Finally Wash Day

I really did mean to wash my hair last week but my lazy took over and it was a non starter last week.  I took some time to research how to do this better than just hopping in the shower and hoping for the best in terms of the weight on the twists and my hair with all that fresh water.  I chose to follow a mix of advice but got spray bottles from Sally's and filled one with two of my favorite shampoos, old standard Moroccan Oil and a Shea Moisture shampoo that is geared for naturals that I actually like--big deal there cause I have not loved Shea Moisture products, and warm water.  The second was just water to rinse the shampoo from my hair.  I sprayed my scalp all over and rubbed with the pads of my fingers and soon my scalp was 1) wet and smelling good, 2) getting clean and smelling good, and 3) just happy because my scalp was getting rubbed.  Don't tell anyone but if you want to kidnap me you don't need to do it by gun point or drug me.  Just convince me you want to rub my scalp and then do so until I fall asleep.  I'm good to go promise.  After I felt like I had done a decent job of cleaning my scalp and the crown of my head where the hair is longer I moved on to the rinse.  That was slightly more traumatizing than I planned because the wetness just seemed to keep spreading and I was hoping that my almost seven week old twists could stand it.  Then I hit it will all of the conditioners and leave ins in this photo.  My spray bottles are there too.  I didn't need to get the giant bottles but I loved the handles on these.  I'm very odd in the textures that I like to touch and work with and the ridges on this one just worked better for me. 

Right now I'm chilling with my hair resting on a towel even tough I squeezed a lot of the water off before I even got to the conditioner stage.  Since the enter length of my hair isn't wet this feels so much better.  And my scalp and the hair that is most definitely protruding from the twists feels good.  It's a great way to end a post gym day.  I will try to stay up another hour before I put them into a loose ponytail and then cover my hair up with my bonnet.  Yeah for clean hair and not a totally wet back and neck ache from all of that flipping water.  Here's me.

Have a good night everyone.

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)?

Seriously Sleepy Sunday

Things have been crazy around here as of late.  Well no more crazy than normal really but it's been keeping me too busy to do much of anything.  I have made it to the gym more days than I haven't and only missed one workout this past week which puts me one workout off my goal of getting to the gym 150 times (or at a minimum three times a week) this year.  If I stick to the plan then it will be closer to the 170 range but I'm not holding my breath that life won't interrupt or like Friday I'll just be so exhausted that I come home midday, fall asleep for several hours, get up and cook and then go back to bed a few hours after eating.  I got back into the swing of things yesterday though after spending the vast majority of the day cleaning up and throwing away things that were never going to be read or used.  I also packed up a rolling suitcase of things I said oh this would be good for this or that class but keep tossing into a pile that never makes it to my office.  They will be on my bookshelf and off the floor tout suite.  All in all, busy as the day is long isn't throwing off my routine too much thankfully it's just making me tired as heck.

Off tangent and potentially TMI for those of you that don't want to know about my workout routine but I have noticed something the last month or so when I go in for my workout.  I normally sweat in my scalp which is super annoying and why those dri wick bands from Goody were such a Godsend when I found them through influenster a few years ago.  Can't find those damn things to save my life now and they are hard to rock with the twists but I'm off tangent.  So I am used to sweating in my scalp and it's just the drawback of trying to be healthy.  Well the rest of me is periodically drenched in sweat as I workout.  It gets progressively worse until I hit the elliptical at which point it's like girl will you take a shower please.  Thankfully I have the treadmill time after it because while I'm still moving the treadmills are all under giant overhead fans so I'm at least mildly dry before I put on a jacket and head out to my car.  This matters on a few levels for me other than my workouts are clearly having the desired effect and I'm staying super hydrated so yeah for that too BUT and here's the problem.  It's killing my sports bra game.  Good sports bras are not cheap especially if you are on the busty side of things.  My favorite red one just got damaged while I was doing laundry and as I can't get it in that size anymore I'm super pissed and now have to remember to always wash them in a lingerie bag.  I'm having to wash them more because no matter the routine I come home and those things are wet for a while.  I ordered a few last night and was happy that I had a 25 percent off coupon.  Now that my red one has been limited by the broken hook I need to get one more to make it through a week of working out without having to rewash all the bras I own lol.

Ahh well, those are the breaks right?  How is life treating you?