Living as a Curly Girl

So there's lot of randomness to share with all of you.  I'm taking a break from organized weight loss and meal planning until the week before classes start.  That's the plan anyway.  Next week it's back to before more deliberate about what's going in and out.  I'll be at a conference as well which means I'm normally moving around much more than I am at work so there's that.  Come August 13th it's time to get back on the grind though.  I feel a little fuller which I'm not digging and I would like to just have the health and mental wellness benefits that come when I work out regularly.  I'm giving myself between August 1 and December 31st to get back into the losing weight camp again.  If that doesn't happen I may have to cut all my hair off and move in with monks.  Okay that's not happening but I will be pissed.

Twilight Zone Marathons rock

So I logged on earlier with the intention of just giving a brief update on what's been happening and to of course go overboard with my happy for the tv show that makes all the random fireworks tolerable today.  Except when I got to my page things looked off.  Turns out Photobucket, who clearly is tired of giving away things for free, had replaced a few of my hosting images with one of their own saying that I needed to "update" my account in order to restore them.  So I click over to the site and look for something to update and there's squat.  I at that point am getting annoyed and start doing some searching before going directly to the website the image referenced.  In order to keep using the images as I had been the previous few years this blog has been active I would have to upgrade not update my account.  And that upgrade wasn't going to come cheap.  I had to be willing to shell out at least 40 bucks a month, or 400 annually woo two months free, to keep my links active in the way they had been.  Most of my images of my hair and stuff I upload directly to blogger so thankfully I wasn't losing a ton of stuff there but my divider bar, signature and a few things in the side bar were MIA.  I just had done some digging about other images and remembered I could embed the images in this site and just did that but then had to edit the HTML code.  Many cut and pastes, a random error that I had to look on how to fix and many saves to be safe and the page is mostly restored.  Some of the image tags for different posts will be absent until I go in to fix them but the page itself is good.

Life Lessons Learned

So this post is going to be super random.  I have gone through another round of install, take down, let my hair rest and reinstall of my twists.  I didn't take any photos cause I was like seriously done when I took my hair down.  Let me pause for a second.  I'm so damn tired I cannot see straight some days.  Work is as always hectic.  Mom is woosah it's time for mom to visit my brother and she's going through fifty million machinations to not go visit right now.  I still have grading to do, entitled students to entertain, evaluations to conduct and somewhere in the middle of that I still have to escort students to a field trip, present at a conference, present an award to one of my favorite students (ok that will be fun) and attend graduation.  There are good things in the middle of there for sure but a sister is exhausted.  It's that time of the year and if there was a teleport a la Star Trek I'd be on Riza on a quick trip getting massages and booze and sleeping in.  Oh sweet precious sleep. 

Tell you all about it....

.....when I see you again.


See I'm back to being corny.  So I mentioned last post that it's been a full year being natural with lots of protective styling I've gone from tiny fro to larger fro and loving it.  I spent the last week natural and tried my first for real wash and go that didn't to hell immediately.  There was some shrinkage of course but not as much as normal thanks to Jane Carter's products, which I did have to order from the site directly and Amazon.  Now I could have gotten it all from the site but I assumed my local Sally's had some products I wanted and they were running a 2 for 1 deal so yeah gotta take advantage of that but locally they have no love for me and my hair texture.  I'm better off at Kroger of all places.  Anyway I got all of my stuff by Wednesday but really just slept in a baggy all the days that I was teaching and then Friday afternoon came home and  planned to wash my hair again because it was almost time for a new twist install PLUS I had plans and wanted my hair to be shiny since it was going to be out.  I didn't actually get to my hair unitl Saturday morning.  Wednesday was the 13th Anniversary of when I became a Delta.  We met up yesterday to hang out and catch up.  Love my sands, I'm down front if you are looking for me.

Apparently I can't count

So I was coming over to check something on the blog and realized the weeks post relaxer looked super wrong since I last got my hair relaxed June 15th of last year.  Yeah I was seven weeks off.  After an unintentional transitioning point and some random breakage prior to my big chop, it doesn't really seem like it's been that fast.  I'm glad my hair is growing, fuller and healthier than it has been in years.  It's not as long as it used to be when I was letting chemicals release the curl but that will come.  The twists are helping my lazy to be sure but I haven't totally done my part to keep it well protected and moisturized.  Since I got them reinstalled I have been trying to hit my scalp and length of my hair with either jane carter solutions re*store or Infusium 23 Olive oil leave in conditioner.  I've been doing it daily but I think it may be too much.  I'll see after this week how the buildup feels and if it's too much I'll cut back and wash my hair with the bottles again.

Honestly I'm super exhausted right now.  If I hadn't been in the mood to braid and roller set the twists I'd probably be drooling on the pillow right now.  I had a busy weekend with my sorority sisters at a conference and it was good be with them.  However, I'm so tired now it's out of control.  At least one of my classes ends on Thursday so I have a tiny bit of reprieve to sleep in and watch the start of Wimbledon in peace.  I didn't take any photos of my hair immediately after it was done but they are smaller than they have been without feeling super heavy.  Here's a photo from the weekend.  Not super close up but you can see my smiling and somewhat dressed up lol.

I need to go eat dinner but revisit that super lazy.  Hope you had a good week.

Hair, hair, everywhere

Woo fresh twists means interesting sleeping tonight.  I have been behind the gun for days which is mostly to say I've been slacking on taking care of things.  I finally called the braid shop on Thursday which is GOOD because if i hadn't I'd be rocking mini fro until next Friday otherwise.  It's not a bad thing to rock mini fro but it wasn't the plan.  I tend to go in on Sundays but the shop is closed tomorrow so my Saturday plans went out the window and off to get fresh twists was the plan.  This is going to be a pic heavy post.  For some reason I'm taking way more photos of this natural hair than I did when I was relaxed.

This is what happened when I got the twists completely out of the my hair.  Minimal hair loss and I'm looking like Don King's granddaughter.  And another shot the next morning.

So I'm happy that it appears to be growing but I know the first real test will be the wash cause the shed hair and any tangles will come to light then.  And they did so while I did better this go round there is still a lot of room for improvement.  I did a mini prepoo, about an hour, and not overnight because I didn't want to go to bed with super wet hair and the longer I wait to wash the more likely it is that my hair will still be at least damp when I pass out.  I washed with Shea Moisture and Moroccan Oil again.  I used the Aphogee, Moroccan Oil and Mizani conditioners in the shower to cap off my shower routine.  I waited until my hair was about 90 percent dry and slathered in a few different sprays, leave ins and finished with grape seed oil.  Here's a comparison shot of morning after wash in February and evening after wash in April.  Oh and a side by side of the twists.

I tried to get about the same angle on the fros to see what the hair looked like side by side but that was harder than I thought it would be lol.  It's growing and doing an odd thing of being more black than gray after graying it up hard for the last few years.  On the upside the stylist in the shop that I love second only to the owner is who did my hair today.  While it took six hours the work is always better than when I have two women doing it and they can still take about that length of time.  So now I'm ready for the week and either tonight after my head stops feeling so heavy or tomorrow I'll work it out again.  How goes your wash days?

Fifty Million Shades of Gray

I promise this isn't a post about that horrific book and from what I hear that mildly but not really sexual movie.  So I got my hair twisted.  As usual it's a godsend.  Somewhat atypical I am doing a better job of using the moisturizing spray and leave in conditioner on the length of my hair like Gina Marie mentioned in a video not too long ago.  Now that I have recommitted to getting my 100 workouts in this year, not having to toy with my hair is much appreciated.  I am six away from that for those who are wondering.  But as is also usual the gray hair that stays mostly hidden for a week or so is like yeah chick I'm back.  I know it's not likely that the braid shop keeps it in stock and not wanting them to order a bunch just for me I went looking for gray braiding hair.  Go figure that was trendy this year for some reason.  Edgy and different to purposely dye your hair gray instead of letting nature do it to you slowly over a prolonged period of time I get it.  I think it's weird but I get it lol.  There seem to be no shortage of braiding hair brands and options online.  I know what I'm Looking for in terms of color but what I'm finding is there is no standard gray.

There's a gray and black ombre.  If the color pattern was flipped it might be okay but not my favorite look.

There's what looks to be a medium gray as well but it seems too dark for my hair which is closer to white than a straight gray.

There is also a mix but I can only find that on Amazon and one local store and the hair felt like crap so I left it there.  The look is cute on the blogger (SimplyGorgeousNic) that I saw but the hair isn't local.  Random aside: as I went to check out the blog to properly give her credit she's raving about the hair so I trolled a few videos and found it at BNG hair.  I may have completed my search, we'll see.

And then there's just plain old white which seems way too drastic for my hair and face even though my hair has begun to abandon all pigment like an evil little color sucking troll camped out and went to town.

Blah, all in an effort to blend my hair into the braids better I'm on the great gray braiding hair hunt.  Here's a photo of me shortly after they were installed.

And one from a few days ago I think.

It was clearly sloppy pull back day.  But it works and I like them so much more than the last time I had them done. I greatly appreciate one of the stylists well not two in the shop that do my hair because they pay attention and they work quickly without being weird or eating in my ear---I seriously cannot explain how much I seriously hate that.

So what do you think of gray/silver/white braids?  I'm excited about the possibility even though I think it will just confuse people more.  The woman at the braid shop thought I wanted the silver hair to be cute until she saw my damn near white hair and said my hair doesn't match my face and I look much younger.  I'll take it, especially less than a week from my next birthday but the gray hair has been my friend since I was twelve, so a long damn time lol.

So I'm Finally Back

I knew it had been a while since I posted but didn't realize it had been two months.  Work was kicking my pretty little butt and even with my spectacular vacation in the middle of it I came back to yet more work.  I won't bore you with the details of that right now but there are things to say.

So as of my last post I had permed my hair and was dealing with super duper shortness as some breakage had happened due to some uneven relaxers over the last year when I was still going to the shop.  I waited three weeks to get some Senegalese twists put in 1) to give my hair a chance to recover from the relaxer and 2) switched up the braids because while I wanted a break the micros felt like they were just too hard on my hair.  They took longer than I thought they would to install but they got me through my week in Amsterdam and the rest of my teaching and work this summer.  I took them down yesterday about a week later than I wanted to but earlier than I had planned because the shop was open today and could get me in to redo them.  Last night I started a prepoo around 7 and then the lazy hit me after the joy of the take down and eating dinner lol.  I washed with my normal mix of Moroccan Oil and Organix products, conditioned with MO, Aphogee and Mizani products before deep conditioning with Dr. Miracles.  I didn't flat iron it as that seemed like it would be a wasted just for a length check.  I did blow it out and here's a photo of me before I made it to the salon.

Not sure if you can completely tell at this point but it's longer than it was six weeks ago when it went up but it wasn't amazing growth of which my hair has never seen.  More importantly though there wasn't breakage.  Just some normal hair shed since my hair hasn't been combed in over a month.  I was actually still planning to be at the shop based on the last install but the owner did my hair this time and she is just much faster than everyone else.  Plus my scalp isn't feeling super sore at the moment either which is always a plus.  Here's a photo of the after.

Unlike the hair cutting process it doesn't matter what length I say to make my braids they end up being down my back but the size is good and I'm happy.  I won't look like super gray hair lady during my conference call in the morning lol.

On the workout front I've been slacking since tennis lessons ended and need to get back on it.  Tomorrow after the call and another meeting I think it will be movie, gotta see Straight Outta Compton, and then off to the gym and maybe tennis if the girls are meeting.  I also got my pinup photos taken and back in the absence, wow I've been away a while damn it lol.  So here's one of those too.  What have you been up to?