Hair Update, With Pictures, Regret, and a Little Nausea

So. Last night I read your suggestions with avid interest. I obviously immediately put the ones which mentioned hair product on the back burner, as we’re not yet due for our once-every-two-weeks trip into the Big City, and watched the clip that KT sent me. I found it fascinating but also somewhat frightening. Not the technique. The technique looked easy enough. It was the look itself, that 40’s glam thing, that I just didn’t feel comfortable trying to pull off for daily wear. I’m neither 40’s nor glam, and my lips never wear red lipstick, just lots of coats of Blistex. Also, I live in yoga pants and jeans, y’all. It’s a rare occasion that sees me outside my comfort zone. Today happened to devolve into just such an occasion, but more on that later.

But after I watched the clip, it reminded me of something I had re-pinned on Pinterest once. Here it is:

I quickly found it and decided that it looked A) easy enough for someone as hair-care challenged as me and B) like the perfect use for the Ogre’s old shirt that he told me, and I quote, “to cut up and use for rags or something, jeez, woman.”

So off I trotted to shower and rag roll my hair. And shower and rag roll it I did. The rolls were a little tricky to get the hang of, but in the end my whole head of hair took me about 25 minutes to roll. Then I slept in them and felt very vintage and adorable all night, even when I spent most of it laying awake in fear because the black bears were roaming about. (It was trash night. They love trash night, apparently.)

Morning came, and I fed the Ogre and the minions, threw on a pair of jeans and a t-shirt, put on some perfunctory make-up and then began to pull my hair down.

Well, I guess I didn’t place the rolls high enough, because the bottom half of my hair looked exactly like Shirley Temple’s and the top half looked…exactly like I had slept on it all night.

I was afraid. So I panicked and brushed it.

Yeah.

It puffed and poodled and grew three sizes that day. It was HUGE. And kind of awesome, in a frizzy way.

I decided that I simply couldn’t go my usual route and pull it into a ponytail, because it would look like I had glued a frizzy toy poodle to the back of my head. So I wet my hands and ran them over it to calm it down a wee bit. Then I pulled it half-back, which seemed to help. Then I went outside with the kids to a neighbors house, and melted in the sun.

We came back an hour later, mere puddles of the selves we once had been, and I put Liam down for a nap, left the girls on the couch with books for a much-needed quiet time, and promptly changed into a sundress I usually wear in the most hideous of August days. And then…well, then I decided to take pictures of my hair with my new camera phone.

I am deeply sorry about the following.

Front

Obviously, that’s the back

This would be a pathetic attempt to get a side-shot

So. At this point, I began to feel extremely awkward about taking pictures of myself in the mirror. See, taking pictures of myself in the mirror with my phone while not actually pregnant is on my bucket list of “Things I Hope I Will Never Be Lame Enough To Do Before I Die.”

Enter the lameness. If I, at that moment, had been in possession of a Myspace Account and a Justin Beiber CD, I would have fired myself from mommy blogging forever. And then life.

I decided that I had to break up the tension that was making things awkward between me, the mirror and my phone.

This is what I would look like if the Zombie Apocalypse were happening

This is what I would look like if the Zombie Apocalypse were underway, and I was on Team Zombie, and I was about to eat your brain

This is the expression that I imagine Queen Victoria would be wearing just before she said, “We Are Not Amused.” Also, the expression I’m betting you’re wearing right now.

This is the expression the Ogre will have on his face when he reads this blog post

This is how I feel after posting this series of pictures (yes, it actually is a trash can, but we had no dunce caps handy, though I can’t imagine why not, seeing as how we seem to need them quite badly today)

Meanwhile, this is what the girls were doing while I was taking pictures of myself making faces in the mirror:

Thing One and…

Thing Two

After that, I hung some pictures. When Sienna woke up she happened to scroll through my pictures because she can work my phone better than I can, and said, “Mom, why do you have so many weird pictures of yourself?”

To which I maturely responded, “your mom has so many weird pictures of herself.” And she said, “yeah I know. That’s what I’m asking.”

Then I distracted her by turning the camera in her direction.

This child feels no awkwardness between herself and the camera

See? It feels much more natural to take a picture with a child. Much less Myspacey. More Facebookey. Facebook for the win!

When Liam got up we went outside to take a walk and hang out with another neighbor (yeah, we read each others blogs before we moved here! Twilight zone, right?). I just stuck with the sundress, since it was still ten zillion degrees inside and out, put on flip-flops and earrings (I can’t explain the earring decision, unless it was a nod to the fanciness of my curls) and we walked around the block.

And then the wind picked up and I spent most of the walk clutching my skirt and feeling like an imbecile.

Dear yoga pants, I will never forsake you again. No matter how sweltering it gets.

In summation, I like the rag-rolling thing. I think it will take some practice, but it’s fun and the curls stayed in spite of my mid-day furniture re-arranging and picture hanging and subsequent sweating, and even though it takes time at night, it’s worth it since it makes the morning so quick.

I’m still open to other ideas, though. And products! I’m like a blind squirrel seeking a nut when it comes to hair products, so please tell me which ones you love! (And maybe draw me a diagram so I know what they’re for.)

I promise this is the last post about my hair. The next post I write is going to be less about hair and more about what goes on it. And hint hint, until a cradle Catholic friend just recently corrected me, I thought it rhymed with “sasparilla” instead of “tortilla.”