June 16, 2009 · 6:30 am

Love & Loathe – 06/16/09

Love:

* The way our little birdy chirps when I cover her for the night. She sounds just like a little cricket. They are the sweetest chirps I’ve ever heard. Sometimes instead of her name, Yoda, I call her Little Grasshopper.

* How our coat closet smells, because that’swhere we store our thousands of co-mingled candles. Our coats smell like co-mingled candles. It’s a good smell.

* Our dishwasher. I enjoy washing dishes by hand on occasion, but I marvel at how clean all of the dishes get in the dishwasher, no matter where I stack ’em in there. Even way back there turned to the side, it still finds it and gets it clean. It really is an amazing invention.

Loathe:

*When people put ads on my car — under my windshield wipers or tucked into the weather stripping on my side window. The rule is simple: Don’t touch my car.

*Sometimes I think “adults” are really just a bunch of people with grade school maturity levels minus the youthful “cute” to distract from our juvenile behavior. We just wield bigger, more expensive toys, larger vocabularies and more emotional baggage.

*Hiccups.

One Last Thing:

One day a couple weeks ago, I returned to work from my lunch errands early and decided to sit in my car in the parking lot and read my mail. One of my co-workers pulled up and parked next to me and made a couple smarty remarks and as he opened his door, it accidentally swung open too far and it hit my car. It hit hard enough that it made my car bounce a little bit and it sounded terrible. I cringed, expecting a dent. He cringed as well and leaned over to inspect where it had hit and said in a wondrous voice, “There’s no dent!”

I inspected it when I went inside and he was correct, there was no dent.

Over the seven years that I’ve owned my car, it seems that as small as it is, people go out of their way to park too close, even to “share” my parking spot with me because my car clearly doesn’t need the entire spot its parked in. Or at least that’s what their parking style tells me. As a result, my car has suffered numerous door dents down its sides and I’ve spent at least $200 on dent removal services. All this time I just figured my car was easily dentable. But now, not anymore. Because as hard as my co-worker’s car door hit my car (I felt it!), the people who actually left dents in my car must have just beat the crap out of it.

People really can be something else, can’t they?

7 Comments

Filed under I ♥ My Miata, Kid Substitutes, Love/Loathe

June 11, 2009 · 11:32 pm

Hair Update — Week 4.

Last Sunday brought about the healthiest, shiniest hair I’ve seen to date in my pooless experiment. It was, dare I say, perfect? The hair I’ve always wanted… from the top to the tip. 25 inches of hairy bliss.

Monday morning things got a little weird because I tried using coffee grounds in my hair for coloring purposes. I was desperate, so I used it full strength, coffee grounds and all. Well, what it did was, it threw the texture off and it was odd (to say the least) to find coffee grounds in my hair (like black dandruff?) and to crave coffee all day. On the upside, no one but me knew and my hair smelled delicious.

After Monday night’s swim and shower (remember, I’ve been using a baking soda rinse & lemon juice), Tuesday my hair seemed a little dry. I determine “dry” by the amount of tangling I get during the day. Which told me that the coconut oil was indeed causing my oily issues. So Tuesday night, instead of my lemon juice rinse, I used an Apple Cider Vinegar (ACV) rinse which, according to Google, is very near to our hair’s natural PH and as such acts as a cleaner and seals the hair shaft. Sure it smells kind of like pickles while it’s wet, but I like pickles.

Wednesday night I again used the baking soda rinse and ACV rinse. My hair seemed a tiny bit better, but still a little dry. So I used a little sulfate free conditioner to see if that helped.

Thursday night I added a tablespoon of aloe vera to the ACV rinse, as well as some rosemary. Aloe vera for moisture and rosemary for scent (nothing quite like pickled rosemary, I say) and hair color. I grow both items in containers in my back yards, so they were readily available.

Saturday after my swim, I used an all natural henna hair coloring gel. The bottle was pretty small, so I wondered if I’d be able to color all of my hair. Of course it didn’t say anything on the outside of the box about needing to buy two for long hair, only on the internal instructions, so I decided to do what I could with what I had. Turns out, there was plenty for such a small bottle and I even have some left over. The best thing about this colorant, since it contains no peroxide or other “bad” things, I can reapply as often as needed, even right away! It didn’t strip my hair, I had zero(!!) loss of hair and it left my hair soft, even during the rinse. I love the color, too. I used ACV post-coloring and my hair felt fine.

In summary, what I did this week:

Hair coloring: Tried coffee grounds. Tried rosemary. Purchased “natural” coloring agents at Mother’s Market on Wednesday and used it on Saturday. The coffee and rosemary didn’t noticeably change my hair’s color, but it did give my hair a deep sheen. Love the new “natural” henna hair color kit. It “washes out gradually”, hopefully the “gradual” slows down because I was a little concerned about how much of it came out with this morning’s post-swim rinse.

Hair growth: I had to snip 3/4 of an inch off my bangs to keep them out of my eyes. I could have easily snipped an entire inch, but I want them just a bit longer than the length they were cut to 4 weeks ago. But, that tells me that the rest of my hair has likely grown between 3/4″ to 1″ since I had it trimmed 4 weeks ago. That’s pretty rockin’ for hair growth, I think.

Hair cleaning/conditioning: Continued using baking soda rinse. Added rosemary and aloe vera to my Apple Cider Vinegar rinse. Used sulfate free conditioner once when hair felt too dry. Did not use any lemon water rinse this week. I’m only using the club soda until the bottle I have is gone. In the course of researching exactly what baking soda and apple cider vinegar do to hair, I learned that, apparently, they are both chlorine neutralizers. The club soda doesn’t hurt, but I now believe it to be an unnecessary expense and just how much chlorine do I need to kill?

Here’s my bottles — the blue one has the baking soda rinse, the red one is the Apple Cider Vinegar rinse and the yellow one has the lemon juice rinse:

Plans for this week: I would like to cut back the BSR to every other day, and alternate the ACV rinse with the sulfate free conditioner. When I used the sulfate free conditioner this past week, I nearly hyperventilated it smelled so good! Talk about glory for my senses! The reason I stopped using the conditioner was because I thought it was causing the oiliness that I was experiencing. Now that I’ve isolated that to the coconut oil that I pre-treated my hair with before swimming, I think I can start trying the sulfate free conditioner again.
Taken today, post-coloring. The sun had set, so I used the camera’s flash.

Overall, I’m very, very pleased with how this experiment is coming along. I’m getting more and more ready to ditch all my shampoo bottles. I love how my hair feels to me. In fact, I’m pleased to report that this is turning into a new way of doing things and less and less of an experiment every day.

Skin Care: In addition to all of the above, I started using the BSR and a washcloth on my face as a cleanser. As my hormones shift through my cycle, I get painful outbreaks of under-the-skin acne on my face and back. The frustrating part of that is, just when the acne clears up from the break-out due to ovulation, it breaks-out again when my menses get ready to start, then clears up just in time for the ovulation break-out. I’m hoping that a more natural cleansing will help.

…and finally, I’d like to thank my husband for putting up with all these weird bottles rotating in and out of the shower, sitting outside of the shower, or some inside while others are outside, all because I’m trying to figure this stuff out. The man has an inordinate amount of patience with me, because I know full well that if I were him, I’d be irritating myself. Thank goodness I’m me and he’s him. If that made any sense at all.

12 Comments

Filed under Chick Chat, Hair Can Be a Topic of Conversation

June 9, 2009 · 10:50 pm

Love & Loathe — 06/09/09

Love:

* Getting a great deal on meat. Beef Round Cut for $1.99/lb. Regular price was $3.99/lb. Perfect for making beef stew in the crockpot.

*Beef stew in the crockpot — you didn’t see that one coming, did you?

* Summer fruits — watermelon, blueberries, cherries. Anyone else but me seeing a food theme here?

* Coming home on my lunch hour. Enjoying the heck out of that while I still can.

* My sweetie, who makes me happy.

Loathe:

* Worrying about things. I know full well that worry never fixes things and, in fact, it often makes things worse. So, why can I not turn it off sometimes?

* Lack of sleep from worrying about things.

* Being tired from lack of sleep.

One Last Thing:
With as crazy as things have been at work for me lately, I sometimes feel as if I don't stop going until I fall into bed at night. I use the word “night” loosely, because it always seems to be around 1 AM that I actually lay my head on the pillow. Then to lay there and worry about stuff, I still feel as if I'm running mentally because I didn't have time to process things intellectually during the day.

I just want to tell you that seeing that you guys have visited here, choosing to interact with me in the comments, those are little happy darts for me during the day. You guys mean so much to me.

So, just… thank you for being here. It means a lot.

Oh, and today is my brother’s birthday — I’m sending him Happy Birthday wishes in a prayer and happy thoughts, since we don’t talk. Someday he’ll know I never forgot.

10 Comments

Filed under Brother rates his own category, I Blog about Blogging, Life Encompasses Me, Love/Loathe, Money Hump Building

June 7, 2009 · 1:20 pm

Hair Update – Week 3.

This Sunday marked three weeks of no shampoo. This week also marks the week that I changed up a lot of things I was doing and started doing “new” things… because I almost gave in this week. In fact, I had the bottle of baby shampoo in my hands and had squeezed out a dollop of it to sud up, but I used it on my body instead of my hair. I was that close, My People.

On Tuesday the “leave in” conditioner feel, or a damp feel, was all the way to the ends of my hair. It was definitely the “oily” feel that women have reported and it almost sent me reeling back into consumer usage of shampoo. But instead, I decided to see what happened that night when I showered, that maybe something would change and I wanted to research something I’d read somewhere about using egg and lemon juice as an emulsifier. So my hair lived in a clip on Tuesday.

I showered after swimming on Tuesday night and Wednesday morning when I got up, my hair was still oily. So down to the fridge I went, grabbed an egg and whipped it up. I had one lemon in my fruit basket, so I juiced it and added it to the egg with some water, and ran upstairs and used that concoction on my hair in the shower. I made sure to use cool water and rinse thoroughly, but even at that I had egg bits in my hair. Argh. Easy enough to comb out, but still… ick.

The thing about that was, it emulsified the oil out of my hair (hooray!) leaving it the right texture, but it smelled like egg. I hate the smell of raw eggs. By 10:30 that morning, it was making me feel a little nauseated. So up in the clip it went. The next day, Thursday, was better and my hair felt normal. I could still smell a light scent of the egg, but I made my work friend smell my hair and she said it smelled perfumed, like flowers. *blink* I have no idea. Could be the lotion I use on my body or maybe she just has good smelling nose hairs. But she said it definitely did not smell like eggs.

Friday morning I used a small bit of my baking soda rinse (since I didn’t swim Thursday night, I didn’t use club soda) and then I used a lemon water rinse as the conditioner. Except I didn’t strain the pulp out of the lemon juice, so I had pulpy hair. (sigh, reminding myself that this is a learning process) However, all day Friday it felt fine and I love the smell of lemons in my hair.

But after swimming and showering on Saturday morning, there was that the oil again, except it was only on the lower part of my hair.

This puzzled me… why only the lower part? The oils come from the scalp, right? Then I realized — it might be the coconut oil that i pre-treat my hair with before I swim. This is something I’ve done for so long, I didn’t even realize I was doing it anymore. So before Sunday’s swim, I pre-treated by rinsing my hair with water only. After my swim, I cleaned it with my baking soda rinse, then club soda and then lemon juice rinse. My hair has just finished drying and it feels normal. We’ll see over the next couple of days if that solves the problem.

So, to recap, here’s what I’ve done this week: Continued no shampoo. Continued club soda after swimming. Stopped using sulfate free conditioner. Stopped using Scalpicin. Stopped using hair serum. Stopped pre-swim treatment of hair with coconut oil. Used one treatment of egg/lemon/water to emulsify oils. Started pre-swim treatment of water only rinse. Started using a baking soda/water rinse. Started using lemon/water rinse.

I’m proud of myself that I didn’t give up this week. I’m realizing that there’s a lot of “natural” things out there that I can do, I just need to learn what these things actually can do! Also, I remind myself that this is a daily journey. What my hair needs one day, it may not need the next. Since my hormones change on a daily basis, so does the oil my body produces. One thing I learned that I found to be a huge encouragement is that there are women who have successfully transitioned to using no hair products at all and are able to wash their hair with water only. Wow — I have to admit, that intrigues me.

I’m also pleased with how healthy my hair feels when it’s wet — that right there is probably the one thing that keeps me going with this. Three weeks ago after I showered, my hair felt as if it would shatter in my hands and I hurried to get the hair serum in it so I could detangle it. I really, really hated what shampoo did to my hair. Now, I lose (maybe) one hair when I shower, most times none at all — that one hair looks like a lot because it’s so long, but one single hair, max? That’s not bad. I lose some when I brush or comb, but a whole lot less than I used to. I think that’s a pretty good testament to how healthy it is right now. My scalp also feels really good, so good in fact, that I’ve been able to stop using Scalpicin entirely. If there’s an itchy spot, it’s usually because I missed it when I was rubbing in the baking soda rinse.

Now I’m almost ready to ditch all the shampoo I have left in my house. Imagine the storage I can free up! Isn’t that something — in one week, to go from almost giving in and going back to shampoo, to being ready to discard all the shampoo bottles I still have?

This coming week I’m anticipating that I’ll have to address my hair color, as the natural color is becoming a bit more obvious to me, what with all the lemon juice and such, so, yeah, that’ll have to be addressed this week. I have some ideas, which I’m going to try… I’ll let you know how it pans out next week!

9 Comments

Filed under Gross Can Fascinate, Hair Can Be a Topic of Conversation, Mermaid Envy

June 5, 2009 · 11:24 pm

Protected: Weird Undercurrents.

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Filed under Best Husband, I have Family, I have Friends, Money Hump Building, Protected

June 3, 2009 · 10:30 pm

Love & Loathe — 060209, 1 day late, but I found the dollar.

Love:

* Finding a dollar bill in my jeans pocket that I forgot I put in there. Money launders well, and I suppose they call that money laundering?

* Funky weather. Even though it’s jacking up my sinuses, I love weird weather. We had thunder this morning and sprinkling today. That was fun.

* Swimming in the rain.

* Having healthy fish. I have not taken for granted a single day of their health since I declared them healthy just before Thanksgiving last year. I thought I would mention this because that whole fish dying thing started right around this time last year. I hope I’m not jinxing their health by saying that.

* My gardenia tree is still blooming up a storm — every branch has two or three flowers. It’s quite ridiculous. I bring four flowers into work every other day… two for me, one for my boss and one for my friend. Even with that, I can’t keep up with it, the little tree just keeps churning them out!

Loathe:

* Forgetting to take my spare battery for my camera OUT of my pocket. Then not remembering which pair of jeans or shorts I was wearing when I changed the battery. GAH! But so grateful I hadn’t run it through the wash.

* Weird vibes and undercurrents. (sigh) Sometimes I wish I didn’t have that ultra-sensitive mood sensor intuition radar thing that’s part of my personality. Being an “NF” sucks sometimes.

* More with the gapped-tooth models. I’d post more pictures, but she wore the same exact expression in them all, so what’s the point? I mean, maybe if she was actually smiling it would have distracted from that vacuous vampiress look.


Different model, different company than I wrote about before. Yes, I know (again) this is terribly superficial of me, but really? How am I supposed to enjoy browsing catalogs when they heavily use the one model who has a gap in her front teeth? Even putting her on the cover of their 25th Anniversary catalog! Is she a bargain model? Is the economy THAT bad? It’s like going to bed at night with the closet door open. It’s the only thing I see, the only thing I think of. No, I don’t obsess much.

* Acne.

6 Comments

Filed under Life Encompasses Me, Love/Loathe

June 1, 2009 · 7:53 pm

Searches & Hair Update.

Now that I’m “out there” again, so to speak, with no password to hide behind, I thought it’d be fun to mark the one month anniversary of this landmark occasion by sharing the search terms which have brought guests to my blog in the past 30 days!

Oh, how I’ve missed thee, Google search words!

Grouped by category, I present:

jammie, jammie j and http://jammiej.com
Congratulations! You have successfully found me by searching my Internet Identification. Anonymity is now a thing of the past! Unless, of course, you were searching for another Jammie J., in which case, I’ll have to sigh and say there’s only one REAL Jammie J. and you’re looking at her! Accept no imitations, I’m a one-of-a-kind gal.

locks of love, for locks of love, donated locks; and “locks of love” knees
A worthy cause, to be sure, but to be clear, I have not yet donated my hair to Locks of Love; maybe someday. The last search concerns me just a bit because i do have that Crazy Hair that lives behind my knee — I’m really not at all confident that Locks of Love would be interested in my rogue knee hair.

discipline lillle boys
I lay no claim to being an expert on disciplining boys of any type, lillie or otherwise. I can, however, with confidence, refer you to my friends “Charmed,” who is raising five of them, Vince, who is raising two of them, or my sister-in-law, Marigold, who is raising two of them. Boys, that is. Healthy, strong boys. Maybe you can find your answer there. Or maybe you’re trying to discipline your male garden lilies?

boy growth size story, story of the little boy
Jack and the Bean Stalk is a good one, if I remember right…

youngest boy to be dad
Yes, eventually the youngest boy can be a dad. Birth order has nothing to do with male fertility.

does dermaswim work and dermaswim complaint
Now this I am an expert on. Yes, Dermaswim works. The only fallible part of whether or not is works properly is whether I remember to put it on before I rush out of the house to go swimming. If you’re looking for complaints about Dermaswim Pro, you’ll not find them here.

endo is going to kill me
No, no it won’t. This I know for certain. Endo may debilitate you with pain and take away your ability to live life like a normal person, and sometimes the pain might make you wish you were dead, but you will live through it. Find yourself a good support system, hook up with an endo association, locate a doctor who is an expert on endometriosis. Don’t be afraid to try things — exercise, acupuncture, herbs — each woman is different and you need to find the thing that helps you get through this. Don’t give up.

i don’t know what is causing my brittle hair
I really don’t know either. Could be any number of things — could be something that might seem to be benign, like shampoo, or maybe you swim every day and have chlorine damage. Swimming in the ocean is bad for hair, too. Or maybe you got it stuck in a vacuum cleaner or a power drill. Not that I’m speaking from experience or anything, but those things have been known to cause brittle hair…

…and that’s it for the We’re All Searching for Something update.
***
Now for Week Two, No Shampoo Update.

My hair continues to feel great after I wash it with club soda and use my sulfate free conditioner, especially when it’s still wet and fresh from the shower. I only felt the need to use Scalpicin three times this week. My concern is that I may be battling an allergic reaction to chlorine on my scalp and I may not be able to discontinue Scalpicin.

One odd thing, though, on Thursday after my hair was supposedly dry, it felt odd… as if I’d used a “leave-in” conditioner, which I hadn’t. I don’t know if maybe that is the oily feeling that other women have reported? I’m really not sure. It did bother me enough that I put it up in a clip and that night after swimming I used a baking soda rinse after using club soda, hoping to break up whatever that coating was. It worked because on Friday my hair felt normal again.

My hair still tangles by late afternoon, but it’s definitely less of a snarled tangle knot and more of a hair-crossing tangle, if that makes sense. Maybe to other long-haired ladies it does.

Two weeks is done, and so far, overall, I’m still pleased. No picture this week, because it looks the same as last week.

8 Comments

Filed under Hair Can Be a Topic of Conversation, We're all searching for something

May 30, 2009 · 3:53 pm

Practical Joke?

So… do you remember a couple weeks ago, I mentioned the nasty dried salted plums I had purchased one day at lunch? How I was excited because I thought I’d found what my acupuncturist had given me, only to discover that whatever she had given me was vastly different from what I’d ended up buying?

Well, what I did was, I put those things in my desk drawer at work and ignored them. I wasn’t sure what I was gonna do with them, but I thought maybe there was something I could do to save them. I just had to work up my courage. I pulled one out the other day and thought I’d give it another go. My strategy was to rinse the salt off it with water. Should come right off, I thought, and I wouldn’t have wasted the dollar I’d spent on them. You know me and my Money Hump.

It didn’t work. In fact, it fused the salt on it, as if I had used gorilla glue — that salt wasn’t coming off. No way, no how. How on earth do they make those things? On second thought, never mind. Don’t tell me. I’m scared to know. If they can paint a donkey to look like a zebra and stand it on the street corner in Tijuana, then I don’t even want to know how they make shriveled up plums with salt super glued on.

I was just about to drop the bag in the trash can and be done with it and, then, like the proverbial light bulb over the head, an idea dinged into my brain.

I could pull a joke on one of our IT guys! I knew that the particular fellow I wanted to play the joke on would never try those things if I gave them to him directly, but he would if I gave them to the guy whose desk is next to his. So I called up Jason* and asked him to come over to my office. I pulled out the bag of nasty plums and told him the story of how nasty I thought they were and said, “Do you think you could get Ansel* to eat these if you tell him they’re the yummiest things on the planet?” Jason smiled and said, “Sure!”

I handed the bag off to him with the promise that he would call me with the results. Jason called me five minutes later and told me that when he showed the bag to Ansel, he said, “Where’d you get those saladitos? Can I have them?” And nearly snatched them away from him.

A couple hours later, Ansel called me to thank me. I figured the whole thing was a reverse spoof — that they were conspiring to pull a joke on me, that he hated them, but didn’t want me to know. Because, really, how could anyone like those things? So, I walked over to see for myself and he had the bag sitting in a prominent location on his desk with only four of them left in the bag. To prove how happy he was with my “gift”, he took one and popped it in his mouth and leaned back momentarily in his chair with a look of bliss on his face. I shook my head in disbelief.

He said, “I lived in Mexico for a couple years and I love all their candy! Saladitos are one of my favorites… in fact, when I saw the bag I started salivating just a little bit!” he continued by saying, “If you get through the salt to the plum — that’s really good, a little sweet after the salty.” He paused while I gagged at his description, then continued, “And if you get through the plum to the seed, you can break through the outer seed to the inner seed and that’s tasty, too.” He smiled happily as he popped another wrinkled salt pill into his mouth.

All I could think was, they call that “candy”?

Turns out, he actually would have taken them if I had given them directly to him.

I found myself laughing as I walked back to my office… talk about a practical joke backfiring. But… it ended well, because I had wanted to get rid of those things without wasting them. I had also hoped to get entertainment out of it. I accomplished those two things and made someone happy in the process. It was the “happy” part I wasn’t expecting… guess I need to know my target a little better next time.

Have to say, though, I sure do work with an interesting bunch of people.

*Names have been changed to protect the guilty.

10 Comments

Filed under I feel Amused, Money Hump Building

May 26, 2009 · 11:36 pm

In Lieu of Love & Loathe…

… I offer a Memorial Weekend.

On Friday I went to lunch with my work friend. It’s been awhile since we’ve gone to lunch together. Part of our routine after lunch is to walk over to Golden Spoon. During that walk, we always joke about “that loser jewelry store” right there, because they were unable to find my warranty information that one time. We always say, “Oh, I’d really love to buy some jewelry, but not from that store.” And then we giggle immaturely.

Except that day, a little girl ran up to the window with her arms stretching upward to touch and trace the name of the store engraved on the glass. She was inside the store, so by running to the window, she was facing us. Her younger sister was three or four steps behind her and she, too, wanted to touch the engraved glass, but could barely reach it. Both girls had blonde hair flaring out behind them and eyes the color of a clear blue sunny spring day. The most darling sundresses graced their perfect miniature bodies and their smiles told me they were giggling, the sound of which I couldn’t hear because of the glass.

What I heard in my head was set to the song of How much is that doggy in the window, except mine said, “How much is that little girl in the window, because I’ll take two just like her, please…”

My friend and I looked at each other and wistfully continued our walk and eventually returned to work.

Tony and I went up to the mountains this weekend. A time of rest that we desperately needed, him more than me. Since he started working his second job, he’s not had a Saturday or Sunday off. Sadly, he worked Monday, so he didn’t get a three-day weekend, the two days off that he did take were good for his soul.

People in the mountain town that we visited were reveling in the glorious weather. Riding their bicycles, walking, hiking, boating, fishing — every type of sunny outdoor activity you can imagine. Creating their little bubbles of happiness by spending time with those they love. There were yard sales galore — an annual event in the mountain town, apparently. Nearly everybody was having one, there were signs on every street corner advertising HUGE YARD SALE and then an arrow pointing to the address listed. We didn’t visit any of them, but we saw many, many signs encouraging us to do so.

Sunday morning we visited our favorite cafe, The Grizzly Manor. Charlie, the owner and cook, churns out pancakes the size of which overflow the plate. Everything on the menu is good and with my penchant for leftovers, one dish can feed me breakfast for a week. Oh, yes, and they only serve breakfast — until 3 PM. The place is tiny, around 24 people fit inside and that’s seating people nearly back-to-back. I asked Charlie how many eggs they go through each day. He said on a normal day around 13 flats (2 1/2 dozen eggs per flat), although he’d surpassed that number for that day and around 5-6 cases of hash browns (there are five 2-lb. bags in each case)…. “and that in a restaurant the size of Denny’s bathrooms.” He chuckled appreciatively at his joke and said, “Yep, Denny’s is where we send the people we don’t like!”

Loaded with good food, we hiked to the top of Castle Rock, which is where Tony proposed to me in October of 2004 and where we married each other in August of 2005. A special place to us, indeed. It’s still so very beautiful with the unending views it offers. Although I have to say, the hike didn’t seem so very difficult as it has in years past. I guess after hiking to top of Half Dome in 2007 my perspective has changed. I felt somewhat humbled, given all the endurance swimming I do, that during the first part of the hike I had trouble catching my breath. I’m gonna go ahead and blame that on the elevation and having a full stomach, because once I found my rhythm, it was all good.

After our hike, we decided to take the sky chair at one of the ski resorts to the top of another part of the mountain and walk around for a bit. The only time I’ve ever been on a lift chair is with 15 pound ski boots and skis dangling off my feet and freezing air nipping at my face. This was much more comfortable and felt somewhat decadent to only have my 5 pound hiking boots weighing my feet and legs. Like nothing at all. It was fun… still a bit chilly, but not freezing.

The other event that marks this weekend is Tony’s grandpa’s 90th birthday (on 5/26). We spent some quality time with family on Monday afternoon to celebrate… it was lovely to see parts of the family which we normally don’t. Ninety years old is certainly an occasion to mark… and to hear the words “Happy Birthday” coming from our nearly three year old nephew, well, it was just plain touching to see an aged face light up, showing the youthful heart within, in response to the exuberant little face who offered the wishes.

And our youngest nephew is at the Wobbler Toddler stage. He’s walking now, wobbly, but he’s got the hang of it. I can’t believe he’ll be a year old next month.

… and so, the weekend is done, we’re back to work already and would you look at that? We’re one day closer to the next weekend already!

Pictures from our weekend can be viewed here, if you wish.

12 Comments

Filed under I did something Special, I have Family

May 25, 2009 · 9:32 pm

The Hair Story.

Back in October of 2005, my dermatologist at the time told me to start using baby shampoo and only baby shampoo. Those instructions were in response to my inflamed scalp, which had become so badly inflamed that it was causing my hair to fall out and my lymph nodes to swell.

I was good. I listened to him. Only baby shampoo did I use for about a year. Then I discovered that if I used Scalpicin on my scalp it would not become inflamed AND I could use other shampoos. Then in July of 2006, I added another bad thing to my hair regiment — chlorine damage — I started swimming nearly every day.

So, I started using various shampoos that professed to remove chlorine. Truly, I don’t know if they do or not. But I also started using hair serum (my favorite of which was John Frieda’s Lite formula) to mask the fact that my hair was super brittle from chlorine exposure. Everyone thought it looked so healthy, except I knew differently. And the lady who trims my hair, she moaned in sadness every time she ran her hands through it… “so beautiful, so dry!” she would say.

Then in May of 2008, I noticed something on my scalp. A mole I thought. Right there in the middle of my part. But it had appeared rapidly and would diminish, then reappear in a different shape. It felt scaly to the touch, and itchy. Uh oh.

I made an appointment with my PCP so I could get a referral to a dermatologist — HMO insurance requires a referral to a specialist. My PCP looked at it and said he didn’t think it was cancerous, but not to be alarmed because to get me to a dermatologist, he had to write “suspicious mole” on the referral sheet. I scheduled the dermatologist appointment to occur just before our Hawaii trip last August, but rescheduled it because I didn’t want to be waiting for biopsy results while on vacation. It was bad enough that my pet fish were dying left and right.

Vacation came and went, as vacations are wont to do, and a couple days before my dermatologist appointment, I reached the pad of my finger up to a feel the “suspicious mole” and it was gone. Totally gone. I hadn’t scratched it, I hadn’t brushed it, but it was gone. Figures, I thought. Just like computer problems, the second you call your I.T. guy, the computer fixes itself. In the second before I pulled my finger away and noticed it was covered in blood, I had pondered canceling the appointment. When i saw the blood, I decided to keep the appointment.

The dermatologist confirmed that it wasn’t skin cancer or anything life threatening. He said it was likely a build-up of irritation and he recommended freezing the spot where it had been to prevent recurrence. Except in those two days the spot had completely healed and we couldn’t really tell for sure precisely where it had been. I declined the freeze and said I’d be back if it reappeared. It hasn’t.

Then I factored in the fact that each time I used shampoo it made my hair feel stripped and brittle, I hated how it felt after shampooing. Then I started to think about the fact that it seemed as if I was using ten products to replace the one thing my hair needs… moisture. All my life I’ve used moisturizing shampoo, moisturizing conditioner, recently adding in hair serum (an oil) for the ends and Scalpicin (for dry scalp). Who says scalp oil is a bad thing, anyway? What if the very thing my scalp and hair needs is being produced by my body?

All of that to say, it just seemed to be a natural step to try the “no poo” thing.

Sunday (5/24) marks one week with no shampoo usage. Tony took this picture on that day.

1 week pooless

My regimen: Pour one cup of club soda over my scalp, gently rub it in. Use another cup of club soda which I coil the length of my hair into, uncoil it, and then pin it to the top of my head for about 30 seconds. Unpin it and rinse.

I then use a sulfate free conditioner for the scent. Frankly, the smell of my hair is something that my husband loves and having that for him is important to me. Beyond that, I’m not partial to the natural smell of my scalp. It’s not that it’s offensive or bad, it just smells different than what I’ve become accustomed.

My hair looks healthy, but more than that, it feels healthy and softer. I noticed a difference after the very first day… it feels thicker at the scalp, and resists moisture for the first second or so when being rinsed. When I part it, it keeps the part instead of sliding all over the place. Someone used the word “trainable”, and I would agree with that. I haven’t really had what other women experience as far as “oily days” because I’m not training it to expect less cleanings per week. I don’t really feel as if washing my hair less is an option due to the daily chlorine exposure that it receives.

The only bad thing, so far, is my scalp. A couple times it’s started to feel itchy and I’ve had to use Scalpicin for my comfort. I’m trying to reduce my scalp’s dependency on it, but don’t want to end up with an inflamed scalp, hair loss and swollen lymph nodes. That wasn’t fun.

So, one week of the “no poo” science experiment done… so far, it’s all good. I’ll let you know how it continues to progress!

Click to read updates on my “no poo” journey: Link

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