Hair Update
OH LUCKY YOU!
Okay, Internet: I took your cheapest, easiest suggestion first and have been washing my hair (fingertips ONLY, NO fingernails!) with baking soda and rinsing with apple cider vinegar for the past few days.
Yays:
- both my shampoo and conditioner cost under $3 total
- the mixtures smell like elementary school science class, in a good way
- the apple cider vinegar makes my hair very soft
- I feel very Little House mixing my own stuff, minus the whole bathing in the entire family’s used bathwater bit
Nays:
- the hair funk is still there
I’m going to go ahead and give it a chance for an entire week, though, so I’m not giving up yet. One day I had somewhere sort of fancy to be so I used a Kiehl’s Tea Tree Oil shampoo sample I had, and that made the rest of my hair look and feel cleaner, and although the funk was still there, it wasn’t quite as funky as usual. So that’s something to consider.
I appreciate all your suggestions, except for the ones that insinuated I was pregnant with a tumor baby. I will thank you not to speak about Ava Gracelyn in that manner. I also switched from my usual sateen pillowcases to just regular old peasant pillowcases, low thread count, because my gut feeling is that I’m having a L’Oreal Vive conditioner build up/overstimulating the scalp on the side of the head I sleep on combo. But, you know, I have an English degree and no health insurance, so that might be swaying my gut a little.
Next step will be trying Nizoral/Selsun, and then I guess I’ll make a doctor’s appointment, MOM.
(Just kidding. You guys were full of ideas, and I thank you.)
Hair MD
Hi! I’m going to talk about my hair now.
About three months ago, my hair started feeling weird. (Right, who’s still with me? The boys have left by now, definitely.) The back of it, on the right hand side, from the top of my scalp to the bottom of my neck, is permanently icky. Even immediately after washing, it looks and feels like it needs to be washed. I thought maybe I needed to switch to an oily hair shampoo, so I did. No change. I cleaned all my combs and brushes and quit using product. Still no change. I stopped conditioning the ends. No change. I asked my hairdresser, and she said to buy Neutrogena Anti-Residue Shampoo. No change. I tried just not washing it for a few days and switched pillowcases and drank more water. Nothing.
I have not changed my diet or started any new medication. I take Vitamin E daily. I’ve been using the same shower for five and a half years, and neither of my roommates are having this problem. My hair was NOT like this when I was in Oklahoma for Christmas, and not like this so much while I was in London.
I don’t know what else to try, but I’m tired of having hair funk in the back right quadrant. Like Jo from Little Women, my hair is my one true beauty, and frankly, I’m tired of having to think about it for longer than my usual five minutes a day, so please, overwhelm and confuse me with your tips and suggestions. I will consider whipping up some hippie home remedy if you say so. Seriously, even if you suggest I get all Elizabeth Báthory, I’ll at least nod thoughtfully while reading.
My usual hair care regimen:
My current hair care regimen:
What the back of my head usually looks like
What the back of my head looks like now
Help.
No one in London talks back to the screen. I miss that.
Yesterday we felt like going to see a movie, only we didn’t feel like seeing anything serious or important, but we also didn’t want to see Hotel for Dogs, so we decided to do what Chris and Tracie and I do all the time in New York: pick a movie you know is going to be horrible and turn it into a drinking game. It’s a pretty surefire way to annoy the people sitting near you in the theater, but it’s also a pretty surefire way to have fun, and anyway, it’s hard to have a lot of sympathy for anyone who earnestly bought a ticket for National Treasure 2. Also we try to sit in the corner.
Usually Chris and Tracie and I pick out the real guaranteed to be ridiculous stinkers, like Valkyrie (drink whenever Hitler is onscreen, drink whenever anyone who’s supposed to be German speaks with a British accent, finish your drink when Tom Cruise does the full heil with his stump) or National Treasure 2 (drink whenever anyone does anything), but the only thing close to that on the marquee was He’s Just Not That Into You. We thought, well, we know it’s going to suck, so we bought a half bottle of rum and a giant coke and giant popcorn and decided to drink whenever:
- anyone waited for a phone to ring
- anyone looked longingly at anyone else
- any girl’s hair was in an artfully messy ponytail or updo
- musical montage or incindental music
- Affleck was onscreen
Finish your drink if anyone behaves like a rational normal human being for even one second.
NO FEAR of that last one happening; Christ was this movie awful. And we were completely unprepared: we drained the giant coke 40 minutes in and had to finish the rest of the bottle of rum on its own like homeless people, which was the only way to make it to the end of the film, which was roughly 80 hours long and made me wish I was dead. You know it’s a bad movie when the only character that you can relate to is Ben Affleck.
There was this one great scene, though, when Jennifer Aniston had to walk a dog down the aisle in a coral satin bridesmaid dress, smirking and hurting, head held high. Man but America sure does like Jennifer Aniston to do our hurting for us, don’t we? Nick said she’s like our Princess Di, which makes sense to me, because America seems to love her best when she’s all fragile and dumped and blonde and brave facing it on a beach somewhere. There was a time about a year ago when we were still in dark days as a nation, no hope or end in sight, when I remember thinking that maybe the one thing that could cure America’s pain was for Jennifer Aniston to give birth to a fat blonde baby. Maaaan wouldn’t that have been some ointment for our national wounds! But God forbid she display any sarcasm; I read some article recently where she namechecked some of Brad and Angelina’s litter when one reporter too many asked her about them, and then you could feel America be like okay whoa whoa WHOA, Aniston, don’t be a freaky stalker who knows Shiloh’s name. Even though everyone else knows Shiloh’s name. In your place, missy. Which is apparently walking a dog down the aisle while crying on the inside. That’s where we like you.
Anyway the best part was at the end, right before the credits started, when Nick went “Awwwww!” really loud and then we burst out laughing but the chorus of every other girl in the theater (there were fifteen men; Nick counted) saying awwwww as well drowned us out.
So basically it’s not just America I’m writing off now.
Nick, drunk, trying to reschedule Sarah's flight
- Not actually drunk
- Antonia was when she took this photo, though
- Someone please make me an animated gif of these three photos
- I am still in London with no return ticket
- Hurray
London Cringe this Thursday, February 5
Hello! I’m in London, and have been for awhile now, which you would not know from this site because I haven’t updated it since about 2007. I apologize for that; I’ve been a little pre-occupied. Anyway, as I am in London and not New York, there will not be a New York Cringe this Wednesday, but there will be a London Cringe this Thursday. How about that!
LONDON CRINGE
Thursday, February 5 at 7:30 pm
The Lion
132 Church Street
Stoke Newington
N16 0JX
The main reason for this London Cringe is because I’m doing a UK Cringe book with a UK publisher, Michael O’Mara Books. It’s due out this fall and I’m really excited about it. If you can’t make it to London Cringe but would like to submit material to the book, you can do so at cringebook.com. It would be best if you submit material if you’re English, but I’m allowed a small percentage of non-UK entries, so if you have something really funny that you didn’t submit to the US book, please do. The deadline is rapidly approaching, so show some hustle.
If I ever end up coming home, New York Cringe is scheduled for Tuesday, February 10.
