inching along

it may not seem like it, but my hair is still inching along towards my goal. this is a picture i took tonight...even with that trim, i can see that the u-shape has grown out some more. i know that i need trims, so i will try to stick to every 3-4 months. with that said, NO MORE CUTTING TILL MARCH!

my skin is inching along, too...i did my 2nd glycolic peel tonight. so far, i have 5 peels completed: i did the three lactics about 3 or 4 days apart, then waited a week for the first glycolic, then gave it another 4 days before doing the one i did tonight. i'm not doing another one until next monday, when i will rotate back to the lactic peel. i am glad that i read regular witch hazel can be used as a pH prep, because everyone was right: i am going through the prep solution much faster than the peel itself. i have also started pouring a tiny amount into a bowl and using a concealer brush to ensure more even application. i wonder if MUA is having a black friday sale, because i definitely want to buy a sample of the TCA peel. i may go on and get the 12.5%, but if i don't there is always the option to get the "lunchtime" 8% peel. i probably won't get anything until half of the bottles i have are gone, and i am far from that, so that gives me time to think -- you know how i am.

can't shake this feeling...

after winging it for about a month, i went back to the dominicans today and got another blowout. i went to the salon down the street looking for my favorite girl, and when i heard she was at the other one in the next city over, i high-tailed it out of the WITH THE QUICKNESS! long story short, it came out great and i met another really good stylist who herself has really nice, thick, long (ok, it's about APL) hair...not only did she not skimp on the time under the dryer with the DC in my hair, but she sprayed heat protectant on my hair without me asking -- truly a dream come true after going to those horrible women i used to let touch my hair.

since my homegirl was busy coloring some girl's hair when i came from under the dryer, the new chick blew out my hair, and i was not disappointed. when she was done, i asked for bangs -- she decided that a layered side bang would look better, and then i realized she wasn't really all that excited to cut my hair from under my chin to above my eyes. i decided to go with the flow since i'm not opposed to a side bang, and i watched as she angled those scissors and went in. the trouble came in when i closed my eyes and heard a snip IN THE BACK when i asked for bangs! all these horror stories of scissor happy stylists immediately came to mind, and i whipped around and stared at the floor, looking desperately for all the hair i just knew she had chopped off. clearly she saw the panicked/crazed look on my face, because she began reassuring me in broken english that she didn't cut all my hair off. i got up from the chair with some really cute layers in the front about 3 minutes later, but i spent much of the next two hours trying to reassure myself it was ok. however, being that i just got a trim in september, my brain was convinced she cut off all my progress since my last blowout. i even looked at the hair again when i stood up, and it was definitely a dusting, not to mention my mom was watching her the whole time she trimmed my hair and would have let me know if she aimed those scissors too high. eight hours later, i am still uneasy about the whole thing, although i realize she was trying to do me a favor: i paid for a trim so it would have been crazy to only get two snips in the front, plus i've had two blowouts (and thus a lot of heat on my head) since my last trim. i think i can still see some progress since the last set of pictures i took, but i won't be sure until tomorrow when i gather the energy to take some more pictures. smh, i am a hot mess...paranoid over trims now.

back to the subject at hand, i plan on keeping my hair straight for the next three weeks or so, then wearing it curly for a week before deciding where to go from there. i am still keeping the weave option open and added a box braids option in there sometime last week, so i honestly have no idea what i will do come the week before christmas. hopefully the solution will strike me soon.

finally!

i've been addicted to twistouts for a while now, but unfortunately they are still hit or miss. i determined at the end of last winter that 5-6 flat twists seemed to work best for me instead of a head full of smaller two-strand twists, but i decided to tweak that theory earlier this month when i was homebound with swine flu. i really had nothing but time on my hands, so i used it to play in my hair. i mean really, what else am i supposed to do with 10 days of free time quarantined in my bedroom...

although i love the simplicity of two-strand twists, mine always tend to look anorexic. i had the brilliant idea to simply make less of them so they would be chunkier, and it worked pretty well for me. after following my normal WNG routine one night, i grabbed a few large duckbill clips and parted my hair into about 7 or 8 sections and just started twisting. i was pretty happy with the thickness, and they got me through 5 days of my quarantine. one day when i got sick of laying in bed, i unraveled them and actually had a pretty decent twistout.

now that i'm better (and getting out of the house), i made a run to wal-mart's electronics department and OF COURSE made an obligatory hair products purchase. i bought a container of cantu shea butter leave-in, which as a newbie to LHCF waybackwhen was the WORST (uhh, probably because i tried it as a DC, which is far from its intended purpose), as well as one of the big $5 bottles of HE hello hydration. excited over my new leave-in scores...hey, i'm easy to please...i ran upstairs when i got home and used the hello hydration as a moisturizer on my dry hair to reset my twists for another twistout. unlike what i've been doing for the past two weeks, this time i went back to my trusty flat twists and got the best twistout this morning. it was everything i wanted: stretched, moisturized, and swangy! now that i am on this washing once a week kick, i'll use tomorrow as my opportunity to set it for the week and wear it till the wheels fall off.

tis the season...

i kind of thought it was a fluke, but now i know for certain...i shed like a small animal in the fall. thinking back to around this time last year, i tried this low-mani thing out, and not only was it an utter fail, but i experienced so much shedding that i thought my hair was falling out. however, at that particular point in time, i didn't know whether to attribute it to my lack of detangling or the change in the seasons. now that my regimen has been pretty solid for the past few weeks, not to mention the fact that i've placed 2 protein sessions with joico k-pak DPR in there, i definitely know it has something to do with the time of year and not my washing/styling habits. i am thinking about going back on those garlic supplements, since they really did seem to work, and i have already started wearing styles that require less washing and thus less of those massive hairballs in the shower. i'm currently rocking a twist n curl a la curlynikki...i may post pics as the week goes along to share how it came out. in any case, i hope it stops soon. my next paycheck (and subsequently, my order with hairsisters to get these tracks) can't come fast enough.