Six Weeks Natural

I was reading another blog and realized I hadn't really been going wooo one more week natural.  Granted that could be because my hair has been in this fabulous twists the entire time but I'm super enjoying being called everything from Storm well now that I think about it's really just been Storm but as kick ass female superheroes go she's nothing to shake a stick at.  Plus, I am enjoying looking a bit younger than I somehow was with the jet black twists.  The one thing I have noticed, and that could be a total fallacy at this point, is that my hair seems to have grown out more in the last six weeks than it did when I was relaxed or when I was consciously not relaxing it.  I really don't want the twists to be tighter when I go in next time but yeah that was something that caught my attention.  And my hair really really likes moisture as much as humanly possible.  The best combination for my twists is Jane Carter Solution re*store moisture mist (which I was super irritated to see marked off to half price after I had bought a few bottles the month before) and Infusium23 Repair and Renew Leave In conditioner with Avocado and Olive Oil.  I think my Ulta is getting ready to phase out Jane Carter because all of the products that I might have been interested in were in the sale section.  I bought way more than I should have but I have Ulta, Sally's and one random beauty supply store that doesn't have as much for the wanting to be natural collective.  They do have a ton of braiding hair but not the Xpression in any kind of gray mix.  And even if other folks can't embrace it I appreciate all of this gray hair still willing to grow out of my scalp.

I mentioned in a previous post that I had planned on having enough braiding hair to get through the rest of the year but my brain hadn't calculated hair growth, varying the size of the braids, and maybe just touch ups if I had something special going on.  That sent me on another panicked hair spree because ebonyline still hadn't put the hair back up for sale on their website.  None of the other sites recommended by Sensationnel had the hair in M51 and a few places that did seemed a bit sketchy.  I stumbled on a brick and mortar store on the east coast that had the hair today and after a brief conversation with them I bought a crap ton more (that's an legitimate measurement somewhere I'm sure).  Because of a mix up with their website the owner must have felt like they had to ship immediately because within an hour of placing the order I had a shipping notice.  Yeah for that.  And if you want to check them out they are at BSW Hair Store and have a pretty wide stock of things and an actual store you can go into which helps if you live in that area.  I know my hair won't be in twists the entire next year but it will be up more than it's not until I can rock a giant afro.  Gotta be prepared for whatever random mood swings my hair opts to go through until we hit that point.

Tomorrow I'm going to wash my twists using the spray bottle method I've seen a few folks try because I really was dreading putting water and thus increased weight on my hair.  I'll try to take photos and updates after I get home from the gym and work tomorrow.  The gym was going well until I tweaked my shoulder and finally had to see a doctor cause the pain wasn't going away.  Turns out you shouldn't keep doing upper body workouts when you've tweaked a major muscle group.  But to my rationale it was loose in the gym and after I came home so there was no pain until I went to sleep and it was like yeah naw kid.  I'm better now and while I may let tomorrow just be a cardio day since we're on break I may make an appearance every day for the rest of the week.

How's life with you ladies (and gents maybe)?

What Happens When New Hair Arrives?

The receiver freaks out of course. The receiver in this case being me.  I was finally able to find out from the folks at ebonyline that they did in fact have the X-pression Ultra braid in my gray and black tresses so I placed an order after some randomness because the M51 is not on the website (which is down as of a few hours ago) right now.  Well we sorted it out, item gets packaged out to ship and then nothing cause USPS is sucking gigantic monkey balls right now.  I randomly checked the shipping status before work this morning and it went from pre-shipment to at the sorting depot in town with no information in the middle.  It also says the box won't arrive until tomorrow, ok fine nothing to worry about because hair is still done up.  I checked delivery for an item shipped and said hmm let's see if it's at least made it to the right part of the city and yeah it had--my front porch.  Thankfully this is a non teaching day so I grabbed the box and realized it wasn't nearly as big as I expected it to be considering I had ordered enough packs of hair to get me through the rest of my planned installs this year.  That's probably sounding a little crazy BUT I like to be prepared and not waiting until the last minute to try to order things because stuff tends to be out of stock when I want it.  There is still the possibility that I won't be able to find it when I need it this year in case I need more hair during each install than I did this first run through.  Regardless I'm concerned that they didn't send as much hair as I ordered so I check the packing slip and nope the numbers match so then I look at the hair.  The hair itself looks the same BUT the packaging is totally different.  You'll see in the photos that follow.  New package is made in Togo, old package is made in Bangladesh (super funny considering it's the one that says it's the African Collection).  The hair is packed differently, old package being wider so the hair appears to be thinner and new package is more compact so it feels kinda fluffy in the package but the texture is the same, the color is the same and the giant Xpression across the front seems to be identical.  However, I was still wigged out and started looking across the internet to figure out what had happened and if I should be concerned.  Most sites were not helpful like even a little bit.  Outre is who was credited with the new packaging but their official site doesn't have an M51 listed.  And remember ebonyline was down so I couldn't remember the brand they said they would send in addition to Sensationnel depending on color chosen.  So I went clicking around all over X-pression braid haven and finally stumbled on THIS SITE which included the following text:

You will receive either OUTRE X-pression Ultra Braid or SENSATIONNEL X-pression Ultra Braid depending on our stock.

They are exact same products in different packagings so please don't be alarmed when you receive two different looking packs!

LOL so my panic decreased but I just wanted to share my super crazy freak out moment.  How goes your hair care week?

Woosah: Relax Relate Release

It's been an interesting couple of days for the hair movement around these parts.  After being lazy, having too much to do, and desperately searching for M51 Xpression braiding hair (thanks ebonyline.com you were a life saver) I finally took my hair down this weekend.  Sunday to be precise.  I knew I wasn't going to spend much time at work on Monday because I had to make an airport run and the most I would likely do is run to the gym so it seemed like having the few recommended days down between installs would both be possible, good, and relatively easily.  Except yeah my hair never does easy lol.  It was fine Sunday and most of Monday.  Gym went great and all was well as I got home, made some fresh pasta, and then finally got around to washing my hair.  The minute the shampoo made contact with the different textures they began a struggle to the death.  It was ugly, it was long and by the time it was done I had little remnants of anything that could be considered straight hair lol.    When I woke up in the morning it was thick and annoying.  I was about 20 minutes away from slapping a relaxer in my hair but I remembered in a previous update that I said I would let my hair sort itself out and to be fair it completely did.  On the upside, the long time post relaxer meant I had at least an afro to work with when it was finally trimmed the next day.  In a variety of spots there was no more relaxed hair to deal with.  In the longest spots it was a loss of another two inches.  I tied it down last night and woke up to a slightly smushed afro and wasn't loving the product that was in it so I washed it then added some of the curly products I bought last night on the way home from the stylist.  I ended up with this look this morning lol.

Notice the copious amount of gray hair and the little bit of black holding on for dear life.  If I stretch it there's maybe another inch or so of hair but as my plan today was to get retwisted I didn't see a point in blowing it out or trying to straightening it.  I'm sure I confused some people as I had what amounted to a twist out on Monday and showed up to the office rocking this midday.  They will be equally confused tomorrow because I did this tonight lol.

I am super sad because I just went to see if there was more M51 left in stock to make sure I could keep this color as again most of my hair is white but they don't have any.  I need at least one more back based on what happened tonight.   I can go with the slightly lighter M44 which seems to be more readily available in lots of brands but yeah I like the super gray.  Meh if anyone sees any Sensationnel Xpression braiding hair in M51 let me know lol.

How goes life with the rest of you?  Back to the gym tomorrow after work since dinner is made for the rest of the week now.  Yeah for diets and trainers.  Night all.