snow day

There's about 1 million feet of snow outside my door this morning! Even though I pay my little $85 Homeowner's Association Dues on time each month, I cannot count on waking up to a shoveled parking area & walkway. Sure enough, there's so much snow out there I can hardly see anybody's tires on their cars. Long before my boss called to tell me the office was closed today, I knew I wasn't going anywhere.




So I immediately got back in the bed. And as I laid myself down (again) to rest (some more) I realized that staying home meant I had a whole day to PLAY IN MY HAIR!!!

Well, actually, I did a bit of playing last night, truth be told. Ok, the night before, too. I guess I'll start there.

Monday I decided to make myself a pre-shampoo conditioner aka shrimp marinate using:

approx 1/2 cup honey
approx 1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
approx 1 tablespoon coconut oil
1 extremely ripe banana

I put all of this in a spray bottle & went to work. I sprayed this shrimp marinate on my hair, wrapped it up in a plastic curl bag and went to sleep.

Lessons learned...

First of all, no matter how ripe a banana is, one probably ought to put it in a food processor or blender or something before adding it to a spray bottle & attempting to spray it onto hair. My spray bottle got clogged 2 or 3 times (I just flushed the pump with warm water to un-clog).

It's Wednesday, I've shampoo'd, I've conditioned, I've rinsed, I've combed...and I'm still finding little pieces of banana in my hair.

The gel I bought at the salon last week is making my hair dry.

I intend to re-work this formula a little (starting with a blender for those bits of fruit!) and try it again. I think the biggest reason I didn't see any real noticeable results is because of that stupid gel sucking all the moisture out of my hair. I have since bought over $50 worth of other styling products & will provide feedback as I have it...

So Tuesday was not my best hair day ever. Getting my thick, curly, carpet-like tresses to lay down is not easy. My 'fro was a little lumpy yesterday, but what are you gonna do?

One of the products that I read about over & over again on other folk's blogs/websites/journals is Vegetable Glycerin.



There is lots of talk of "defining the curl pattern" on these other sites. It took me a couple of days to figure out what that meant. But once I (thought I) did, I ran out and bought some. Last night I made a Leave In Conditioner that Aldrea has posted on her site:

1 part glycerin
1 part conditioner
3 parts water

I put all of this in a spray bottle & went to work. I could feel my curls curling up immediately. I wrapped my head in a bandana & a bonnet & slept on it. When I woke up, my hair was still extremely moist; not wet, but moist! So I did a little finger-comb...






then added some water (in a spray bottle) so I could get a comb/pick through it...







It's been over an hour (probably closer to 2) and I can still comb through my hair and boy, lemme tell ya, that glycerin is making my kinky-coily-curls super curly-coily-kinky! It's soft to the touch, although very slightly sticky (I probably need to add a little more water to my mixture if I'm going to use it as a leave-in).





Thank God for snow days!

[yawn]
I'm going to sleep now.