That time I cut my hair so I could look like my Bitmoji....

So, my hair has been bugging me lately. This is not new. I have very curly, very thick hair that does its own thing no matter how much money I spend getting it cut and styled. It's a wild mane, and I spent my formative years cursing my hair and longing for silky, flowing locks. Alas, my hair has remained wiry, frizzy and unmanageable.

The ends of my hair dry out the fastest and when I'm in need of a haircut it's pretty obvious how much needs to be cut by looking at how much length has gone from curly to frizzy. I've been needing a trim. And the other day, I realized I like how my Bitmoji's hair looked, so why not get that haircut?

For those who do not know what a Bitmoji is, it's an animated version of yourself - essentially a comic/cartoon version that you create. Once created, your Bitmoji can be used essentially like an emoji - to express a certain feeling or sentiment in a text or social media post. It's silly and completely useless but it's also kind of fun. When you create your Bitmoji, you have to be really honest with yourself. For instance, you have the option to add wrinkles and make yourself pudgy.

This is what my Bitmoji looks like. Notice I gave her some wrinkles! 

So, last night I went to bed with my hair wet from the shower. It was freshly-washed and there was no product in it (although I did condition liberally in the shower). Here is what it looked like when I woke up today: 

As you can see, it's very.......electrified. Normally when I go to bed with my hair wet, I just have to dunk my whole head in the shower the next morning and get it saturated. Then, I proceed to put massive amounts of styling products in my hair and hope for the best. But, today, I decided to try something different. I thought, perhaps, I could use the flat iron to smooth and curl my hair into something more manageable. So, I spent several minutes smoothing and twirling and smelling burning hair and this is the result: 

Besides being a little less frizzy, I'm not exactly sure how this improved things. Clearly, I needed another strategy. Styling product! Yes, that would fix it! 

Except....it didn't. This is after I slathered a liberal amount of shea butter leave-in conditioner in my hair. Definitely not improved. It was clear I needed to employ my tried-and-true method of dunking my head in the shower. But first, I fluffed it. 

Who needs volumizer? I got your volume right here, baby! 

The drowned rat look is becoming on me, no? This is me with my hair dripping after spending several minutes twisting and turning my head to saturate my hair with water. 

And this is me, using my trusty "Turbie Twist" towel that squeezes my hair up tightly, wringing all those drips out. Might as well do my makeup while I'm waiting........

This is what I start with. My trusty Olay moisturizer. It has SPF 15 and isn't terribly expensive. I've been using it for years and it works, so I'm not changing things. Mostly I just appreciate that it keeps my face from getting sunburned since I can't remember to sunscreen the rest of me. 

I also use this - neck and chest moisturizer. I don't know if it works, but I read a book once by Nora Ephron entitled "I Feel Bad About My Neck" and it made me self-conscious so I decided I better start moisturizing below my chin. Also, I heard a commercial for this lotion and decided to try it. It's probably nothing special but I recently noticed some wrinkling on my neck area so now I'm paranoid. 

After that I use this cream. Well, today I did. Because I just bought it. I had another one but I got this one for reasons I will tell you about below. P.S. I liked this one. #notasponsoredpost

I was using this cream. It was a "sample" at Sephora, but it cost like $23 so that's hardly a sample price. I figured if "BB" cream was good "CC" cream had to be better, right? Plus, look at that SPF! And honestly? I really liked this CC cream until I accidentally spilled a big blob into the sink. I tried to rinse it with hot water. I used soap. I used shampoo. Finally I had to just wipe it out with paper towels. This stuff is water-resistant to the point that I wonder if any of it really ever washed off my face when I was using it and maybe I just have layer upon layer of greasy, impenetrable cover-up on the surface of my skin. I prefer cosmetics that actually wash off with soap and water, hence the new purchase of BB cream. Taking a step back. Also? Calm down, Sephora. 

Next I use this expensive powder that was a gift for my birthday last year. It's nice, but my $8.99 Cover Girl loose powder works just as well. 

Then I "do" my eyebrows. As you can see from the first make-up-less photo, my eyebrows are pretty much non-existent. I USED to have lush, bushy eyebrows that needed to be tamed with a hedge trimmer. But suddenly I got older and they disappeared. Now I have to enhance them with eyebrow stuff. I'm not sure what the official term is. 

This is the eyebrow stuff. As you can see, there is a waxy, dark substance you are supposed to apply with the brush end of this applicator. What brush end, you ask? Oh yes, the brush end that fell apart when I tried to wash it once. All the bristles fell out so I just don't use this portion any more. Instead, I use the applicator to apply the medium brown stuff to my eyebrows to make them appear and then I used the other side to apply this "highlighter" stuff that really doesn't do anything at all. 

After the eyebrows, I do the eyes. This involves a neutral eye shadow, applied with a brush however I feel like it because I have no idea what all the brushes and techniques are about. And so I get this: 

Also, I'm not sure why my face is so long in this picture. But, as you can see, the eyelids have some color on them. Yay. I'm done.  Except for mascara. 

Today I used this, but I have about six different mascaras in my drawer. This is because ALL mascara smudges under my eyes, no matter what I do, and so I keep trying new ones in an attempt to find one that doesn't. This one smudges LESS so it's the preferred brand at the moment. By the way, it needs more than one coat and does not thicken the lashes, despite what the container says. 

Oh yeah! Back to my hair! This is what it looks like when I take off the Turbie Twist towel. Like wet noodles. There's still a lot of work to be done. 

Remember - I wanted the haircut of my Bitmoji.  But I am very impatient and I don't have time to wait for a salon appointment so I figured I could do it myself! 

I know - it SEEMS like a bad idea. I am not a hairdresser. I have no skills or experience. I am attempting to cut my hair to look like a cartoon. Is this wise? Is it even sane? Probably not, but I was going to attempt it, regardless. First, I combed my hair out. 

This is what my hair looks like after I comb it out. My comb is permanently bent at a slight angle because of all the tangles, and I usually have a small handful of hair to remove from the comb afterward from all the tangly, dry, damaged hair that gets yanked out from combing. 

Then, I combed my hair into basically the style of my Bitmoji. Clearly I was going to need to remove some length here. My hair was quite long - it shrinks up about 50% when it dries. So, cutting it wet can have disastrous consequences if you're not careful. Also? I am not careful. 

As I began my careful cutting hack job, I realized my hair was drying pretty fast. This part was getting frizzy already! 

These are all the products I currently have in my arsenal. On any given day I will have at least one but up to five of these products in my hair. None of it is enough. I could put mayonnaise in my hair and it would not look greasy. My hair sucks up these products and more, including straight coconut oil, and still has a halo of frizz. There will never be enough styling product for my hair. 

Since my hair is so thick, I started with it half-up so I could work on the underside first and work up from there, layer by layer. Can you see my gray roots? Yeah, I color them every two weeks and I still get this. I should probably just give up and embrace the gray, but I am NOT READY. 

Ok, almost finished. I think I did it. I know the back and sides have some uneven places, which I had my daughter correct later, but for now, it's looking pretty good. I cut quite a bit off. Want to see? 

This actually doesn't look like much, but it's all length. When I thin my hair, which is accomplished using a pair of weird scissors that makes random cuts along the hair, I've filled the entire sink before! 

Ok, now I'm dressed for the day and I can't believe it! I actually did it. I cut off my hair so I could look like my Bitmoji. Who DOES this? 

It feels so much.......less. The tangly feeling I get when I run my hands through my hair is gone. My bangs need to grow a bit longer, but for the most part, it's pretty close! 

Done! Yay! 

I made sure I could still pull it up into a pony tail, too, since that's how I wear my hair most days. But now I can actually wear it down and not worry about "triangle head" or the fact that my hair grows all day long (well, actually that still happens but there's less to tame now). I will enjoy looking like my Bitmoji for now. And once it grows out again, maybe I'll just change my Bitmoji to match ME! 

A day in the life of a curly girl.............

So, I've been hearing a lot about "plopping." No, that's not something you do in a toilet bowl, although the name implies as much. Plopping is the horribly-named practice of using a t-shirt and, I guess unicorn dust or something, to get your hair perfectly curly. Plopping promises a head full of bouncy curls and all you have to do is twist your hair up in a fancy Korean-sweat-towel-type contraption made from a t-shirt and let it dry. You can learn more about plopping here.

Some say you should "plop" for just 20 minutes, until your hair is completely dry. Haha, I say! My hair, when put into a ponytail wet, will still be wet twelve hours later. So, I figured I would have to go with the plopping technique of overnight curls. But first, I had to master the head wrap. I stole a t-shirt out of my husband's drawer, lay it on my bed, flipped my head over, as instructed, and attempted to wrap it by "pulling the back taut against the head and rolling the sides away from your face, then tucking into the sides"....voila! Except.....I could NOT get the shirt to roll correctly, no matter how I tried. It didn't help matters that the diagram showed the model using a towel, not a t-shirt. They called it an Aquis towel, whatever that is. I don't have one of those. Oh, I just looked it up. I DO have one of those - it's a microfiber towel - only mine is conveniently shaped like a Turbie Twist and works fabulously. So, why plop? Because apparently a t-shirt is a magical material that will eliminate frizz and give you a head of bouncy, shiny curls.

I decided I'd just pull the t-shirt over my head - you know how you did when you were little? And it looked like long hair? Yeah. So, I twisted it and tucked it and settled in for a long rest with anticipation of waking with glossy spirals.

This is what actually happened: 

Which looks remarkably like this: 

Sexy, no? 

Here's what it looks like from the back! Oh, and, that no-frizz promise? LIES! 

So, I did what I always do when I wake up after going to bed with my hair wet. I dunked my head in the shower, soaked my hair, and started all over. 

Then, I added some product. And by "some" I mean a handful. 

This is the product I slathered on my hair. I've used just about every hair product out there, and this is one that stands alone. I don't need to add hair gel with this one, like I do so many other products. Plus, it's as thick body butter - perfect for me. Other products are too wimpy! By the way, this product indicates that it is a "leave-in conditioner" but, for the record, ALL my conditioners are leave-in. Body lotion is a leave-in conditioner for my head! There is simply no product strong enough to saturate my hair and eliminate frizz. 

So, I managed to tame my mane into something respectable for work. Also, makeup is a miracle, and I apologize for those earlier pictures when I was au natural, because.....scary! And I used a hair straightener on my bangs, because otherwise they are like demented worms crawling on my forehead. 

Oh! I can't forget this product. It's from The Body Shop and I bought it a hundred years ago and it's still not gone. It says coconut oil, but it's a little different, and just takes the tiniest bit to apply to my bangs to make them look a little "piece-y-er" and not like straightened fluff, which is what happens when I straighten my bangs. I love this stuff and I don't know what I'll do when it's all gone because they probably don't even make it anymore. Wait, I just did a search. THEY DO STILL MAKE IT. The package is less cool but they make it. Whew. 

Now it's around 1:30 p.m. and, as you can see, my hair is "growing". It does this throughout the day when I wear it down. This is why I usually wear my hair up. It's not because I love an updo. It's all about containment and taming the beast. 

And......it's 7 p.m. and this is how big my hair grew today. Some days it's even bigger! If I touch it throughout the day, it grows even more. DO NOT touch your curly hair. It must be left alone. Today I had some sort of weird fluffing going on at the top of my head. Also, look how tired I am! Someone should get me a margarita. 

The only solution to all this big hair is to tame it. My hair is a lion's mane, and this is my whip. This is no ordinary hair tie, either. It's a Goody Slide Proof elastic and it's MAGIC! There are similar products on the market, but only this one will do for my hair. They are not cheap, either! And my kids steal them. So, if you love me, buy me these hair ties. Also, why do they call them hair ties now? We called them rubber bands when I was a young 'un. Btw, I just checked and they have these on Amazon. So, go buy them for me now. Mother's Day is coming. I don't care if you're not my mother. 

The problem is, once my hair has grown this big, my pony tail is more of a pouf. Or, as one of my students described me - the lady with the pretty pom-pom hair. Rah, rah. 

So, there you have it. A day in the life of a curly girl. Let's summarize: 

1. Plopping is for the toilet. 

2. T-shirts are not for hair. 

3. If you sleep on wet hair, you will wake up looking like a Rastafarian sheep. 

4. The only way to pay penance for the sin of sleeping on wet hair is to baptize your hair in the shower. 

5. No amount of product will tame your frizz, but shea butter leave-in conditioner comes close. But it must be the Cantu brand. And don't even THINK of trying their hair custard because it looks like shiny Jell-o and it makes your hair dry into a plastic mold. 

6. A little coconut oil on frizzy bangs works well, and a LOT of coconut oil makes your hair really shiny and like an oil slick. I do not recommend. 

7. Bangs are the devil, but also necessary to cover large foreheads like mine. I resemble a monkey without bangs. However, with curly hair, you either have to keep your bangs short and straighten them every day, OR you have to grow them long and make them side-swept, thereby covering a hint of forehead. The in-between stage is horrible and the curly bangs often resemble wayward Ramen noodles, so it's probably best to just keep them short. 

8. However, if you have straight bangs and curly hair, it will confuse people and they will ask you if that's your real hair or if you are "naturally curly". I like to say "Of course it's naturally curly! Do you think I would do this on purpose?"

9. Curly hair grows. Curly hair often looks perfect when it's wet. And it looks completely different when it's dry. 

10. A good hair tie is a girl's best friend. But even the best hair ties break, so always keep a spare handy. Unless you're like me and you're down to, like, one good hair tie and it's never around when you need it. Buy them in bulk. 

11. Always keep your curly hair long enough to pull back into a pony tail - or whatever you call it - a pom-pom, a pouf, a curl bun. Curly hair is like sheep's wool - it's hot and you'll want to be able to pull it off your neck and face. Also, short curly hair has the dangerous potential of turning into a poufy helmet and no one wants that. 

12. On your biggest, frizziest hair day, at least one person, guaranteed, will gush over your fabulous hair and tell you how jealous they are of it and remind you that people pay good money to get hair like that. And you will look at them and question their sobriety, but when you go home, you'll pouf it even bigger and take selfies and post them to Instagram, hashtag "curly girl". 

Have mercy. 

P.S. No one paid me to promote the above products. But they should! 

My crazy hair...........

Today's Instagram picture post is this picture of my crazy, curly hair taken after a windy walk on the beach. It's big, it's wild and it's real. I'm a curly girl. People compliment my hair more often than not when it's at its craziest and wildest - when I think it's out of control, everyone seems to love it. People also have no problem giving me hair-care advice and recommending products. I think that's weird. I have never recommended a product to a straight-haired girl, and only to a curly girl if we are actually talking about our hair. It appears people (and hair-care companies) are on a quest to help us curly girls tame and straighten our locks. Ironically, my hair is straightened as I type this and it feels foreign and odd to me. It's fun once in a while for a change of pace, but I'm most comfortable with my curls, even if they do tend to grow bigger by the minute. Most days end up with me containing the wildness in a hair tie just to keep it out of my face, but I kind of like my wild curls sometimes. Like this day, at Cannon beach, when I actually felt, rather than saw, my hair getting wilder and decided to snap this selfie. Thanks for your advice, straight-haired people of the world, but my curls are happy the way they are. 

The truth about my hair..........

My hair is really poufy. Not that anyone who actually knows me or sees me doesn't know that, but you have no idea how poufy it can be. I mean, I can make it into an Afro that would make a 70's disco king jealous. One time I saw a guy at a 5K race wearing a fake "Afro" as a gag, and I stood next to him, flipped my hair upside down and frizzed it out into an Afro bigger than his fake one. His wife thought it was hysterical and took our picture. But this hair comes with a price. Namely, it's hot. Really hot, and I don't mean in a whistling construction worker way. I mean hot as in I can almost never wear my hair down because, for one thing, it continues to "grow" all day, getting bigger and poufier and once it's fully in pouf mode, there's no taming it without getting it soaking wet. But it's also just really hot, like wearing a thick scarf around my neck, so keeping it pulled back and off my neck is much more comfortable in my perimenopausal state where I vacillate between boiling hot, sort of hot, completely sweaty and really warm. Again, not the "hot" I'm going for.

Besides the poufiness and hotness, my hair is also has the amazing ability to suck up whatever products I put in it at alarming rates. Conditioner, leave in conditioner, gel and finally, sometimes, just plain old hand lotion smoothed over the frizz doesn't seem to leave my hair greasy at all. It's like I can never saturate it with product (and if I tried, I'd use a whole bottle). When I get out of the shower, I have fabulous curls. My hair falls in ringlets and frames my face and looks great. But it NEVER stays that way. If I could "freeze" my hair in its wet state, it would be adorable. But no amount of product can freeze my Medusa hair in its ringlet-y state. Instead, minutes after I shower, a halo of frizz begins to surround my hair and the curls start their morph into pouf. There's no stopping it.

Thank God for elastic bands to hold my hair back. But not just any elastic bands are strong enough for the job. Only the Goody brand "no slip grip" kind actually hold my hair all day. I have to put it up while it's wet, otherwise the damn band won't even fit around my thick ponytail. Once my hair is in full pouf state it takes a super-duty hair band and about 736 bobby pins to tame it. However, once my hair is pulled back, it stretches and straightens the curl. And not in a good way. When I take the ponytail out at night, the first alarming thing I notice is that the center of the ponytail is still wet! That's how long it takes to dry when it's all pulled together like that - forever! Second, the sides of my hair are now straighter than the rest of it, resulting in the top of my head looking like curly noodles (think Top Ramen) and the sides looking like a bad straightening job. Not pretty!

I'm not sure whether I really have "good hair days" as much as "semi-maintained hair days". Sure, people comment on my hair on a frequently - Is that your real curl? (do you really think I'd do this to myself on purpose?)........Do you know how much people pay to get hair like yours? (really? 'Cause I'd ask for my money back!)........You're so lucky, my hair can't hold a curl for five minutes! (Lucky? Like I have a choice!). Thanks to modern technology and the invention of the flat iron (haha), I now have the option of straightening my hair. Anytime I have the inclination (and a spare hour!) I can heat my curly locks to satiny straightness. I've done this a few times and you know what? It drives me nuts. Not only does it come out looking weird because my hair is not the same length in any area, but hair that actually moves and falls into your face is incredibly annoying to someone who's hair never moves freely. No, my hair moves en masse - not unlike a helmet. I love getting out of the shower and swinging my hair back and forth (Cue Willow Smith..I whip my hair back and forth....) and feeling it move. Because as it dries, it becomes one large, tangled mass of curls that doesn't enjoy a lot of free movement.

All those tangled curls mean a lot of tangled hair in the shower. After running my fingers through it to distribute conditioner, I spend a couple of minutes just rinsing all the hair off my hands and then create a hair mouse on the shower drain which I have to remove after every shower. Don't even ask about what goes down the drain - every few months I ask Jeff to remove the "hair monster" and you don't even wanna know what that thing looks like! I love that there are all these donation programs where you can lop off your ponytail and donate it to create wigs for cancer patients. But I wish I could donate my mass of curls - at least once a month I could easily thin out my snarled cap and still have plenty of hair left over for me. I bet if I were so inclined as to sport dreadlocks, they'd be the envy of many a Jamaican, mon.

On days when I dare to go ponytail free, and my hair does its growing all day trick (not unlike a Chia pet), Jeff often finds me, at the end of the day, with my back facing him while I'm working on the computer at my desk. I can only imagine the pyramid of curls that greets his view and I know it's an extra poufy day when he says I have "Hagrid hair". You know, Hagrid? From the Harry Potter movies? The big, ugly guy with the crazy hair? Yeah, that's what Jeff calls me when my hair is out of control. Hagrid hair. Nice.

And thanks to my age, I'm experiencing hot flashes like no one's business. So, my hair only aggravates that condition by creating the feel of a fur hat when all I want is a cool breeze across my neck. You know Pedro in Napolean Dynamite? How he shaved his head because his hair was making him hot? That's me. It's the miniscule shred of sanity I have at this point in my life that keeps me from doing just that, but don't think for a minute I won't go shitballs crazy some day and shave it off. Because I just might.

Working with kids all my life, I've often dealt with the dreaded "lice scare". And long ago I decided, if I get lice, I'll just shave my head. Because I cannot imagine pulling a nit comb through my tangled web. The time! The pain! The ineffectiveness! Nope, I'd just shave it and start over. Who knows? I could end up a blonde with silky locks and make a living doing shampoo commercials. But for now I'll wash, condition, condition, condition, leave in conditioner, gel, hand lotion, gel again, wet my hair, ponytail, bobby pin, and otherwise tame my wild pouf and continue to smile when people say "great hair!"