72 Hours

72 hours without shampoo and all is well.  I'm having a hard time believing the changes that I can already see.  First, I'd expect to be a greasy mess, but I'm not.  I would also expect my hair to be fairly flat by now but it's actually much more wavy and the waves start at the top of my head instead of the middle of my ears.  And although I'm wavier, I don't have triangle head.  Somehow, I have a lot more wave, but my hair is hanging straighter.  Which sounds impossible, but apparently, isn't.  Before, my hair would hug my head until it got to about my cheek bones, then it would suddenly triangle out away from my head Rosanna Danna style.  Today, not a triangle in sight.  Now, if I could only get that one section of bone straight bangs to curl....  And if said bangs would ever grow past the tip of my nose...

Oh, and if anyone is curious, instead of my normal $6+ bottles of Pantene shampoo & conditioner, I'm now using 84 cent Suave Naturals.   84 cents!  Apple something scent.  If this experiment actually works, I may end up saving enough money to pay someone to dye the 'old age blond' out of my hair.

On a totally different note, I'm sure the kiddo's are excited.  Their school books finally arrived today.

I shouldn't say they "finally" arrived though.  It makes it sound like we've been waiting and waiting.  It's only been 9 days since I placed my order.  Which is really not bad.  Nine days for what I'm sure is a very busy homeschooling company (Rainbow Resource) to take my order, gather the books, box them, ship them and for the snail mail folks to deliver them to my door step.  Not bad, not bad at all.

Have I mentioned how much I like Rainbow Resource?  Well, that's a whole other blog.  Or more like a blog series.  I Love Rainbow Resource.  If you are reading this and are new to homeschooling, stop reading immediately and go order yourself a catalog.  And if you are some kind of freak of nature long-time homeschooler that doesn't know about Rainbow Resource, well, you should stop reading too.  Their catalog is something like 1,500 pages.  And yes, that's fifteen hundred.  The decimal is not in the wrong place.  And in addition to the massive quantity of products they carry, 99 times out of 100, they will have the lowest price.  And best of all, when you get your package in the mail, the box will be covered in cute little stickers.  Totally homeschooler style.  The phone number to order their FREE paper catalog is 888-841-3456, or at least it is as of this writing.

A New Adventure

I’m off on a new adventure.  A shampoo-free adventure.  We’ll see how long it lasts.

A friend from my Monday night knitting group lent me a book, Curly Girl the Handbook.  Basically, it’s for anyone with curly hair.  Curly hair tends to be much dryer than straight hair.  That dryness tends to be one of the main causes of curly hair’s frizz.   One of the book’s recommendations is to quit using shampoo.  Instead of shampoo, you “wash” with conditioner.  A second recommendation is to leave the conditioner in your hair without rinsing it out all the way.   

I’ve heard these recommendations before and while my hair dresser (can I even call her my hair dresser if I only visit once a year?) has suggested many times that I leave a normal conditioner, not a “leave in” type but a “real” conditioner, in my hair.  She’s also suggested I apply olive oil to my hair.  I tried the olive oil trick for quite a while.  Some days were better than others.  There seems to be a VERY fine line between why bother, and coating your head with so much oil it looks like you’ve bathed in Vaseline.  At least that was my experience.  Also, while the olive oil did absorb into the hair within about 30 minutes at which point I stopped smelling like an Italian sub sandwich, those 30 minutes were pure torture.  All I’d be able to think about was Italian food.  My stomach would actually grumble from hunger due to my hair’s smell.  Not a good thing.

So, as of this writing, I find myself looking at 56 hours without shampoo and so far, I’m liking what I see.  Or at least not hating what I see.  I’m not expecting Exxon to build a pumping station on my head anytime soon.  Actually, I’m not oily on top at all, in fact, I’m still a bit frizzy.  Ok, so maybe I was a bit paranoid about the oil factor & rinsed out the conditioner from the top of my head.  But the rest of my hair is.... better.  It seems wavier and less frizzy.   The waves are starting at the top of my head instead of at ear level.  Mostly.  One side of my bangs are still rail straight while the rest of my hair waves & curls.  The triangle-head thing isn’t happening quite as badly as usual either.   

All in all, so far, so good.  I would love to hear from others who have gone shampoo free.  What were your experiences?  Did it really work and turn your frizzy hair into something a super model would envy?  Or did you have to call in Exxon to remove the oil spill?

First Day Blues

Today was to be our first day of school, homeschool that is.  Every day, every stinking day over the summer, I woke up between 6:00 and 6:30 a.m.  Today, I woke up at 8:49 a.m.  Two hours behind schedule before we'd even started.  Sheesh.

And it's raining.  As in pouring buckets.  We've already had way more rain than we received in the recent hurricane.   It's really hard to wake up and get excited about 'back to school' when it's pouring buckets of water outside and the house is all dark and cozy on the inside.

Another drawback to the first day of school this year - I realized my little bitty baby girl is officially a high schooler this year.  Ouch!  How did that happen?

The majority of our text books haven't arrived yet.  All we have on hand is spelling, history & math.  Guess which two subjects are everyone's least favorite.  You got it, history & math.

It's only lunch time & I'm already seriously jonesing for some knitting time.  There's also a book sitting there on the coffee table screaming for me to finish reading it.

Maybe we'll just start school next week.

Hurricanes & Yarn

Yeah, I was pretty late to the "let's blog about Hurricane Irene" party, but here it is.   My hurricane adventure got posted on my knitting blog because I seem to be doing everything backwards today.

Speaking of doing things backwards...   Here's my knitting report.  Have you seen the new Wendy Knits Lace book?  O. M. G.!   I want to knit every single thing in there.  From the whole book, there's only one item that I didn't immediately want to start knitting and that's a circular shawl big enough to cover a couch.  While I like to knit circular shawls (round and round and round, no icky purl rows typically) I'm not a big fan of wearing them and I don't often find a pattern that I like enough to justify that much yarn.   I am however in LOVE with the True Love scarf/stole.  I wanted that to be my first project but since it's graded as being an "advanced" level project, I thought I'd cut my teeth on an "intermediate" level shawl first.  I ended up skipping dinner so I could cast on the Stacy Shawl. So far, so good!   I'm too lazy to get up and find my camera, so here's a bad Photo Booth picture of it.

So, back to knitting.  And uh, running.  It is September.  I'd promised myself that on the first of September, I'd start running again.  Today's the second.  I better get on with it.  I'm having a little trouble getting excited about it.  I know that once I lace up my shoes, I'll be itching to go.  I also know that I will feel like a million bucks when the run is over.  But I also know that I  haven't run all summer and I've gained a bunch of weight.  It's going to be a painful and depressing slap of reality.