Medusa, Rapunzel, or Lady Godiva

4:17am: Greasy!
I'm trying to curb oil production in my face and scalp, 'cause ick. I think I've been stimulating it by washing both too often, and with too-harsh products.

I'm using the facewash stuff I bought for kyeian and I to share, but I think I may go back and buy some that's slightly less lotion-y, or try using a sugar or oatmeal scrub. I'm also not washing my hair every day, as of yesterday. So I did wash it yesterday, but I didn't wash it before work tonight; I just rinsed it thoroughly, conditioned lightly, rinsed lots more, sorta massaged my scalp while rinsing, and used a tiny bit of oil on the last couple inches. It felt clean afterwards, but now it feels oily. But I read that it takes three or four days at least for one's body to adjust, so I'm going to wait it out and only wash every other day for at least a week.

So yeah...I've got my hair up today, because it's greasy.

4:03am: Hair Toys!
I bought two pairs of hair sticks, a slide/stick/whatever barrette, and a "salon clip" like a Ficcare, only it was $5. The hair sticks are one pair each black and brown plastic, the slide barrette is black plastic, and the clip is dark base metal with all kinds of shiny things on it, and a very strong spring. I'm not sure how to wear it yet, but I'll play around. I'll update this post later with pictures.

~room for pictures for later~

Also, my hair is being super-curly today, after using larger amounts than usual of both my first and last conditioner, and a smaller amount of oil on the ends. It's not tangly at all. It was like this when I did the same thing with the conditioner and oil one day last week, too, so I think that's how I'm going to wash my hair from now on. I do want to try Kim's baking soda/honey thing, which would hopefully reduce (do away with?) the cost of shampoo, replacing it with an ingredient cost, but hopefully would be necessary less often, so the cost should still be less. I'll end up spending more on conditioner, too, if I'm going to use more every time, but my poor hair seems to need it.

4:07pm: A Pictorial Timeline Of My Hair
October 2001, just after dying my hair black. Hair was a bit past BSL.


This one (also posted below) is actually from 2002, not 2003 as previously noted. Bangs, natural dark auburn (not shown well), about BSL. Blow-dried straight-ish.


This one is from summer 2003. Bleached streaks dyed crayola-red. The tube was burgundy. Rawrr. Hair was down to my waist.


This one's from autumn 2003, after the red faded off the bleached bits, and I had all the bleach-damage cut off the ends, and the bangs stopped being bangs and became layers. About shoulderblade length at the longest.


And this one's from early 2004, when I found a bottle of L'Oreal dye my natural color, and covered up the bleach.


Backing up, this is halloween 2003, in between the last two. Doesn't show my hair very well, but I like it. Makeup is fun.


This is just before halloween 2004. I was (am?) fat and interested in cake because I quit smoking in mid-summer. Smoking is bad for you, and quitting makes you fat, so don't start.


And a cross-section of the cake:


And then my signature pic and such, found below. Currently somewhere between 30 and 32 inches, only about 3 inches shy of my waist, and much healthier than last time it was that long. Still lots of room for improvement, but it hasn't got many splits or anything, so I'm pretty happy. I just decided in the past week or so to grow out my layers at least a little bit for the wedding, and maintain the length within +/-3" of its current length. After that, we'll see. But I don't ever wanna cut it shorter than my shoulders again.

2:43am: Mom measured my hair for me, and various lengths. Apparently, my hair is not 31.5" but exactly 32". I find it interesting that it keeps getting measured in perfect 1/2" increments, since I, at least, have not been rounding up or down. I don't think it's grown, though; it was being particularly straight when Mom measured it.

As for the different lengths, I guess "waist length" is at 33.5" so I'm very close to it. 40", which Mike and I discussed growing my hair to, is too long; I'd be able to sit on it. So, I'll get it to waist length, and keep it there-ish while I work on growing out the layers and keeping the ends from splitting much. At least, that's the plan. We'll see.

Also, I had crazy-build-up from CWC-ing and hard water, so I used baking soda tonight before work. It felt icky, but it got my hair squeaky-clean without being terribly drying (I don't think) and I immediately followed with two rounds of conditioners (because I don't like how the thicker conditioner smells or makes my hair feel if I use it last, so I used the thinner stuff afterward). So, even though it felt gritty and bleah, I'll almost definitely use baking soda again. I do want to try vinegar next time, though.

11:02am: Measurement
As of 2/1/05, my hair is 31.5"

That's 1.5" in a month. Wow?! I always thought my hair grew pretty slowly, but I'd say that's fairly fast. Imagine if I actually started eating better and taking vitamins. *chuckles*

Also, some pics.

1:23am: Blasphemy
I blow-dried my hair Saturday for photos. In my defense, it was something of an emergency; I'd worked all night, slept too long, and had a greasy scalp. I scalp-washed and didn't use any conditioner, then blow-dried FAST, combed it a bit, put on makeup, and left. I didn't even have the decency (or time) to leave the blowdryer on low heat.

Anyway, it was one time, and the photos are going in the church directory we only do every 5 years or so, so my parent's friends are gonna be looking at the photo for a long time. I'm also sending a 5*7" of the one of just me to Mike, so it had to be good.

So, no more blow-drying, but that was an emergency.

12:45pm: Pic!
Okay, much better pic of the current length/color/etc. Edited to be my sig on the Long Hair Loom boards.




Mwahaha, my hair is long. And my sides are fat, but who's counting? Yay hair!

4:09am: Tangles and Curls
My hair looks healthier, I think, since I've started CWC-ing more consistently, and using jojoba oil occasionally, but it also seems more tangly than it used to be. I've got a couple ideas on the cause of this.

First off, between the extra conditioner, the jojoba oil, and our hard water, I might need to start doing something about build-up. It doesn't feel like there's any build-up, but how would I know? I'm fairly hair-dumb.

Second, the hair at my nape seems to be getting curlier. The last several bad tangles I've had to deal with produced distinctly cork-screw-ish broken-off hairs. I'm thinking that as it gets more curly, the curls are tangling themselves around each other and the straighter hairs, making knots and thus getting broken off.

But...why is it getting more curly? I just read a thread on the hair care board about things that can change straight/curl textures, but none of it applies--I'm well past puberty, nowhere near menopause, not pregnant, and have never had chemotherapy. I have been dieting more strictly than usual, but I've gone on the same diet before without affecting my hair, and I would think that would be more likely to affect gloss and strength than how much it curls. None of the hair products I'm using right now are "curl-enhancing" or "curl-taming" or related to curls in any other way; it's all moisturizing or extra-moisturizing-for-damaged-hair.

So, I have no clue what's going on, and I like how healthy my hair is at the moment, but the tangles are driving me nuts.

1:58am: Pic!
Current length, color, and curliness, but blurry because Lisa wiggled, or something.

2:58am: Goals
Now, to set down my goals very plainly:

- Make my hair healthier
- Keep it that way
- Don't fry my hair

And more specifically:

- Keep it its natural color at least until after the wedding
- Keep it no shorter than its current 30"
- Figure out how fast it grows
- Figure something out for the super-dry, brittle ends
- No perming or straightening until after the wedding, either

1:58am: Getting Started
So, this is my hair journal. Ta-da!

I'll be using it to track my hair growth, 'cause I've never been able to figure out whether it grows "fast" or "slow." I'll also be using it to record changes I make in my hair care routine, review products I've tried, and record anything particularly damaging (like dye!) I do to it. I'll post pics of new haircuts, colors, or styles, and just generally ramble on about hair.

Part of my new resolve to take good care of my hair comes from the assumption that everyone (including myself, until recently) makes; that all hair ought to be slick and shiny and either lie flat or in perfect waves or ringlets. My semi-curly/semi-straight hair tends to look frizzy at times, even when it's healthy, and while it's got some shine, it's not mirror-bright, and I don't think it's meant to be. So, I've come to the conclusion that I don't have to have hair like Lisa's or Kim's or Lana's. I can have hair like me. I want it to be healthy, but I don't need to change it.

For the last couple years, I've been using L'Oreal "Vive" products, usually the "curl," "moisture," or "color" versions, and the color vive 3-minute conditioner every few days. I've also tried Physique's shampoo and conditioner for curly hair, which I really liked, and various Suave and V05 products, which I did not like. I've tried a few John Frieda styling products, which I liked, but I'm waiting for them to put out a line for redheads, now that they've got things for blondes and brunettes.

Right now, I'm using a generic of a Redken conditioner, L'Oreal moisture vive shampoo, color vive conditioner, and color vive 3-minute conditioner. I bought some jojoba oil, but I haven't used it yet. When I wash my hair, I wet it, put in the fake Redken conditioner, detangle with a wide-tooth comb, shampoo the scalp, rinse, condition with the L'Oreal normal stuff, then comb again and apply the 3-minute conditioner. At that point, I either wait around about thirty seconds before rinsing, or I put it up with plastic hair sticks and wait 5 or 10 minutes while I finish my shower before rinsing. After my shower, I don't use a comb again unless I'm going to braid it; I gently shake the curls out with my fingers and let it dry. I was using John Frieda's leave-in conditioner, but the bottle just went empty, and I think I'd rather find a better leave-in instead of buying more.

Here is a pic of me from the summer of 2003.



My hair was its natural color (it's more reddish than the pic shows, though), and somewhere in the middle of my back. Shortly thereafter, I bleached it and dyed it bright red, which faded quickly to pink. The pink faded out so it was just bleached blondeish, and by then, it was just barely to my waist, but the ends were so damaged that I had to have rather a lot of it trimmed off. The bangs had also grown out about to my chin, and so when I got it cut, the stylist put in layers throughout, so the bangs blended in. A while after that, I dyed it back to a reasonable proximity of the original color, but it slid off the dye within a couple months, leaving my hair a sort of wimpy strawberry blonde with darker auburn roots. I dyed it again, and got a haircut (maintaining the layers, but keeping most of the length), and now it's all sort of light auburn on the top layer, where most of the bleach was, and darker auburn underneath, where the hair is coarser and curly and the bleach didn't take very well. There was also a streak in the top layer that the bleach didn't take to at all, which I thought was really funny.

So. Right now, I have layers, my hair is about 30 inches from hairline to ends, and it's of varying straightness, color, and texture. The top layer is fine, straight with a little wave and occasional curl, and light auburn. The middle is neither fine nor coarse, is very wavy with a few curls, and is medium auburn. Underneath all that, the hair is quite coarse, pretty much all curly, at least toward the ends, and dark auburn. I don't have a current picture, but I'll take one soon, and I'll see if I have more old ones showing styles, cuts, or colors.