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?

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.

Hair Wars

Lately, it seems like several people from different areas of my life have been complaining about, bragging about, or simply talking about their hair.  And since one of my favorite past-times is complaining about my overly thick, straight in front but curly in the back hair, I've decided to join the fun.

There it is in all of it's witch hair glory.  And yes, I am quite aware that I'm really too old to wear it this long.  I'm also terribly aware that I desperately need at least the ends trimmed.  But if I'm going to bother getting a trim, I'm going to go all out & cut it.  Cut it short enough to make a donation to Locks of Love.  And if I'm going to cut it, I need to decide how I want it cut.  And that takes me back to the need for a grown-up hair do.  And I really don't want an age appropriate hair style.  Besides, I like being able to wash it, comb it, shake it like a dog and go.  I bet an age appropriate hair style will involve at least a blow dryer.  And I swore long ago that I'd never go back to using a blow dryer.  So, it looks like the witch hair stays.  At least for a while longer.

On a totally different note, I felt like quite the naturalist yesterday morning.  I was sitting out on the front porch having my morning coffee while the mud-daubers swarmed around me.  They are determined to cover our porch light with their mud nests and I'm determined that they won't.  I kept hearing a weird buzzing noise behind & beside me and finally realized it was humming birds.  I've never seen them visit the plants on the porch before.  Meanwhile, there were three lizard/salamander things crawling all over the place & occasionally darting between my feet and a rather large turtle crawling across the yard.  I'm just glad the local bear didn't decide to come join the party.

A Southeastern Five Lined Skink, other wise known as a "lizard/salamander thing"

HTC

Boy am I glad that in my world this year, HTC stands for Hotter Than Crapola instead of Hood to Coast.  Although I only ran one leg of it, I had a blast ghosting my assigned HTC runner last year.  This year, I'd planned to ghost all three legs of it.  And then I wimped out.  I had a million excuses, some of them good, most of them pathetically bad.  I hung my head in shame and sent in my notice that I wouldn't be participating this year.

And then July hit.  Good grief!  July has been one hot, horrible month.  Not only has it been above 95 just about every single day, we've gone over 100 at least twice a week and even  hit 113 degrees, twice.  Maybe more, but twice that I know of.  And while it's been that hot, it has also been unbelievably humid.  As in 70 & 80% humidity every day.  I don't have asthma or any other breathing issues, but there have been more days than not, when I stepped outside and instantly felt like I couldn't breathe.  It felt like there was a weight on my chest preventing my lungs from expanding and when they did expand, they burned.  It has Not been a comfortable July.

That uncomfortableness became my excuse to stop running.  I tried to run in the heat.  I even got up early & hit the pavement at the un-Godly hour of 7 a.m. a few times.  I ended up walking more than running, and there were several runs where I felt ill, nauseous & faintish for the last half mile or so.  And once I was so hot & miserable I faked an injury and pleaded with a sympathetic automobile to give me a ride home.

I decided that my illustrious running career was over until September.  On the first of September, I'd start running again.  But today, it was cooler.  I never checked the thermometer or the humidity gauge so I don't know what it actually was, but Mr. Weatherman had said it was only going to be in the 80's today.  So this afternoon, when I got home from taking Zack bowling, I decided to dust off the old Asics and hit the road. It felt so good and so awful all at the same time.  I guess now is the time to admit that I have spent the month of July sitting.  Sitting and knitting or sitting and reading.  And apparently eating since I seem to have gained 15 pounds.  Okay, 22 pounds but who's counting?

So there I was this afternoon, lugging my extra-large butt and stiffened from lack of use thighs down the road.  It felt great for about 20 yards.  That's about the time I noticed my thighs were rubbing.  And of course, it had been so long since I ran I'd completely forgotten the concept of Body Glide.  Another 20 or 30 yards down the road and my thighs, the parts that weren't rubbing together, started turning bright red and doing that itchy, stinging thing that unused muscles tend to do when you use them for the first time in a long, long time.  Another ten or 20 yards up the road (up a hill by now) and my hips and waist were doing the itchy, burning thing too.  Gee!  This is so much fun.  But damn!  I'm running!  Boy, this feels great!  By the end of the first mile, I thought I might be in need of 9-11 and walked a hill.  After all, I didn't want to over do it on my first day back.  (Good excuse, huh!?!)  By the end of the second mile, I decided my breathing wasn't any worse than it used to be, but my legs were pretty dang tired.  Good grief!  Two miles and my legs feel like I've been running for about 8 days straight.  It was at that point that I decided I was really, really glad that HTC had a new meaning for me this year.  By the time I finished 3 miles, I was thanking God for helping me survive the run and praying he'd see me up that final hill where my driveway starts.  By the time I got into the house, I was almost too tired to stretch.   Luckily, I remembered previous runs where I was "too tired" and I recalled with not-so-fond memories how not stretching made me feel.  So I stretched.  Then I drank my chocolate milk (the best thing about running!) and took a shower.  While I showered, Hubby cooked hamburgers & hotdogs on the grill.

And now, I sit here with a full belly, jello legs and that blissful sense of calm that leaves me almost too brain dead to function.  Damn, I love running!  And boy, am I glad I'm not a HTC Ghost this year!  But next year....

What's in my purse?

I was reading someone else's list of suggested blog topics recently & one of the items was "What's in your purse?"  At the time, I thought it was a pretty dumb thing to blog about.  I mean, who cares?  But ever since, I've had that little nagging voice inside my head asking what is in my purse.   It has been a while since I cleaned it out.  Actually, I don't think I have cleaned it out since I started using it sometime around mid-May.  Ok, this could be rather embarrassing.  A while back, I recall counting eight Fiber One bars and even more feminine unmentionables in there at one time.

Ok, let's see what's in there...

Well, gosh.  That doesn't look so bad.  Well, ok, the tacky vinyl zebra stripe bag is a disaster, but the rest doesn't look so bad.  Let's dump it out and see what's down at the bottom.

Phew!  No unmentionables fell out.  But what did fall out?  My wallet, which has so much junk crammed in it it should qualify for it's own blog; the lovely vinyl zebra stripped bag that contains Band-aids, dental floss, a few unmentionables, an eye glass cleaner cloth, a mini flashlight, & a few pony tail holders; 3 pens, phone charger for the car, receipts from Target, BJ's & Verizon, one Fiber One bar, 3 packs of gummy fruit snacks, a calculator, a hair brush, a checkbook for an account that's closed, the camera with hand knitted case, lemon scented anti-bacterial hand goo, a couple of Claritin, a highlighter, an empty mechanical pencil, a bottle full of Tylenol, Ibuprophen, Advil & generic Claritin all mixed together, 2 tubes of hand lotion, chapstick, lipstick, gum, Altoids and thirteen, yes, 13 empty gum wrappers.

That wasn't so bad.  Well, 13 empty gum wrappers isn't exactly something to be proud of, but all in all, not so bad.  Boring, but not overly embarrassing.

Minnie's sad because she doesn't have a purse.