Going Wavy Again - my background story.

I'm going to take a break (ha) from talking about my ankle (well, mostly) and talk about my hair.


I have naturally wavy hair that I straighten all the time. However, my current inability to stand on my own two feet is compromising my standby routine of years and years and yeears - namely, washing it every two days, blow-drying it, and straightening it out with this Beyond the Zone spray and my trusty Sedu. I'm seriously considering going to full-time wavy - and I think I found a way to do it!


But first, some backstory.


I had a head of pretty cute loose curls and waves when I was a small kid. Then it got long, really, REALLY long, so long I could sit on it, and I had it for years. In a lot of my later-childhood pictures it looks straighter; pretty sure that's because my parents and I would always brush it (I don't remember how much blow drying may have been involved). I grew up in California, luckily, so frizz didn't really seem to be much of an issue. At least, not to me. I was a tomboy, so I didn't care whether it was all over the place. I loved my hair.


Sadly, just as I was entering my awkward stage, some well-meaning aunts of mine got their hands on me and lovingly proceeded to annihilate the one thing standing between me and full-blown tween-age yuuugly - that long unruly hair of mine. First to shoulder length, then to jaw length. And I was required to blow-dry it. Then finally the summer before high school it was deemed time to chop it all off and give me soccer mom hair. Worst. EVER. Suffice it to say I don't have very many pictures from those years!

And those I do have break the internet.

By the time I inevitably threw the reins and swore I would never have hair shorter than my shoulders again, I lived in a much more humid location. Though I blew my hair straightish when I could borrow a blow drier, I would often just wash my still-shortish hair at night and flip it over my pillow, waking up to mahhvelous waves. (My aunt even borrowed my idea for a trip abroad.) Of course, I was kind of SOL in the wintertime, but when it wasn't cold I was able to do the above until well into college. This was a particularly good hair day during my sophomore year:

I kinda went through a Zorro phase.

Then, early my junior year ... I got a straightener. After a chance run-in with one before one of my college concerts, I spent weeks poring over reviews and invested in a good one (my first was a Solia). I immediately started using it all the time. ALL the time. I loved it. I mean, it really does make my hair look pretty snazzy, and during a time where I just plain couldn't afford regular haircuts, it gave me a way to defy the humidity, frizz and ponytail creases faster and more efficiently than any blow dryer (well, the cheapo one I had) could. And back then, it even made my relatively undamaged hair look shiny.


Before too terribly long, I had very long hair again, and continued to blow-dry and straighten it just about every other day. 3 or so years of this later, I found myself in a long distance relationship and decided to put the appliances on the shelf for a while. I was going wavy again, for the first time with hair that length. 


But there was a problem - even worse than the fact that my hair was dried out, I simply didn't know the right way to do what I was intending. I brushed it after getting out of the shower, piled on the gummy silicone shine products, used a blow drier to help me dry it, and was constantly touching it. The results were, well...

Ramen head. The bacon apple pie (yes, bacon
apple pie) was hedonistically delicious, though...

Crunchy. Strawlike. Wontons. Nowhere NEAR where they used to be. Be glad you can't see the back; it would just make you sad. Ever tried undercooked ramen when the noodles were crunchy and limp at the same time? Yeah. After months of this, I gave up and went back to my reliable flat-ironing ways.


Since then, I've given 10 inches of hair to Locks of Love and have very gradually been growing my hair out again. I've been getting regular trims and cutting out some of the extra styling products, and that seems to have made a positive difference. But I continued to blow-dry and straighten it, despite moving to Houston where the humidity is the stuff of legend.

Finally, fast forward to about a month ago. I hurt my ankle and found it increasingly tiring to stand on one foot do my hair before work. I needed something simpler. The week before my surgery, I let it go wavy. And though I got compliments, there was definitely frizz happening, more and more as the day went on. I wasn't sure how to stop it.

Post-surgery has meant plenty of time to observe what my hair does nowadays with minimal to zero styling after washing, and plenty of boredom and restlessness to replace with googling every darn thing that comes into my head. So I decided to start trying stuff.

After rave reviews everywhere on the internet, alongside numerous mentions of crazy practices such as not washing your hair with shampoo (what?!) I bought the Curly Girl Handbook and read it cover to cover. Let me tell you, these ladies seem to have revolutionized the world of non-straight hair. I think she's really done us a service.

I will, of course, be posting pictures of my progress here on this blog, as I try different products and methods and hopefully get wavier. Woo hoo!

My first step is getting rid of my buildup. I tried a method with ingredients from my own pantry, which is great because I'm not very mobile. And the results shocked the heck out of me. Read on...