J – your hair is beautiful! My mother wanted red hair (she was a tow head with carefully constructed ringlets as a child) so she took a bottle of oxblood shoe polish and managed to coat two of her ringlets before she was caught… her haircut was much like yours afterwards, much to my Memere’s dismay.
As for your questions – here’s my answer. http://writingdownthewords.blogspot.com/2011/12/my-answer.html