boring, sluggish, depressed and depressing. Young women, or young-looking women, are exciting, up to date, hip, interesting, active, knowledgeable, capable and fun. Two women of the same age applying for the same job don't have equal chance if one colors her hair and the other doesn't - the one who colors is likely to get the job if both are qualified. The one who doesn't color her hair has "let herself go" and is therefore less valuable as a person.


This all upsets me quite a bit, as I'm sure it does everyone as they age, but considering that everyone is aging (sorry, young people, it will happen to you, too, God willing) you'd think the older people of the nation would unite and work on changing the societal norm of being youth-obsessed. No, this is not the case, they are the ones pushing supporting the ageism movement. 


Now, once I got good and riled up, and wanted to rebel against society telling me what to do, lol, I agreed to stop coloring my hair and see how it went. Rick was very happy about this, because he admires "natural" women, whom he considers to be strong, powerful and attractive. He thought I'd look great with gray hair. Silver ladies, pray he, or a guy like him, is the one to conduct your next job interview.

For anyone who has lived through the transition of growing out hair color without literally buzzing your hair down to the skull, it is not much fun. I'm sure women who are well endowed in the chest know the feeling, but this is the opposite - people's eyes constantly flit upwards to your hairline instead of down to your boobs. You can see their mind pass over the reasons you've allowed your roots to show:  she's really low on money, poor dear; she doesn't realize she needs a root touch-up, poor dear; she's MUCH older than I thought, poor dear.... etc. I, like many women, resorted to wearing headbands when the white stripe was too strange-looking. I had one tipsy guy at a party once lift the edge of my headband and say, "It appears that the color of your hair is very different at the front than at the back." Congratulations! You win the Observant Award! Then he asked me why.  Why? Because I'm letting my gray come in, dummy. I had a question or two for him about his look and grooming habits, but I was raised better than that. 


The real question was, "Why aren't you covering the gray in your hair?" This went on and on, and on and on, because it takes years to grow out color, and it takes years before you don't look like something went horribly wrong on the top of your head. Styling choices took on new meaning - a bun means your dark color-treated hair is plopped right atop the shining white part, and you look like you have a fake bun, but wearing it down shows the clear line where the new growth was not colored and it is more noticeable. You can cut it all off or not, try low-lights or color washes to ease the transition, etc. It was a long road!


It became part of my identity, and still is, obviously, since I'm blogging about it. It gets brought up nearly every day by someone, depending on how many places I go. Now that it is mostly grown out, or at least it looks natural and the darker areas are in the back and at the ends so it doesn't look like a beauty school accident I don't get the odd looks, but people do the double-take. I'm 46 so certainly not one of these really young women who sport gray hair (this is a stunning look!), but people definitely seem surprised when they realize I'm not a much older person, or I'm guessing that's the reason. When I'm paying for something, or dealing with the general public directly I often get compliments about my hair, or with a new or casual acquaintance they'll say, and this happens a lot to me, "Well, it looks good on YOU, but I could never do it." To me this is not a complement, but I'm not sure why, though they surely mean it to be. Am I really getting away with something? That's sad!

My own mother, who is in her 70s and still colors her hair brown, was initially upset that I was letting my gray grow in - she was not happy having a daughter with gray hair. Most of my other family members were supportive, and even a cousin or two told me they were going to do the same thing. Someone even told me that I would be "unhirable" and that you must keep yourself up to get a job these days, with unemployment so high. 


The main thing I get is that I'm "brave" to do it. If this is bravery, what do you call what our troops are up to in Afghanistan? I guess in our culture it IS brave to take something that can so simply and easily be corrected, and choose not to correct it, like not shaving your legs. 

My hair is so much healthier and shinier, and it feels soft. It takes a bit of extra attention to conditioning so it doesn't look frizzy, but that's not hard to accomplish these days with the array of hair care products available. I use a blue/purple shampoo to keep the white bright, since it can yellow with sun, chlorine, pollution, etc. I feel freer somehow, like I have a secret, though I'm sure there are plenty of people out there who would recommend I resume coloring it. I saw a woman recently who is in her 50s and has a gorgeous straight angled bob of gleaming silver hair, and she looks wonderful - I don't know that I'll look wonderful but I'm looking forward to my hair being more gray than brown. 

To that end, I can say the worst is over and I'm on the road to pure silver. Hopefully this will not keep me from succeeding professionally, but the medical field is a little more forgiving than some other fields might be when it comes to appearance. Being well-groomed and professional in manner and attire can make up the difference, I hope. At the least maybe it will give others the idea that maybe they don't need to color anymore, either.


Ultimately, I am happy I did it, and far more people give me truly genuine and heartfelt compliments. My husband loves it, and is my biggest supporter - he considers it his life's work to do what he can to make me feel beautiful. Well, maybe until I stop shaving my legs, but that's another post. ;-p

The wee fishies are here: 12 wild crossed with domestic silver (50/50) angels. I ordered 10 but got a few extras. All are in perfect condition and very healthy, packed 4 to a bag. They were packed beautifully - very carefully done with cool packs. Big shout out to Jim Scarola (Prontodelivery on Aquabid) for some lovely specimens. He was very, very prompt to get back to me to answer my questions and shipping was fast and just as requested.

Sorry for the crappy pic but I'm at work and using my phone. They're acclimating slowly to the local water (my house is 5 minutes away) and I will bring them home and acclimate them again to the tank they're going into, which has params very close to this tank at work, except the tank at home has almond (catappa) leaves to acidify the water slightly, giving it some antiseptic properties.

Today's the Day!

My wild Peruvian "Altum" (scalare) angel cross fry come in today! Will post video later.

Summer Shakeup

The tanks have been in a static situation for the past few months. I've been watching the Geophagus grow and start to color up, and am keeping the 45 gal cycled and using a quarantine for new tetras. I've obtained quite a few more H. bentosi, or at least something like that - there are several very similar species on the market right now that mostly resemble bentosi, though I'm sure I have "rosy tetras" too, H. rosacea. They are doing well in the 150 and I wanted a nice large group.

Now the geos are at a good size to start thinning out the group, as a I have a dominant male who seems to have chosen a mate and staked out an area of the tank. This is not causing any problems, since this species is pretty peaceful, but I'd like to remove about 8 or so of them and see how things develop. I sold 4 yesterday to a CVAS club member (thanks, David!) and I've got another 4 ready to go at the end of the week (thanks, Chuck!), so I'll have my group pared down a bit. I may wind up removing more down the road, but it will depend on how the male/female ratio works out, and how big they get. They are not the fastest-growing so I have some time. Their colors are just starting to express themselves, especially in the dominant male, with blue in his ventrals and tail along with the red stripes. The others are coloring up too. The Bolivian rams have great color as well, though they look a bit washed out on the video below:

I'm keeping the 45 cycled because I have been wanting to add wild angels to the 150 to complement the geos, who occupy the bottom. My single wild P. leopoldi could benefit from some tankmates, though I don't plan on more leopoldi, unfortunately. I'm more interested in the Peruvian scalare variety, with more impressive finnage.

However, the wild imports I've been keeping my eye on are pretty expensive for me right now. I was hoping to simply save up for them, but maybe it's not worth it to me - the wild fish need very special attention and slow acclimation, and I'm not sure I have the time (well, I KNOW I don't have the time). When I worked at home this was much more easily accomplished, but I'm at work full time these days. Not only do the fish need to be quarantined in water conditions close to their native environs, they also need to be dewormed and treated for parasites before introduction into the show tank. I don't mind quarantine, and I strongly recommend it even for fish bought and traded locally, but for wild fish this is mandatory, and my tap water is very different than what the wild fish are accustomed to. The wild leopoldi angels I got previously sat at the LFS for quite some time before I got them, so the acclimation and deworming had already taken place.

I came across some domestic wild crosses, or a wild crossed with a domestic silver. The wild is described as a "Peruvian altum," which is, in fact, not an altum but a scalare from a particular collection point that produces higher-finned and more altum-like scalares than other locales. This fish is crossed with a domestic "zebra" silver, and the fry I'm getting are the offspring. I'll be getting 10 dime to nickel-sized fry and they'll reside in the 45 for a while as I see how they do. I will likely retain a pair for the 45 and the rest go into the 150 to see if they pair off, and hopefully they won't wreak too much havoc on the tank when that happens. There might be enough room for a pair to stake out some real estate without having to kill off other cichlids. This is always a possibilty with angels. I will almost definitely be looking to remove extra angels from the 150, since 8 will for sure be too many once they are grown.

Fortunately, I belong to a growing aquarium club,  the Central Virginia Aquarium Society, and have contacts with local fish stores so finding buyers for the extra fish ought not to be too difficult. I'm anticipating impressive finnage on these fry, and though the wild types are not terribly sought after in general, I think they will be attractive and have some appeal, at least for those wanting to insert some wild blood back into their breeding program.

I've been spending quite a bit of time on Finarama lately, as well as The Angelfish Forum (TAF-2) and have a renewed obsession with angelfish. I really want to focus on them now, and may be able to set up additional tanks for breeding pairs. I freely admit that I have an aversion to "engineered" fish, and have probably mentioned this in my blog before, but there are some angelfish phenotypes that I like. I strongly dislike long-finned versions of any fish (my goldfish prove this statement to be hypocritical, or at least highly selective) and do not find veiled angels in any way attractive. This goes for plecos and cory cats with long trailing fins, long-finned tetras, etc. To me it looks like a defect rather than an adornment. I do hold interest in the blue/silver variety, which looks like a wild fish but with a gorgeous peacock blue. I also like black angels, especially when you can still see the wild stripe.

So, in the 45 I have some H. bentosi, a single female BN pleco and a pair of Bolivian rams. I'll probably move out the tetras when the angels arrive Tuesday but I'll see how things look. I cleaned the filters last week and today did a large PWC on all tanks. This is something of a chore, but with the Python and the fact that all of my tanks are now on the first floor, it goes more quickly than you'd think. We're watching the summer Olympic games while I work on the tanks. With the planted tanks and the snail tank there is quite a bit of tidying up that is required, especially the tanks with almond leaves (catappa), which gradually soften and disintegrate. The snail tank is just gross, with quite a bit of debris that collects. Otis, the F8 puffer, has a messy tank too, with quite a bit of mulm that I can never seem to get ahead of, even with weekly 70% PWCs. I keep 100% marine water mixed in 5-gal jugs and use that mixed with tap water to get the brackish conditions he needs. I have a specific gravity gauge that floats in the tank, so I can see how much SW needs to be added. Otis has proven to be a very hardy fish, now with me 4 years.

The goldfish tank's only challenge is trying to suck up the poo, which is too heavy for the Python, even with the water going full blast out of the tap. I change about 80% of that tank weekly, since it is a relatively small tank (20H) for 3 full-bodied fancy goldfish.

The bettas tanks are easy, slurp them into a cup, rinse out the little tank under the tap, wipe down the inside walls and you're good to go. These are the fish belonging to my daughters, but of course I wind up doing the water changes!

The water out of the cold tap this time of year is around 80, which is a bit on the warm side for some of my fish, but I can't do anything about that. I can add an ice cube or two but that's hard to calculate. In a couple of months I'll be standing there with hot and cold taps running, with my hand under the water waiting for the perfect temperature to be achieved.