Dear Internet,
I’m not a terribly vain person except when it comes to two things: My skin and my hair. I pride myself looking roughly 10 years younger than I am and that (mostly) has to do with taking my vitamins, drinking loads of water, and taking good care of my skin religiously. (Mostly.)
My hair, despite the years of bleaching, coloring, and other misdeeds, has not been destroyed and still retains its lustre and gorgeousness no matter its length. Even when it’s binded up, it still looks brilliant.
I love my hair. I love my skin. But the last year of stress, lack of cash, bad haircuts and dye jobs coupled with the general malaise has compounded into dull skin, crazy hair with far too much grey. I have not felt comely in months.
With my general moping about such things, TheExHusband thought it was a good idea for me to take a half-spa day to get some rejuvenation. I booked the appointment for an hour long facial, eye brow waxing, and finishing with a hair color and cut. (GTFO grey.)
The thing about skin care is I’m a cleanser and moisturizer kind of girl. No eye serum, no night cream, maybe BB cream if I’m feeling extra girly before going out. If I do makeup, it’s usually primer, thick eyeliner, and mascara. When I’m rolling in the cash, I do microdermabrasion and get the ‘stache lasered, but the day to day is pretty minimal.
One of the downsides of spas is they want to upsell you their specially formulated, organic, free range, paraben and SLS free products with the cost ranging from outrageous to ridiculous. Imagine my surprise when my aesthetician stated I had some age spots and sun damage (!?!) and suggested over the counter products to purchase rather than the spa’s concoctions. After she gave me a few brands to check out, most of which could be purchased at Target, with specific directions on how to (better) take care of my face. I hied thee to Target to stock up, leaving with a day cream with SPF, eye serum, night cream, and a good cleanser.
Feeling so much better about my physical appearance, I came home and decided to clean out my make-up container which came with interesting results. If you’re curious, that’s 20 shades of eyeshadow, liquid liner, and color pencils; four mascaras, four lipsticks, liquid blush, and highlighter.
Good thing orange eyeshadow is making a comeback.
xoxo,
Lisa
Tag: Curly Girl
To Hair or Not to Hair, That is the Question
Dear Internet,
363 days ago, I wrote a post about how I wash my hair and it became a viral post on my site, and lead to many great discussions on Facebook and Twitter on how people care for their hair. (Hot topic, who knew?)
In that year, my hair has gotten longer, the color keeps changing, and the style is still more or less the same. Evidence:
But there’s been some issues – the two surgeries straightened the hell out of my hair. I can’t get a curl to save my life. It’s gotten heavier with length, which is understandable – I have a lot of hair, but I can’t do a lot of cute hair styles because my hair always slides out of pins and other hair accouterments. I shed A LOT, and my new habit is I’ve started dribbling food in my hair unexpectedly which makes for fun when dining out with friends.
When I finally got a chance to see my stylist a few months ago, I was wavering back and forth on cutting my hair. And by cutting my hair, I mean something similar to the below image of me, circa late 2006:
Lisa circa late 2006.
According to my note on the image page, I went from similar length then as I am now to that cut in two cuts and kept it short for three years.
Obviously, I chickened out.
And here we are.
I’ve been going over pros/cons again on cutting it for the last few days, started adding more images to my hair cut Pinterest board, but I still find myself with no concrete decision. There is no value to me in keeping it long other than it is the one thing TheHusband would really like for me not to change (but as someone whose own hair goes to his knees, he knows the value of having control over one’s own hair). With the long hair, I have no need for hair product and I only wash it once or twice a week at best. Short hair would be more upkeep, but I feel like I could have more fun with it.
When this posts, I’ll be in the middle of my appointment so we’ll see which direction I took and it might look like something like this.
x0x0,
Lisa
This day in Lisa-Universe in:
It’s all about the hair.
I never thought I’d write a post about my beauty process1, however, a large number of my Twitter girlfriends and I haven taken to having unplanned and very random discussions lately on everything from being anxious to our periods to whatever else our vaginas demand we talk about on the twitters. As the conversations are often spontaneous2, and it typically starts out with one writing a blog post, another commenting on said blog, then more entering the fray with their thoughts and the threads go on for ages. Thus, when Carolyn recently wrote about that she doesn’t use shampoo, I commented that at some point I should write about the fact that I wash my hair once a week. Several of them said I needed to do such a post because it would be very important, natch, to note that not all of us are created equal, hair wise.3 Since I’m a writer with consistant writer’s block, if writing about my girly acts gets me back to writing on a more regular basis, who am I to argue?
When I say “I wash my hair once a week,” I mean specifically that: I wet and lather my hair once a week. I do not wet or wash it during the course of the week, with the odd exceptions here or there, but usually I have to set aside time for THE WASHING not so much that I have so much hair but that it can be a fairly long process. When I first met my friend Jessica, this past January we were attending the same workshops together in California, and one night we were planning on doing something or another and I mentioned that I had to get back to our hotel early to wash my hair. She looked at me like I was crazy, as it does sound so damned ’50s. Though, to be fair, I have been toying with the idea of setting my hair in juice cans for curls that won’t quit but that is neither here nor there.
Continue reading “It’s all about the hair.”