Notes of a Former Mushroom-Haired Child

Tumbleweeds

2010-07-03T21:55:00.000-07:00

I didn't want this blog to seem as if tumbleweeds were rolling through it because I wrote in it so little, so for now the blog and comments have been suspended. I'm just sort of putting it on hold for the time being, but if more things to say come up from time to time I will certainly post them.

For right now I want to put more time and energy into the site, to make it a better reference source, and I'm doing some writing, and I want to do a bit of painting, and at the end of the day there seems little room to give the blog the attention it deserves.

Thank you so much for visiting and reading the posts here! I'm sure I will still visit and write; I wanted to be let you know what what was going on with the blog.

In the mean time, you can always check out the site updates , or you can visit me on Facebook, or check out some of my art at terilaflesh.com.

Book Out Tomorrow!

2010-05-16T20:29:00.001-07:00

Throughout the process of writing the book, drawing the pictures, and getting it published, it always seemed too good to be true. I kept thinking that at some point Wiley would change their minds, and I would be starting all over again. But here it is! The book is out tomorrow, and I can't even wrap my mind around it. If you get a chance, please stop by your local bookstore and ask them for a copy of the book. Thank you thank you to all of your support and your encouragement, tough questions, and thoughtful comments. You helped make this possible.

Energy and Hair

2010-05-15T15:46:00.000-07:00

Most of my life I was obsessed with hair. I'd spend hours nearly every day poring through magazines for pictures of people with curly hair like mine, for information. I'd cut out those pictures and study them for hours trying to figure out how the models got their curls to look so lovely. I filled binder after binder with the pictures and spent hours going through them looking for clues. I'd try all the suggestions they gave for "kinky, curly, frizzy" hair, but none of them worked. I spent almost an entire day as a teenager every weekend, for years, miserable, trying to wash and set my hair. Every night I tried to set it so it wouldn't embarrass me the next day; every morning was a soul dampening exercise trying to style it in a way that made me feel less ashamed. It seemed like my hair fell outside of the realm of help.

Of course, there were things I didn't know at the time I do now. That my hair was so damaged from chemicals back then that very little could help it. And that the instructions the magazines gave were really for wavy hair, not hair like mine. And over the years I began finding pieces on my own how to care for my hair, the biggest of which was simply to stop putting lye-like chemicals on it.

Many years later I was working at a lab, and I loved my hair, and it was to my waist, and it struck me: I hadn't actually thought about hair in years. I hadn't cracked open a hair magazine, no longer hung out in beauty supply stores, no longer looked for books on hair care. I didn't talk about it much to anyone. Apart from the time I spent washing, conditioning, and combing my hair, I didn't think about it. My hair was simply no longer a big deal to me. It was my hair, I loved and accepted it, and that was it. And it was then I began thinking I might want to share what I'd learned, because apart from maybe a tiny piece here and there, I hadn't found any of it in one easy to reach place.

And it hit me also that my true goal was to help others have their hair no longer a big deal. That they could do their hair, and be done with it. That they could spend their energy and time focusing on something more important to them. I mean, it's one thing if you truly love obsessing on hair. But what about those of us who didn't really want to obsess about it?

So the site as well as the book are focused more for people who want to get in and get out. People who want to know what the heck to do with their hair so they can move on with their lives. That instead of using precious energy fighting their hair, that energy is used to create something wonderful and positive in their lives. And finally, not having to care that much if they get caught in the rain on the way there.

Dead Leaf Hair

2010-04-18T20:00:00.000-07:00

Through all my high school years I wrote fanatically in journals. I wrote in tiny writing on both sides of loose notebook paper, often six pages a night. I bound all the pages between covers that clipped together with metal fasteners. When I got about 100 pages, or when I thought a new chapter in my life was starting, I'd begin another notebook. By the time high school, and then my brief year of college (the first time I went) was over, I had thousands upon thousands of angst-filled pages written.

When I visited my mom in Kentucky last July, I grabbed as many of my old journals as I could fit in my carry-on bag to bring back with me to Seattle. When I got back, I was thumbing through the journal I wrote right after high school, during the summer before college. In it was a chunk of the hair I dissolved with a relaxer. You can even see the words "dead leaf" right above the hair clump, which describes exactly how the hair that didn't totally dissolve or fall out of my head felt when it dried. It was so crunchy that I had to cut the rest of my hair off, and was basically left with a narrow fringe of hair at the back of my neck that the relaxer hadn't touched.

How did I manage to dissolve my hair with a relaxer, you ask? Well, it takes a special person to do something like that, I tell you. I had worn locs during 12th grade, but had put them in wrong, so they were little more than pieces of a large mat that I'd cut into strips to make my locs. So I cut those off at the end of 12th grade, and was left with my curly, and still damaged hair (because I'd been bleaching it auburn). Not knowing what to do with it, I fell back into old habits, and decided to relax it.

However, it had been well over a year since I'd relaxed my hair, and I forgot how to do it. This would have been okay, except I didn't realize I'd forgotten how to do it. I thought I knew exactly how to do it. But I was wrong.

I bought my first box (yes, that's right, my first box) of relaxer, opened up the big jar, and put it on my hair. I waited about 20 minutes, rinsed it out, and saw it didn't work. It wasn't until I looked through the box later that I saw the activator bottle I'd neglected to mix in with it. So I bought another box. My reasoning being that the first time didn't do anything at all to my hair, so I could do it all again with no problem.

I was wrong. When I went to rinse out the second relaxer, it gummed up in my hair and wouldn't rinse out. I went through all my bottle of neutralizer shampoo, and had to use some of the half-used bottles my mom had saved through the years as well. And as I finally rinsed away the relaxer, my hair came out too. When I was done, the sink was filled with hair, and the hair left on my head wasn't really even hair anymore.

And being the dutiful journaler I was, when I cut away this hair, I saved some in my journal, to properly record the day. And then I went out and bought myself my first weave.

New Improved Cover Is Out

2010-01-23T19:05:00.000-08:00

I just got the newest version of the cover...the version that I think is going to be the actual, real live cover! It looks pretty similar to the old one, but just a bit more polished, and you can see more detail in my hair. I'm so excited!

I know I haven't been posting nearly as often as I'd like to...but I have been working on the site behind the scenes to add several new pages, as well as beefing up the answer bank with lots more fresh new answers. I do appreciate all the wonderful support I've had through this process! Thank you so much for reading. I truly am humbled.

The book is available for pre-ordering!

2009-12-21T00:19:00.000-08:00

I know it's been a long time coming, but I still can't believe I'm writing these words: Curly Like Me: How to Grow Your Hair Healthy, Long, and Strong is available for pre-order!

Here's a bit about the book:

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons (May 2010)

ISBN: 978-0470536421

WHERE TO PRE-ORDER:

The simple secrets to growing healthy, long, naturally curly hair!

Do you spend countless hours— and untold dollars—on weaves, perms, salon visits, and products that promise to “cure,” change, heal, or make your hair more manageable, only to end up even more frustrated? Do you wrestle daily with hair you can’t get a brush through? Do you struggle to keep from hurting your child when you comb through their tight curls? Would you like to learn how to grow your tightly curly hair long and make it happy?

If you answered “yes” to any of these questions, this is the book for you. It gives the information and techniques you need to take charge of very curly hair. You will learn how not only to care for your curls, but also to cherish them, all the while saving time, effort, and money.

Curly Like Me is a complete beginner’s guide to tightly curly hair care.

Within it you’ll learn:

Simple, easy-to-follow instructions with over 250 original photographs and illustrations
Proper care, the best products, tools, and ingredients for curls
Pain-free techniques on how to comb and style your curls, or your child's curls
Over 30 easy curl-enhancing hairstyle ideas, tips for growing out your perm, and more

Say goodbye to broken, frizzy, damaged hair and begin your journey to naturally curly hair free from breakage and damage. Applying the ideas and information in this book will end the damage, frustration, and heartache of the past so you can love your hair the way it really is. Curly Like Me empowers you to take back the care of your own hair. It gives you the secrets to growing healthy, long, natural hair without costly treatments, products, marketing misinformation, or styles.

New Ingredients Dictionaries Have Arrived!

2009-10-17T21:50:00.000-07:00

It's no secret I'm a total ingredients geek. If I could spend all day researching ingredients, I'd be a very happy person indeed. I have many ingredients dictionaries I use to look up ingredients to put in the Ingredients Dictionary on the site. I love the reference books I have, but they don't have nearly all the ingredients in the different products out there.

I've been coveting the mother of all dictionaries, the CTFA (Cosmetics, Toiletries, and Fragrances Association) dictionaries. These dictionaries are the industry standard. I'd requested them from my library previously so I could look up more elusive ingredients. My local library would borrow and ship in one volume from, like, a library in Ohio. But then I wasn't allowed to leave the building with it. I'd been wanting a copy of my own for years. New products come in all the time with ingredients that I can't even find out what function they serve in their product. And finally, we got the entire set of dictionaries (thank you, Jon!).

The reason for such massive tomes? In a few months, Jon and I will be offering a new feature on the site called ProductsGeek. It will give not only all the ingredients in any product, but you will also be able to get information about every individual ingredient within that product. Also, it will let you know what that ingredient does in the product, and if there's anything harmful to your hair in it. The service will also let you search for information on the ingredients in your product in multiple ways. This way you can see if a particular product you've been eyeing is worth the money to buy it or not. We're really excited about it, and building this feature is what we do in the evenings when we get home from work.

I've been happily petting our newest arrivals since I first pulled them out of their box, in such happiness they're finally mine. There will be few ingredients that escape me now!

Carol's Daughter Tui Hair Smoothie

2009-10-11T18:42:00.000-07:00

After visiting it several times in the store, I finally decided to try a Carol's Daughter product. There were several conditioners all with very similar ingredients, such as the Tui Hair Smoothie, and the Black Vanilla Hair Smoothie. I liked the scent of both of them, but finally settled on Tui. I was hesitant about the Amodimethicone it has in it as the main slippery ingredient (for combing). I'm fine with Amodimethicone in something I rinse out, but because I haven't been able to pin down yet what exactly it's made of (it's a mixture), Amodimethicone makes me nervous. Also I haven't found it to be as slippery as other silicones, so I've found it doesn't seem to work as well for getting a comb through my hair.

That being said, I'm trying not to be so stubborn about trying new things, and I've been surprised at some ingredients doing a better job than I thought they would, so decided to give this a try.

Since the Tui Hair Smoothie is in a jar, it's a bit thicker than conditioners you can squeeze out of a bottle. I tried to be very careful to make sure my hair stayed very wet during the combing out process. However, the product becomes sticky quickly. I spent much time having to wet every section before combing it (usually I don't have to re-wet my hair once when I comb with a good conditioner). It was a struggle to get the comb through without tugging or getting frustrated. So, alas, I'm liking Amodimethicone even less as a slippery ingredient than before.

The Tui Hair Smoothie dried well, and my hair seemed to clump okay, so I was thinking maybe I could recommend it, but with a caution about combing, as I have with Blended Beauty.

As I do for all products, I use it for a week to see how my hair does after seven days using it to smooth my frizzies every morning. And after seven days, I hate to say, my hair had matted on one side. I mean, after a week, my hair is always a bit tangley, but generally it doesn't have a chunk of hair that's melded together by weeks end, that takes a long time to get a comb through during the following combing, usually. So because of both the difficulty combing it, and the matting afterwards, I can't recommend this product.

*Note: I understand that this product (as are nearly all the conditioners I review) is meant to be rinsed out. And there are plenty of wonderful reviews out there for how this product works when it's rinsed out. However, since my method involves leaving the product in our hair, I review how a product functions this way.

The book has a publication date!!

2009-09-06T21:09:00.000-07:00

I am so excited to be able to write these words: Curly Like Me is set to come out early May of 2010!!

I haven't seen the cover yet—Wiley is still working on it—but I can't wait to see what it will look like!

(The above picture was one of the covers I was thinking about when I was originally going to print the book myself)

New hair tool!

2009-08-01T16:16:00.000-07:00

In Bellevue there was recently a small arts fair. I wandered around for a while, and a girl who looked alot like me caught my eye. She had her hair pinned up, and it looked much like mine did when I wore relaxers, except hers looked way better than mine ever did back in the day. So I stopped to catch a closer look at her hair. By then, she'd gone into a booth, and when I made my way up to it, she was letting a vendor demonstrate a hair comb on her hair. Heck, I hadn't even noticed the combs, but he had one wall of his booth covered in large, shiny metal combs in all kinds of beautiful metal-worked designs, in bronze, copper and silver (as well as combinations of all three).

As I watched, she undid her hair, and he began to style it. At first I was struck that he didn't try to run his comb through her hair. He simply twisted it gently up, and slid in the comb. It went in easily. It stayed in. She commented how light it felt, how secure it was. Then he slid it out, and did another style. And another. And another. Each time the comb came out easily. There was no frizz. And the comb was sturdy enough to hold her hair. I was impressed. But cautious.

The woman and I bonded over our hair for a while and marveled at the combs before she headed on her way. I cautiously entered the booth, and looked over the combs. I asked what they were made of, and the guy said they were actually made of copper, bronze, or German silver (which he said is a very strong type of silver). He said there was a lifetime repair on these combs. I touched one. It was smooth and heavy. He offered to do my hair, but being not only stubborn but paranoid, I declined. No one touches my hair. But I had liked what I saw, so I picked out a comb to buy.

I took it up to him, and bought it. It was pricey—I won't lie. But worth it. Then he asked if I wanted to put it in a bag, or wear it. I hesitated for a moment (since I'd seen how gentle he and the comb seemed), and then I decided to live a little , and said "wear it". So he had me sit in his chair, and he began showing me many of the styles for this comb. He didn't even try to comb my hair. The styles easily went from one to the other. The comb slid in easily, held firmly, and came out without catching. Usually my hair is too heavy for me to put up comfortably. But this comb was big enough to evenly distribute the weight of my hair, so my hair actually felt light. He showed me about 6 styles in 5 minutes. He would have shown me more, but when he asked "Can your hair be separated?", I said that it couldn't (it can, but not easily, and I didn't want to take the chance of it being pulled apart). But I really appreciated that he asked. I had seen the half up, half down styles he'd done on a few other people who stopped by his booth, though.

He asked what style I'd like to wear out, and I chose what he called The Figure Eight Bun, which I'm calling a Split Bun. He simply swirled my hair into a high bun, split it in half, and slid in the comb. Below, I'm including some pictures of this style, along with a few others so you can get the idea of what this comb can do. (The first four photos show the Split Bun at different angles, including from the front. Two are the right and left sides of a French roll, and the last one is a loose bun I swirled around and pinned with the comb.)

Down the road, I'm thinking of collecting a few more of them. They are more like works of art that will most likely last me the rest of my life. For more information, you can check out his site (where you can order a comb, as well as check out many styles and the instructions for creating them) at www.simplistic-designs.com.

Product quest

2009-07-25T19:14:00.000-07:00

One of the missions I had going to Kentucky (besides, of course, visiting my family) was to look for hair products there that I haven't been able to find here. I looked for the beauty supply shop I used to go to many years ago when I was living in Louisville, and was happy to see it still there. It used to be a big highlight of my week to shop for new hair products back in the day, hoping that maybe that trip I would find a miracle product that would stop my hair from breaking and get it to grow. Well, I never found that miracle product, but I sure enjoyed looking for it.

So this time I spent about an hour looking at all the hair products in the Beauty Supply store in downtown Louisville. On the three or so blocks before you reach the store, there are at least two wig shops that I counted, anyway. Inside this beauty shop I visited there was an entire isle devoted to weaves and extensions. I used to buy my extension hair there (mostly nylon), and when I wore weaves, I bought the hair at a store across the street.

It was fun picking up products, looking over all the shampoos, conditioners, hair dressings and lotions. I read through their ingredients and looked for products I might be able to try out so I could recommend them. I located about five possibilities. I know many ingredients to avoid, and many I like to see, by heart. But there are probably tens of thousands of ingredients out there, so I never know about every ingredient in a product, and therefore if a bad ingredient or two has snuck in, until I look them all up at home in my books.

I crammed the new bottles of products in my suitcase and brought them home to Seattle, eager to perhaps find a new one to use. I brought each one in to the room with my reference books, and began to look up the ingredients that weren't yet on the site. And wouldn't you know it, one by one, all of them had at least one ingredient that turns out I don't trust. Almost all of them had one sticky ingredient lurking under a poly- something. Some poly- somethings are okay, and others are sticky. And due to a bad experience I once had with major product buildup when I was a teenager, I always try to avoid things with these sticky ingredients in them (unless they're supposed to be there, like in a gel). Also, by avoiding sticky ingredients, I can use a very mild shampoo because there isn't that sticky buildup that needs removing by a stronger shampoo (or I could use a conditioner-wash, but I break out when I don't shampoo. Otherwise I'd go that way).

So with a sigh, and a realization I am truly paranoid and stubborn when it comes to my hair (well, more than just about my hair, but in this case, it's about my hair), my search continues for finding products I trust enough to use.

Something behind the door...

2009-07-20T16:48:00.000-07:00

I'm back from Kentucky. I miss it already and wish there were some way to be both here and there at the same time. When I first got to Kentucky I told my mom at the airport that I'd written about her house and the raccoon. She said "Well, there's something else in the pantry now. " She said she didn't know what it is, but it sounds too big to be a mouse, squirrel or rat...maybe it's the other raccoon. They were only able to catch one of them. But she said you can hear it rummaging around in there, and when you go to open the door you can hear it frantically trying to scramble away, little paws making scraping noises as it tries to catch its footing and run before the door is opened. She said she always gives it a minute to escape before she opens the door. So I was instantly curious.

For the whole visit I listened for the thing in the kitchen pantry. And for the whole visit, the pantry was silent. I had the room right next to it, so perhaps hearing me moving around at all hours (when left on my own, I revert to my old ways of staying up until dawn, or later). But on the second to the last day of my visit, I heard it. Well, first I heard the squirrels in the attic running around. They were also dragging something. Maybe insulation or clothing, because it sounded like a blanket sliding across the ceiling. Soon after, I heard noises coming from the pantry.

At first I thought it was my mom searching for something in there, until I remembered she said she doesn't go in there anymore. So I got up, grabbed my camera, and approached the pantry door. As I turned the knob, I heard frantic scrambling, like a plump body falling over itself and slipping on boxes to get away. I must confess: I hesitated before flinging open the door. At the last minute I got this image of opening the door too fast, panicking the creature, and it now feeling cornered and with no other choice but to leap for my face in self defense. So by the time I opened the door it had vanished, leaving in it's wake a pile of violated boxes with their contents strewn all over the carpet. Not sure if the creature was huddled in an unseen hole somewhere amongst the boxes, I snapped a quick picture of the inside of the pantry (this is the above photo) and shut the door again, leaving it to continue with what it was doing.

My Mother's House

2009-06-22T11:16:00.000-07:00

Last Fall, my mom had a raccoon outbreak. A raccoon (she suspected it was two of them appearing at different times) suddenly appeared in her kitchen from a hole no one knew about in the pantry. At first she was willing to work with it. Mostly it was there for Grey Kitty's cat food. The raccoon would raid the dry food dish, taking cat food and rinsing the pieces in the water dish, leaving a soggy floating mess in their wake.

She would put Grey Kitty's bowl of dry food on the kitchen table to hide it, but the raccoon would climb on the table to get to it. She accepted this, too. She told me about combing her hair and watching television in the living room and getting up to get a snack in the kitchen. As she walked into the kitchen, there the raccoon would be, on top of the kitchen table. It would watch her without moving, until she returned to the living room, then it would go back to eating. Later when she returned to the kitchen, it would be gone, leaving behind its calling card of the mess in the water bowl. Sometimes when she came into the kitchen to make dinner, it would be sitting on one of the chairs at the dining room table. As she fixed dinner it watched her from under the table, still sitting in the chair.

Others in the household were not as zen-like about the visitor. Grey Kitty would avoid the issue all together. He'd pretended there wasn't a raccoon on the table eating his food and just walk on by. My younger sister Chrystal would scream when she saw them and run from the room. My mom's husband Leon wasn't at all pleased with the new guests and wanted them gone. They tried to shut the pantry door, but then it seemed to be coming in from a hole a plumber had left in the bathroom floor.

This went on for a few weeks, until one day, for some reason, the raccoon became a vandal. My mom would wake up the next morning to find it had pulled cereal boxes down off the shelves, torn them open and dumped their contents all over the floor. It marauded through the kitchen while they slept, shredding apart anything plastic, including medication bottles, and throwing the contents about the room. It was then the raccoon had to go. Her solution was reasonable: she simply got a humane trap for it, caught it, and set it free in the woods far from her house.

When I visit her, the room I stay in is the back room of the house. At night (and often during the day), you can hear squirrels that live somewhere inside the roof and inside the walls. They scamper loudly all across the ceiling, sounding like they are actually in the room with you. They've even appeared inside the house, freaked out and hostile, on occasion.

Another thing about the house is the electricity. It's an old house, and the wiring has never been updated. One time when I came for a visit, as I was putting my bags away in the back room, I noticed a handwritten sign above a light switch by the door that said "Do not turn off". Curiosity overcame me, and I turned it off. Dramatically, all the electricity groaned to a halt in the entire house. My mom had to call the electric company to turn the power back on. Turns out an old friend had installed a ceiling fan in that room, but once the fan was in, the switch that turned it on and off now shuts off all the power. (That light switch is now duck taped in the on position looking like a silver cocoon against the wall.

In the back room I stay in, there are two outlets. On one wall by the television, the bottom socket doesn't work. I found that out the hard way during a visit when I plugged something into it. The outlet made a loud popping sound and a bright flash of light. Now most all the appliances for this room are plugged into two piggy-backed extension cords that stretch across the kitchen floor from behind the stove and across the back room.

One visit, as I was showering there, when I touched the hot water faucet, I could feel it vibrating with electricity. Not enough to hurt, but enough to give that creepy electrified feeling. Of course I told my mom about it, but like her philosophy with the raccoons (before they became delinquents), my mom felt that as long as it wasn't hurting anyone, it isn't worth all the fuss I was making about it.

My mom and Grey Kitty

The reason I'm writing about my mom's house is because tomorrow I am going to Kentucky to visit her. I love visiting her, and I love that house. To be there is like a totally different world. And now, in the summer, if you sit in the back yard after dusk swatting at the cloud of mosquitoes surrounding you, you can see something that fills me with such unreasonable joy that I can't even describe. Just as the sun is setting, the fireflies come out. They rise from the grass, winking yellow-green, rising to the trees. In a good year, they are so plentiful that it looks like the trees have been hung with thousands of tiny winking lights. Everywhere you look the earth is sparkling. And I can't imagine anything more beautiful than to stand in that tropical humidity, toes deep in emerald grass, surrounded by little winking stars in every direction.

Cornflake

2009-05-25T15:23:00.000-07:00

My hair has managed to tangle around some impressively odd things. I've tangled myself into buttons, my bra strap, rings and earrings. I've gotten caught in the wood grain of cabinets at work as I passed, and it's nearly guaranteed I'll be caught in shrubbery when I walk in the woods. It catches on items on store shelves and knocks off onto the floor what it can't hold onto as I go by. It catches in notebooks and pens. But just when I thought I've gotten my hair caught in about every surface it can get caught in, my hair surprised me once more.

The other day I was peacefully eating a bowl of cornflakes while reading. I put a spoonful in my mouth, not paying attention, and discovered hair in my mouth, too. This is normal (it often sticks to my chapstick or gloss). But when I tried to pull it out, I found it stuck fast inside my mouth. The only way I was able to get my hair out was to open my mouth, and when I pulled out my hair, a cornflake came out too, still tangled in my hair like a crunchy fish on a curly fishing line. The cornflake rotated slowly at the end of my hair until I untangled it. Then I tucked my hair safely behind my ears, and went back to eating.

Aveda Dry Remedy Moisturizing Conditioner

2009-04-24T22:34:00.000-07:00

I almost recommended it. Well, okay, I sort of did recommend it for a few days before too many things began to bother me. And I have to admit I was intrigued by it. I also had conflicting feelings about trying this conditioner. I've been wanting to add more variety to what I recommend on the site, but Aveda conditioners are so darn expensive. And I feel that they have basically the same working ingredients for your hair as less expensive brands—they simply throw in lots of exotic-sounding plant-water to sell it.

This is where my issues started to nag at me. It began to bother me that this product has several ingredients with very little objective information available on them. I hadn't heard anything bad about these mystery ingredients, necessarily. It's just that I like to read, from at least one unbiased source, what the function of each ingredient is. One ingredient in particular really got to me: Palmamidopropyl Trimonium Methosulfate. I spent hours trying to track this down. I mean, how can there be no references to this anywhere, not in any of my books on ingredients, nor online, except in listings of Aveda ingredients. How did Aveda get any information on this ingredient to use it in the first place, then? I tried lots of variations of it's name (sometimes companies like to change the way an ingredient is listed on their label by adding spaces, leaving off part of it and such). But no such luck. In desperation/ frustration, I even called Aveda (and if you knew how much I hate talking on the phone, you'd know this was quite a drastic action on my part). I asked the customer service representative if she might know of any objective source that would tell me what this ingredient did. Though very nice, instead of giving me an objective source for this ingredient's information, she simply told me the ingredient was "a conditioning agent". But if you think about it, it's not like she would tell me if this were a crappy ingredient in their product.

But I do like how environmentally conscious the company seems. And I want to recommend more products that work, so I tried it anyway. The combing was amazing. I tell you, it combs like a dream. This would be the conditioner to use if your hair is matting. (However, it dries very light, and isn't as moisturizing as other conditioners, so this might be best for hair that doesn't need as much weight and definition or moisture. Perfect for tangles, though. You can also wait for your curls to dry and smooth a bit more on the ends to keep them together. This would also be a good candidate for adding a little olive oil or jojoba oil in the bottle (about a teaspoon and shaking it hard) to make it more moisturizing.)

At first the scent caught me by surprise. I was expecting it to be sweet, but it smelled more like a bitter sap, and I didn't like it. Although, once it dried, the scent grew on me. It began to smell more like frankincense or myrrh, or another warm, smoky scent. Now (I say grudgingly) it may be one of my favorite scents. It may not be for everyone, though.

But those mystery ingredients started getting to me. Usually I gloss over the extracts. Extracts are in hair care products for show. They are so diluted by the time they are put in the product, and then they are in there in such teeny amounts that they are nearly non-existent. And what are they really going to do for hair anyway? Hair isn't alive, so it can't use vitamins and minerals and antioxidents. And if the extract or exotic oil is being marketed as moisturizing, simple olive, coconut, or jojoba oil would do the trick. And on top of that, if the extracts did have a function, the product would have to be labeled as a drug.

Then, as the last straw, I saw two extracts the bugged me. The first was styrax, which may be a resin, which means it could harden on the hair. However, I didn't see that concern mentioned in any of my books, and it's mostly used as a fragrance anyway. And it's low on the ingredients list, so it may be okay. But then...then I saw it had tomato extract. Not just of the fruit, which, though totally pointless in a hair-care product, is harmless. But then the label said it included the leaf and stem extracts—and those are toxic! (As are the leaves of potatoes, by the way. They are both in the Nightshade (Solanaceae) family). What on earth is that doing in there?! So that was it.

Grumbling and fussing, I pulled the conditioner off the site.

*Note: I understand that this product (as are nearly all the conditioners I review) is meant to be rinsed out. And there are plenty of wonderful reviews for how this product works when it's rinsed out. However, since my method involves leaving the product in our hair, I review how a product functions this way.

Monster in a Box

2009-03-23T22:43:00.000-07:00

When I took this picture last night of (most of the drafts) of my book as I've worked on it over theses past couple years, that was what popped into my head: Monster in a Box. This was actually the title of a movie by the late Spalding Grey, where he talked about writing a book that just got bigger and bigger, but he couldn't seem to find an end to it.

Though I have an ending for mine, I keep adding to it, so it grows and grows. But now it's time to stop adding, and prepare it. When I first started the book, I was planning on self-publishing it. I figured that since I was unknown, my time would be best spent learning typesetting, and print it myself. Through an amazingly happy turn of events, my book will be published by an actual publisher (Wiley). I just got the contract in the mail yesterday to prove it.

I know I am stunned, and absolutely happy. I've been writing books since at least the age of four. And soon I will have a real live book. The only thing is that it's due at the end of this month (ack!). I'm going to have to focus over the next week on getting it in the right format, so I don't horrify Wiley by turning in a mess. So I guess for the next week and a half, if you don't hear much from me, it's because I'm grooming my monster to not be so scary in the light of day, finally out of the box.

Thank you MixedChicksChat!

2009-03-21T12:50:00.000-07:00

I had a great time on Mixed Chicks Chat! Both Heidi and Fanshen were very sweet and I had so much fun talking to them. It was a huge honor to be on their show. Though I was nervous (I'm always much more comfortable writing than talking. It's almost impossible to get me to talk on the phone in real life), they were absolutely wonderful, and asked great questions. If you want to listen, or to leave any comments, you can check out: Teri's Interview on Mixed Chicks.

A huge congratulations to Heidi on her book The Girl Who Fell From the Sky! I can't wait to read it. Heidi surprised me by suggesting she and I should go on a book tour together. I have no idea when my book will be out yet, but it floors me how cool that would be!

I'm going to be on Mixed Chicks Chat this Friday!

2009-03-16T21:16:00.000-07:00

I wanted to give a quick update on what I've been doing. I don't want it to seem like I've disappeared or anything. I've just been doing most of my work behind the scenes. However, the big news is that on Friday at 3:00 pm PST I will be on Mixed Chicks Chat! I'm really excited! I have been a fan of theirs for such a long time, and it seems almost unreal that soon I will be talking to them. I've been visiting their sites for so long it's sort of like having a book you really love, and one day you find out you will get to talk to the main character (okay, I know, I'm goofy).

Other than that, Jon has been hard at work putting together the structure of the "Ask Teri" page, so that I will be able to offer a selection of questions and answers. This means that if you have a question, you won't have to wait on me to answer it. You'll be able to get the answer instantly, and maybe find the answers to a few other questions you didn't even know you had as well.

As for me, I've been reading lots of ingredients encyclopedias to give better and more comprehensive explanations about what is being used in products. Mostly, however, I've been working vigorously to answer emails from the site. I got behind when I moved, and a few other things came up unexpectedly, so now I'm working to catch up. So if I haven't answered you yet, I haven't forgotten!

Where have I been?

2009-01-24T10:37:00.000-08:00

Snow outside our apartment at the end of December

I know it's been a while since I've posted...it's been a hectic couple months. For now I'm concentrating on catching up on emails from the site, adding lots more words and cleaning up the hair care products Ingredients Dictionary, and working on a few more pages to add to the site. I'm still here, I've just been doing stuff more behind the scenes.

Here are some of the pages Jon and I are developing (he does the code-magic that makes the pages I write actually work—you should have seen the idea I'd had for the Ingredients Dictionary if left to my own devices: one unimaginably long page with all the words on that. I couldn't imagine how long it would take to scroll down that thing):

Ask Teri: I get asked so many great, thoughtful questions. I feel it would be helpful to create a resource to share them and their answers so everyone who wanted to could learn from them.

Product Reviews: I get asked all the time what I think about other products not mentioned on the site. Here I will be able to post why I like or don't like a product, and it's ingredients good and bad.

Express Your Curls: Useful products adorned with curls and swirls (designed by yours truly) to celebrate the beauty of our curls.

I'll still be posting, but for now I'm mostly concentrating on getting as many resources to you as possible.

Move nearly over (thanks to lots of help)

2008-12-16T12:09:00.000-08:00

Today is my first full day with Internet access after nearly a week without it. I didn't realize how dependent I am on it until I went nearly a week without.

Though there is still some last minute cleaning to do at the old place, Jon and I are now officially in the new place. A huge thanks to my brave dad: between his "Escargo" trailer-that-could, and his amazing packing abilities, my dad and I got all the stuff moved in twelve trips between the two apartments and several flights of stairs at both, over two weeks. I can't imagine trying to do the whole move over a weekend, which was our plan before my dad stepped in and rescued us from ourselves (thank you Dad!).

I know I have lots of stuff. I guess I get some sort of comfort in holding on to things. Add that to all my hobbies, my love of reading, and my obsession with large houseplants, and you start to get an idea of how unpleasant I am to move. Once, in Louisville, I filled up an entire trailer with my houseplants alone. Then we had to come back for the rest of my things. I think I horrified the family members in Kentucky who volunteered to help me move, like my mom and my brother (my cousin stopped by later to help, and he said he's a pack rat too, so he wasn't nearly as shell shocked by the volume).

Luckily, this time I have less plants. However, I still have this weird thing where I don't like anyone to touch my plants but me. And when they are in the car, I like to be able to keep them in sight at all times. I'm not sure exactly what I think will happen; it's not like they'll run out into traffic if I take my eyes off them, but oh well. I guess we all have our quirks, eh?

Citre Shine Colour Prism: It snuck in

2008-12-05T14:10:00.000-08:00

I am moving this week and next, so I thought I should probably talk about this product before it got packed away and I didn't see it for months to take its mug shot.

I'm always looking for good conditioners to comb my hair with. My favorite thing to do is find little gems in drugstores that have nearly identical functioning ingredients as more expensive brands. I then happily take my new discovery back home like a squirrel that has just found a giant acorn.

A while back I found Citré Shine Colour Prism Conditioner. On the bottle, it says it contains "Multi-Reflective Illumination", and "Citrus Prismatic Waxes" and I imagined combing into my hair a slippery, sparkly cream that (hopefully) shimmered slightly when dry. Perhaps the images of shimmery hair danced before my eyes, and blinded me on my first scan of the ingredients in the store. I usually scan a product twice before I buy it, looking for any ingredients I know to be bad. If I don't see any (well, or notice any), I then go home and research any additional ingredients I'm not familiar with before it even touches my hair.

Almost all the ingredients on the long list on the back were familiar, and there were even many conditioning ones in there. It wasn't until I got it home and was looking it over again that I saw this one had three ingredients I consider bad for the hair: isopropyl alcohol, zinc chloride and styrene/acrylamide copolymer.

Isopropyl alcohol is an easy one. I just overlooked it. It's known to be very drying to the hair. What it's doing in a conditioner is beyond me. I mean, I know it's only in there by a very tiny amount, but still...(I guess I really was blinded by the hope there were shimmery prismatic waxes in there).

The second ingredient was trickier: zinc chloride. I had to do some research. But from what I've found so far, it looks awful. Every scientific site that mentioned it had a big CORROSIVE listed for this product, saying it dissolves fibers including skin, and even some metals, apparently. If this wasn't bad enough, it also does terrible environmental things when it's put in water. Again, I know it's in there in tiny amounts, but why they would put something like this in a product at all is odd.

The third ingredient, styrene/acrylamide copolymer, and I go way back:

You see, long ago when I was still a teen, when I was trying to learn what to do with my hair, I thought I'd found the perfect products. I loved this particular orange colored shampoo and conditioner, and faithfully used them every week. This was back in the days when I thoroughly rinsed out my conditioners, and then used some kind of hair dressing to moisturize. So imagine my horror when I was doing my hair for school one morning, and found that it was sticky! My fingers actually stuck to my hair. And of course I couldn't leave it alone. I had to keep pressing my hair between my fingers, getting more upset as my fingers got stickier. School papers stuck to my hands like I was Spider Woman.

Being the easily mortified teenage girl that I was, I had a dramatically bad day, until one of my teachers pulled me aside and asked what was wrong. I told her about my sticky hair, and she told me about product build up. Needless to say, I never used that brand again. Unfortunately, I had no idea what ingredients in the products caused the build up.

Now that I know ingredients, I know which ones get crunchy or sticky. And styrene/acrylamide copolymer is one of them. This ingredient is often found in hair gels, and it's one of the things that gives gels their hold. Now I know you are supposed to rotate products so this doesn't happen, and I do rotate them. But since I leave in my conditioners, I don't need all that stickiness in my hair, ever. Plus, you need stronger cleansers to remove sticky/ crunchy ingredients than you would with a product without them. I won't say that this ingredient would hurt your hair unless it really built up on there. If you want a little hold, a product with them in it is perfect for you. But after my sticky-note hair incident, I am staying away from it.

So alas, with a sigh I have to pass on this juicy conditioner, with its promise of shimmer, because I am paranoid. That and I hate having hair that can double as fly paper (along with a few other issues).

*Note: I understand that this product (as are nearly all the conditioners I review) is meant to be rinsed out. And there are plenty of wonderful reviews for how this product works when it's rinsed out. However, since my method involves leaving the product in our hair, I review how a product functions this way.

The story behind the wavy orange hair

2008-11-25T11:01:00.000-08:00

As I've been finding old photos, all the stories behind each style come back to me. Every style I tried was an attempt to find the style: A 'do I could maintain, that would make my hair grow, and that I could feel good about wearing. This hair style was one of those stories:

It started out during 10th grade. I had recently gone after my hair with kitchen scissors and cut it short except for five braids I liked to put beads in. I loved the clink of the beads, but if I turned my head too fast, they'd swing around and hit me in the teeth.

I decided that in order to grow my hair, I needed to choose between either coloring it, or relaxing it (not realizing that because my hair is so fragile, neither is an option). Since I'd been relaxing it and that didn't seem to work to get it to grow, I thought maybe coloring it without relaxing might be the key. At the time, I didn't realize that lightening hair was nearly as damaging as relaxing. Looking back on it, I see how unhappy I was with just about everything my hair was. I wanted honey-brown hair, and I wanted it straight. I couldn't imagine wearing my own dark and curly hair (funny how things have changed, because I now can't imagine wearing my hair any other way).

So I lightened my hair with store bought color until it was a honey brown color, and wore it curly that school year (photo on the left). I actually began to enjoy those little curls, and I even started to think that maybe having curly hair wasn't so bad.

That summer I visited my mom in Kentucky. I spent a lot of time hanging out with my grandmother, who lived two houses down from us. I didn't know this at the time, but my African-American grandmother did not like curly hair. She tried to talk me out of the curls. I told her I actually liked them, and my hair was easier to take care of this way. For weeks she tried to talk me out of the curls, but I held firm. I wanted to keep them. They were my curls, and I saw nothing wrong with wearing the hair I was born with (I still wasn't quite there with wearing the hair color I was born with, but this was a big step in the right direction).

Then one day she tried a new approach. She asked me if there was anything about my hair I'd like to change. I said I did wish it was easier to comb. And then she had me. She said she knew how I could keep my curls, but would make it possible for a comb to just glide through them. That sounded heavenly, but I was worried it would take away the curls. And she said to me "You see, hair like yours can never have all the curls taken away no matter what. The only thing that will happen is that they will just get softer and easier to comb." Those were the magic words. I believed her, and I agreed.

My grandmother got a family friend to put the chemicals on my hair. Throughout the process I asked several times if I'd still have my curls, and she said yes. It wasn't until the process was over, and I was standing in the shower running water over my hair that it began to dawn on me what had happened. My hair hung down like a defeated cloth. I tried scrunching in curls as it dried. Nothing. My hair just fell back down. It lay there. The joyful curls were gone, and in their place hung crinkly orange straw.

Soon after, 11th grade started. The stringy hair hung in my face, so I cut the front down to about an inch with kitchen scissors (photo on the right after lots of scrunching. My hair was much lighter than it looks in the photo). Damaged beyond hope, the ends got lighter and lighter. When they approached a platinum color I'd cut them off.

I have since learned many things about my hair. One of them is that our hair is not lay down hair. Combs do not pass easily through spirited coils. That's just a fact. But the rewards for spending the time it takes to gently comb through wet and well conditioned hair is enormous. It is worth every minute of time I spend with the Denman to have the hair I have now. Hair with spirit means that it is happy and healthy. It sure beats limp and broken every time.

It's like this...

2008-11-09T13:52:00.000-08:00

Here's the thing...I've been working on putting up more pages on the website, so I haven't written here for a bit. And I must also confess I've fallen behind in answering letters from the site, too (sorry about that). In a couple weeks, I'll be putting up a curly hair Ingredients Dictionary, along with a few other pages (such as a FAQs page) on the website (I'm so excited!). This is thanks in a huge part to Jon, who helps put my HTML and CSS code back together when I turn it into exploding spaghetti after working on it for even a few minutes, it seems. He is also the one making the ingredients dictionary manageable. If it were just me doing it, I'd have all the words on one VERY long page, and any poor soul who wanted to look up a word would have to scroll yards down the page to find their word. Because of his programming agility, words will be displayed letter by letter. He is in fact working on this as I type here (thank you Sweetie!).

As soon as the new pages are up and running, I will be back with more stories and product trials.

Alba Botanica gardenia hydrating hair conditioner

2008-10-30T09:56:00.000-07:00

When I left off last post...

I had found the Alba Botanica coconut milk extra-rich conditioner to be not only drying, but when I added enough product to clump my curls, it got flaky. I wanted to see if it was the guar hydroxypropyltrimonium chloride that was causing this. So I decided to try Alba Botanica gardenia hydrating hair conditioner, which had nearly identical ingredients, except that it was missing the guar hydroxypropyltrimonim chloride.

So a few weeks later, I tried the Alba Botanica gardenia hydrating conditioner. Just like the coconut milk version, things started out fine. The combing was nice, and it clumped okay. It was a bit light, and when my hair dried, I added more product to my ends. And sure enough, this time it didn't flake or glob! So I knew that guar hydroxypropyltrimonium chloride, though a fine ingredient for a product you will rinse-out (as far as I've been able to find), was not ideal for a product you were going to leave in your hair. This was fair.

Now the real test: was this ingredient also to blame for my hair feeling dry? Or because it was included in the ingredients, I wasn't able to use enough product to keep my ends together, and that just made them feel dry? Or was/were there other ingredient(s) lurking in there that caused the dryness and matting?

As the days wore on with the gardenia conditioner, my hair felt dryer. I'd put a generous amount on my ends, but when the product dried, they felt even dryer. Not good. By the end of the week, it seemed like I had little matted areas in my hair.

At the end of the trial week, when it was time to wash and re-comb my hair, I decided to comb with a stand-by very slippery conditioner, and used Paula's Choice Smooth Finish Conditioner. To my surprise, my hair took even longer than the usual two hours to comb and smooth. It was really matted. I grumbled to my guy, Jon, about how long it was taking me to get through my hair, and he said he'd noticed my hair had looked sort of matted this week. So that decided it. There was something in those products that was drying, and I needed to find out what it was! This way I could avoid it in future products and save my money.

During that time I was doing some reading and stumbled upon a mention that pineapple was drying (per Don't Go Shopping Without Me by Paula Begoun, pg 352), mostly because it has the enzyme bromelain in it. I know when I eat lots of pineapple, my tongue gets really raw. It's mostly from the the acidity, but also the enzyme action. So I checked back over the ingredients in both bottles of Alba conditioner, and saw that they not only had pineapple, but papaya as well (a source of the potent enzyme papain). I'm thinking this product is pH balanced (it says it is on the bottle—though I haven't used litmus paper on it to make sure)— so it's probably the enzymes in those two ingredients that made my hair dry and matted, not the acidity.

However, these two conditioners also have citric acid, which puzzles me: Citric acid is used to balance the pH in products that may be too alkaline by making them more acidic. Hmmm. I think I will get some litmus paper. If I find out anything, I'll post again about the results.

So from what I can tell, the pineapple and papaya were mildly exfoliating my hair, which was what was causing it to feel so dry. So now I know to avoid them in future products.

I do want to say I use Alba's cocoa butter hand & body lotion and am happy with it. It's just that products have to go through a much more rigorous process when it comes to my hair. I'm much easier going when it comes to lotion for my skin than for my hair.

*Note: I understand that this product (as are nearly all the conditioners I review) is meant to be rinsed out. And there are plenty of wonderful reviews for how this product works when it's rinsed out. However, since my method involves leaving the product in our hair, I review how a product functions this way.

Alba Botanica coconut milk extra-rich hair conditioner

2008-10-29T09:54:00.000-07:00

I do tend to find a few products I love, and then stop looking. Lately I've been trying out different combing/ leave in conditioners so that I could offer a wider range of conditioners I recommend. Before I recommend a conditioner, I check out the ingredients several times. If there aren't ingredients I know to be bad in the product, I look to see if it has ingredients that look moisturizing, will give my hair weight, and seem like they will help me comb through with my Denman with little friction. If the conditioner seems to pass these hurdles, it's only then that I'll use it. I comb it through my hair after washing, use it to define my curls, and use it to smooth my hair every day for a week, until it's time to wash my hair again. The conditioners that work, I recommend on the site.

I often get asked about what I think of other conditioners that didn't make the cut. So I decided I would write about the ones that seemed like they would work, but for one reason or another didn't.

The first one I tried was Alba Botanica's coconut milk extra-rich hair conditioner. I have a special weakness for tropical flavors like coconut and mango. On looking at the ingredients, it seemed to have good weight ingredients, good moisturizing ingredients, and lots of slip ingredients. I don't have a very sensitive scalp, so I generally don't worry about extracts and essential oils. Everything seemed good to go. I figured it would be a bit light, going by the ingredients, but that just means I'd use a bit more. Sometimes I wait until my hair is dry, then go back over the ends, putting in more product to keep my ends together.

The combing went well. I was feeling excited I'd be able to recommend another conditioner that I found at the health food store. The clumping action also seemed to go well. So far, so good. As I suspected, it dried a bit light. No big thing, I'd just add more to the ends to keep my curls together. It was at this point the conditioner started to go a bit wrong for me.

When I added more, it started drying up as a rolly white film that flaked out of my hair. Instead of keeping my ends together, it seemed to ball up in confused little particles. Not a good sign.

I tried for a couple more days to smooth water and this conditioner on my ends, but my ends ended up looking dry and covered in little flaky globs. I finally stopped using it and switched to smoothing a tried and true on my ends.

So then I was puzzled. What ingredient caused this product to gunk up? The next week I used one of my regular conditioners I love to give my hair a rest. The week after that I tried Shikai Natural Everyday Conditioner. It was wonderful. And it's basic working ingredients were similar to the Alba. What gives?

After comparing the ingredients of lots of products that worked, I saw a few things that this conditioner had that others didn't. One was guar hydroxypropyltrimonium chloride. My research of as many objective sources as I could find all seemed to agree that this was used to condition hair, and so far, I haven't found anything to say this is a problem ingredient. Which makes sense, because if I were to rinse it out, this wouldn't have been a problem. It's just that I leave good products in.

So to experiment, I decided to try another Alba conditioner that didn't have this ingredient, but was basically similar otherwise. In this way, I could see if this ingredient was the culprit, or if there was another ingredient in there that was making my hair feel so dry. I wanted to get to the bottom of the flaky bits that occurred if I used enough product to keep my ends together.

To be continued on the next post...

*Note: I understand that this product (as are nearly all the conditioners I review) is meant to be rinsed out. And there are plenty of wonderful reviews for how this product works when it's rinsed out. However, since my method involves leaving the product in our hair, I review how a product functions this way.

Teri and the Book Propsal

2008-10-21T10:18:00.000-07:00

It's no secret that I'm a ferocious avoider. I can out-avoid anyone. I have been known to walk a mile or more to go to a different store if I feel I've managed to embarrass myself at a store a few block away. I've had letters and phone messages I wasn't sure about sit, undealt with, on my machine or counter for weeks or months. I actually had my contact lens prescription for my left eye expire before I was able to pick them up because I felt a bit weird that I only had the money to buy the right eye at the time. I once even climbed out of a bathroom window in high school just to avoid a person—who didn't even know me.

When I was originally writing my manuscript, I knew that in order to present it to publishers, I had to produce a book proposal. A book proposal is basically a long sales document describing your book, audience size and composition, and how (well) it might sell. I began to write mine early on, caught up in the spirit of getting things done, and trying to go against another part of my nature...to procrastinate (I come from a proud line of procrastinators, just ask my dad). A deadly combination when mixed with avoiding, let me tell you. But I decided to face the beast, and write the document.

I wrote and wrote. And one day, when still facing the bulk of it yet to go, I decided, true to my avoiding nature, that maybe doing the book myself might be the way to go after all. So I got to work on designing the book and getting it edited to print it on my own. In part to avoid writing the scary book proposal.

And then the universe gave me a huge gift, one too amazing to avoid...I got an agent. Who then needed a book proposal to give to the publishing companies she was approaching.

I have heard that the universe gives you lessons, and it will keep giving you a lesson over and over until you learn it. Thus it seemed to be with the book proposal.

I wrestled with myself for weeks, but prevailed, and finally finished the proposal. Thinking it was now out of my life for good, I gave it to my agent. I was so relieved to hand it over! It was almost like I felt the more I touched it, the more potential there was that I might mess it up. Like my proposal was a new baby bird and I had puffy mitten-hands. I was almost afraid to look directly at it (in my defense, this was the document that went haywire in Fire and the Infinite Loop, so I'm not completely a wackadoo about that one).

Late last week the proposal came back to me once again for a few more adjustments. I have a feeling this will be a lesson the universe may have to give me a few dozen more times (or more). Maybe one day I'll finally learn to face things head on the first time, instead of going around the block to avoid it, only to find it waiting for me there around the corner.

Tragedy Stories

2008-10-08T15:37:00.000-07:00

I'm terrible with ages, but sometime around when I was six or seven, I discovered that not all stories have to have a happy ending. This was a huge revelation to me as a child. Up until then, all the stories I'd been reading, all the television shows I'd been watching, and all the movies I'd seen all ended well for the main characters. I guess I thought it was a requirement that things had to be wrapped up positively in order for a story to be considered valid. I was thrilled to hear this didn't have to be! That at the end of the story, something bad could happen; a character could even...die. Imagine all the new possibilities! I was so excited.

Immediately I began work on a new series of stories called Tragedy Stories. A typical Tragedy Story of mine would go something like this: A baby alligator (I loved alligators, so I often wrote about them) got lost from it's home. He had to walk 100000000 miles (I'd usually just add a bunch of zeroes to the end of the number to make it look really impressive) to find his way back to his family. Just as he was about find them, he got hit by a car. The end. Or: A butterfly flew 9800000000 miles (another number that I thought would make an impression on grown-ups), and just as he reached home, he lost a wing and could not fly. The end.

At this time my mom had a reunion at Hampton University, and she took me and my four year old brother with her. I only remember two things about that visit. The first was that I got hit in my eye area with a toy car (my brother and I were throwing it back and forth to each other up and down a flight of stairs. I was at the bottom). I remember crying determinedly for a really long time in hopes I would get taken home, but no such luck. At some point I got tired of crying and moved on to something else.

The second thing I remember was that I was seated for dinner next to a hapless Alum of my mom's. I turned to him and began to explain with gusto and intensity my Tragedy Stories. I think I told him every single one I'd written, and to show off, threw in some bonus ones I made up on the spot. I remember him having an uncomfortable deer-in-the-headlights sort of expression. At the time I figured that was just how he wore his face.

My grandmother was horrified when I told her about the Stories. She begged me repeatedly to change the tragic endings to happy ones, after I read some of the stories to her. But I wouldn't budge. Changing the endings would defeat the whole purpose of the so-named Tragedy Stories. That logic didn't appease her in the least.

I have noticed, in more recent years as I've gone through my old stories, that these particular tales are mysteriously missing.

The Nylon Mullet

2008-09-29T13:18:00.000-07:00

Recently, I was in the shower washing my hair and I got a surprise: My hair has grown to the length where it reaches about mid-biscuits when it's wet. This means that when my hair gets wet in the shower, it slaps me between the cheeks. The first time it happened, it startled the heck out of me. It's just not something you're expecting in the shower during a routine hair washing.

At the same time, it was a huge moment in my hair saga. That soggy smack was like an announcement that my hair was finally long. My hair is now long enough to give me a friendly slap on the cheeks as if to say a cheerful "hello".

This made me think of one of my many misguided hair attempts from long ago. When I was wearing my hair texturized in my mid-twenties, as always, it never grew past my shoulders because of the chemicals. And I really wanted that long hair to swing over my shoulders dramatically. In my weave days I discovered I wasn't coordinated enough to pull off a whole head full of weave: I tended to put weaves in wrong, so my head was Elephant man lumpy. And when I put all my hair in extensions, it tended to mat up by the time I got a chance to redo them. So my big idea at this time was that if I added hair that matched my color and curl patten—but just in the back of my hair only—that would give me realistic-looking length. I reasoned that the extensions would give the back of my hair time to grow long itself, and when I took out the extensions, my own hair would be the same length. That was the theory, anyway.

I spent hours, days, and many trips going to various wig shops and reading hair magazines looking for hair to match mine. Real hair that was curly and sold in bulk generally wasn't available in a long enough length for me. So I ended up checking out the bags of nylon hair. I tried to be clever. I'd buy two differently colored packs and textures of nylon hair to try to make them seem more realistic. Then I'd braid them in the back, and sort of comb the nylon hair to try to get it to lose the fake doll-hair shine. The plastic hair hated that. It matted together into odd, multi-colored puffs, giving me a tortoiseshell-cat fur appearance. I had to replace the extensions frequently because they snarled so badly.

Still, for it to look realistic, I couldn't venture very much longer with the extension hair than my own broken hair's length. For the most part I kept the fake length just long enough to peek out from beneath my texturized waves. But one time I became frustrated and hair hungry. I wanted me some long hair darnit. So I bought some new, tightly s-waved nylon hair. And in the very back, I put in about five of those long extensions, just in my kitchen area. These few strands were long enough to brush my lower back.

The thing is, as I remember it, this couldn't have been a good look for anyone. Hadn't I basically given myself a terrible, terrible mullet made of scraggly nylon pieces? From the back view, my head must have appeared shaped like a bell of texturized fuzz with about five octopus tendrils of fake hair hanging down from out of it. I must have looked like either a crazy hair person, or a person who had forgotten to remove the last few pieces of her extensions. At the time I was giddy with hair and it impaired my judgment.

I remember taking it out for a test drive. I walked around in downtown Louisville during a summer visit with my mom. I remember having two opposing feelings as I walked around: As I moved, I could feel the nylon hair gently swaying against my back. I had never felt that before, and I was exhilarated. It was the nicest feeling I could imagine at that moment. What I wouldn't do for real hair like that! Yet, on the other hand, I knew those extensions were too long. I knew there was no way anyone was buying it. I kept waiting to be called out. I almost wished someone would say something to yank me back to reality.

No one said anything to me, but I took them out that night anyway. I consoled myself with the bittersweet memories of feeling the soft swish of hair against my back; the stuff of dreams.

So when I felt that cold wet smack of hair in a very personal area the other day, I realized my real hair is now much longer than that fake hair I couldn't pull off wearing years ago ever was.

And now, things are so different. In a tank top I can feel my real curls gently swish against the exposed skin on my back between the top and the bottom of my pyjamas. And though it's now been several years that I've been able to enjoy the swoosh of my hair against my back, I still get that rush. Like having been hungry for so long, and now I'm eating my favorite food and I'm still grateful for it. Like I still can't get over that I don't have to go home and take out all that phony hair in shame. That I don't have to walk around obsessed with whether my fake hair could be detected or not (that one was easy—it could be). And that I actually get to keep this hair, and it didn't come home with me in a crinkly plastic bag.

Fire and the Infinite Loop

2008-09-22T17:28:00.000-07:00

You'd think that correcting a document and fixing dinner would be simple things to do in an evening. I thought the same thing, until Thursday night, when I not only created infinity, but I almost burned down our apartment complex, too. This is what happened:

I just got back my book proposal from my agent, with the changes she felt it needed. Luckily nothing major, and every suggestion she had, once she said it, made perfect sense. So I worked on making the changes all day on Thursday. I got to the last changes, which is incorporating two sets of photos appearing at the beginning and the end of the chapter together in one place instead of two. Seemed simple enough. Unless you are me.

So I start happily rearranging the photos. There are text boxes accompanying the photos, so I copy and paste them with their appropriate pictures from one copy of the document to another . Out of the corner of my eye, I notice something weird is happening to the little blue scroll button thing to the right. It's moving up. My document begins repaginating. I don't pay it much mind for a while; I'm focused. Then I notice my page count is going CRAZ-EE. It's moving like a digital stopwatch counting down nanoseconds to the end of the year or something. It turns out my document has inexplicably begun creating an infinite number of pages. At first I think maybe I can get to the end and delete whatever is down there causing the ruckus. But at the depth of about 31,000 pages, it crashes. There is no end. I have a bottomless document. Then I make it worse. It's just another talent I have.

Just as I realize I have created a form of infinity, Jon (my guy) comes home from work. It's time to fix dinner (I try and make myself useful when I can). But I'm weirded out, distressed and frustrated by my ever-expanding document. So here's what I do: I start dinner.
I decide to let things warm up on the stove for just a minute while I check one more thing...

The next thing I hear is Jon make a sound I've never heard him make before. I get up reluctantly, pained to have to step away from my document (that's still wildly creating pages), and upon approaching the kitchen, I notice an orange glow on the walls.

Yup. The pan I had put on the burner to warm up had caught fire, and tall flames were coming straight out of the pan. Quick thinking, Jon turns off the burner, and runs to get the fire extinguisher from outside our door. My survival instincts are sluggish, and actually, not that interested. I debated just putting the lid on the pan. That's supposed to work, I thought detachedly as the smoke alarms began going off. But what if I reach over the flames, and my sleeve catches on fire? I wouldn't like that much. I move the bag of pancake mix out of the way of the flames. By now Jon is back with the extinguisher, but his earlier move of turning off the burner has caused the flames to die down. We watch the flames go out. All that's left of them is the blackened pan.

Apart from feeling stupid, I was actually way more upset about my infinite document doing who-knows-what in the other room. Of course I apologize all over the place to him (I still am). Luckily, nothing was hurt. Even the pan is fine. A little soot, and a very smoky apartment. No big thing. I began to fix dinner (in a different pan and I don't leave the dinner this time).

The document wasn't savable. Jon tried everything. He copied it, saved it as a docx, sent it to his computer, opened it. It looked fine. Then he'd send it back to the mac, and when he opened it, it was still infinite. Basically, I ended up doing my work over again using the original version my agent sent back to me. Apparently, it's a huge bug with text boxes. When I'd copied and pasted a bunch of those text boxes, I guess there was no longer an anchor for them to call home. Orphaned, the little text boxes searched and searched for their anchors, and finding none, the program started creating more and more pages looking for those anchors. Since there were none in that document (all the anchors were still in the document I'd copied the text boxes from), the document became infinite. And I created fresh new text boxes, complete with anchors for each of them to call home. And as of today, I haven't started any new fires. Well...it is time to start fixing dinner.

...and behind door number two...

2008-09-18T14:10:00.000-07:00

Just like my dark curls and my chai-colored skin, writing, illustrating and putting books together has been a major part of me. As far back as I can remember (and even before then, since I possess the books from when I was less than five) I wrote, illustrated in crayon, cut and stapled papers into booklets. Before first grade I was gluing my illustrations onto cardboard, laminating them with contact paper, and binding with glue. One book I even cut out a round medallion, colored it gold, and stuck it onto the top right corner of a book I'd made because I'd noticed several of my books had the same medallion on them. It seemed important.

Throughout all of junior high and high school I perfected the art of walking and writing (Plus side: You can write and get your exercise at the same time. Down side: Running into telephone poles.) At this time I was working on my epic horse story Datashen (this is what I'm working on in the photo, taken when I was thirteen. The feet to the side belong to my brother). The number of pages stuffed binder after binder. When I'd finish it, I'd start over again, rewriting it. At the beginning of the story, because it would take several years to write by hand and illustrate, I would have totally different handwriting by the end of it. The start of the story sported large, balloon-like lettering. By the end of the story, my writing got smaller and sharper as I got older. As I flip through the hundreds of pages of these volumes, I watch my handwriting morph, as if on a radical diet, from plump to gaunt strokes, becoming closer to the sharp and scratchy handwriting I have today.

In twelfth grade, when I wasn't doing much talking anymore, I wrote copiously on this book, and in my journals. One day that year, I finished the horse book, and started over one more time. There it changed from the horse story to another story all together. By the time I entered college, the new version didn't have a single horse in sight.

In my early 20s I set about printing this newer book myself. I hand-lettered the drop caps for every chapter. I did the color illustrations. I tried to learn Pagemaker (my computer kept crashing, wiping everything out). I even got to the point where, not able to afford having the pages bound, I decided to bind them myself. The paper stock for the cover had turned out too flimsy—they couldn't get thick paper through the copy-shop color printer—so I laminated each cover with clear contact paper. (At this time there was a stray cat, Ernie, living in the apartment, and with him came a rampant outbreak of fleas. Often I'd laminate a bunch of book covers, only to find fleas caught between the covers and the contact paper covering them.) I roughed up the sides of the pages with a wood rasp and hot glued the covers over the books. Then I'd carry them, ten at a time, down to get their rough edges trimmed away.

So I guess all this is to say, I love making books. It's as if a book doesn't feel finished until I've designed it and bound it myself (much like my beadwork doesn't feel done until every possible surface is covered with beads).

And so it seemed natural that my newest manuscript for taking care of tightly coiled, mixed-race hair would be done the same way. After putting up the website (my mission is to see no more people go through with their hair what I did with mine), I set about learning the typesetting program InDesign, Photoshop, and reading books on how to design the pages and cover. How amazing would it be to hold a book in my hands that I had done entirely myself? Well, if it's a beautiful book, there would be lots to be proud of. If not, I guess the drawback is I wouldn't have the luxury of being able to blame anyone else.

Then something unexpected happened. A real live book agent took an interest in my book. I'd read stories of people having agents. Previously, I felt having one was akin to stumbling upon a unicorn in the woods. Magical if it were to happen, but you might not want to stake all your hopes on finding one. But nevertheless, I have an agent (thanks in a huge part to my editor). And she seems really nice, too. And I feel if the universe is kind enough to give me an amazing opportunity, along the lines of sighting a unicorn, I will honor the universe.

So now I will do my absolute best to put my all into whatever path I end up taking. Whether I create the book myself, or it's done by a publishing company, it will be exciting, and I know I will grow from either. The great thing is that I will be beside myself happy when I finally hold my published book in my hands. Hopefully minus the fleas.

HapaTeez

2008-09-16T16:33:00.000-07:00

I just got my new HapaTeez™ designed by Yayoi of Watermelon Sushi fame! "Hapa" is the Hawaiian pronunciation of "half", and these shirts are a great way to celebrate our multiple heritages. The proceeds help fund the making of Watermelon Sushi, the movie.

How I Escaped the Relaxer

2008-09-12T15:33:00.000-07:00

Up until I grew out the chemicals, my only run-in with my natural hair was what I considered my troublesome new growth's waterwaves peering out from my crunchy straight hair, signaling it was time again for a touchup.

At twenty-six, I didn't know what my real hair looked like. My tightly curly hair had been permed since childhood. And the only time I thought I'd experienced it was as a Frankenhair mixture of a Jheri curl over a straightener over my natural curls, giving me the fabled Mushroom Head that grew larger and larger like a swollen sponge over the summer I had it.

After this experience with my hair, and the sinking feeling I got as a young, easily mortified teen when looking at the photos of my giant balloon head, I wasn't too eager to go through that again. I really hated the relaxers and how they made my hair break apart, but I felt that my own hair would erupt as it grew out, exploding open in slow motion frizz until I couldn't get through doorways anymore. Basically, I felt I had no choice. So I spent most of my life looking for wonder products to undo the damage the chemicals did. But the reality is there is nothing but scissors that can take away the fatally damaged hair once the chemicals have been used.

My mom, who is African-American, could grow her permed hair down her back when she was younger. So I thought I just had to find what she had done, and I, too, could have long, straight hair. Unfortunately, she couldn't remember how her mom (who took care of my mom's hair because it was such a procedure to wash and care for it) got it to grow so long. What I didn't realize is that my mom has individually thicker strands of hair that can better withstand the brutal chemicals than mine. I, on the other hand, have spiderweb thin individual strands of hair. So they literally partially dissolved when I put on the chemicals.

The thing that changed it for me was finding the book Good Hair: For Colored Girls Who've Considered Weaves When the Chemicals Became too Ruff by Lonnice Brittenum Bonner. Here was a woman with hair curlier than mine, and she grew out her chemicals (luckily, I didn't notice at the time her mentioning she still used a texturizer in her hair). I figured if she could do it, so could I.

In Good Hair, Bonner cut off all her permed hair and started fresh. Definitely the recommended way to go. But I didn't want to have such short hair. Hair was (is) a big part of my identity, and I didn't want almost no hair. So I chose to grow it out. How hard could it be? I thought cavalierly to myself. I'd been dealing with the chemical hair all along. That was a known quantity. This process would just introduce a new kind of hair in addition to the familiar hair. That didn't seem so bad.

I washed, combed, and set my hair every week in about twenty or so two-strand twists. I'd let them dry, sleep in them overnight, and untwist them in the morning for a headful of spirals the rest of the week. At night I'd pull my hair back in a bun—not too tight—for fear of smashing the spirals.

And this was fine for the first few months.

Then The Mat arrived.

When I combed my hair, the comb halted at my scalp and wouldn't budge. Every week it got thicker and stronger, as if it were calling in reinforcements. It grew ferocious and puffy at the back of my head. When I prodded it back there, it seemed like something had decided to build an insulated nest, especially packed at the top, back of my head. Now it took me three hours to get through my barely shoulder-length hair, and put it in twists. Every week was a painful session to work my way through the mat, slowly, toes clenched from the pain of having to comb out something so tightly tangled, so close to my scalp. What if this was my natural hair? If it was this bad at two inches of new growth, what would six inches bring?

I'd heard that there can be severe breakage where the two textures meet when growing out a relaxer. Maybe this was another consequence of having two extremely different hair types joined? I tried to pull the hair in the back more firmly down into my bun at night to prevent it getting so riled up, and determinedly hoped for the best.

The mat was tenacious, but so was I. And a few months later I noticed a change. My Denman would glide for a brief moment through the hair closest to my scalp, and then halt abruptly as it landed into the mat. That meant the mat was slowly inching it's way down my hair. The new hair coming in above the mat was slippery and glossy. Now I was interested. I began touching it all the time to feel it. I had no idea something so soft and smooth could grow out of my head.

At about nine months, I pulled open my hair, and looked at the hair growing behind my ear. And there I saw it. A curl pattern instead of chaos. An S shape instead of fuzz. I saw my real hair, strong and sure, coming in over the confused noise of the chemical hair.

From that moment on I was hooked. I took a pair of scissors, and cut off the chemical junk hair (saving two pieces to tape into the Good Hair book—see Curlocide for a photo of them).

I loved my new hair. I still had a way to go towards figuring out how to keep if from growing horizontally rather than vertically, but this was my hair, and we were finally a team.

Introvert to Extrovert

2008-09-05T16:41:00.000-07:00

Looking back, it's almost as if I were a flower opening in reverse from childhood to adolescence. That by the time I stumbled, dazed, out of adolescence, it was as if all my petals had folded in on themselves.

And now I am trying to reverse the journey, to reconnect with my childhood chutzpah. Not to say I was always a well-behaved kid. Honestly, I was known to border on downright obnoxiousness. So maybe not going so far as to be a wild child, but enough to jump into the middle of the stream and be okay watching the current I create. To participate instead of lurking and watching voicelessly.

I've been trying to think what it was about turning twelve that made me change into an opposite person from what I started out as. Well, I know a big part of it was the hair. It was about that age that it got cut off, leaving me mushroom-headed. At the same time I went from an environment of few rules to one of many. I went from a place where things were easy to where they were hard. And I went from one where I was closer to society's ideal of beauty, to where I was planets away from the beauty ideal compared to those around me. Plus that whole puberty thing. Man, was I awkward! Braces, big 80's glasses, bad skin, no clue about clothes, and broken, frizzy hair.

And boys. Lots of energy went into trying to catch one of those (no success in highschool, which is just as well. Just like a dog chasing a car, I don't know what I would have done had I actually caught one).

Teenage years are the years that you try on different yous, like dresses, and see which one fits, and which one the world around you responds to in a way that you feel comfortable with. I spent many of those years trying on conforming outfits. Trying to not be odd. Trying out the combination lock to the door of normalcy. Sometime around sixteen or seventeen I gave that up, and got quiet instead. By eighteen, I wrote much more than I spoke.

Then over the years, another change happened. I figured out my hair, and now have the long mermaid hair I'd dreamed of. My curly security blanket. And I've made peace with so many of the things that kept me quiet all those years. And I'm surrounded by wonderful people.

And with the site has come new lessons. Lessons that it's time to have a voice again. To learn the lessons that come with communicating, with having opinions (and actually saying them out loud). Having started the Biracial Hair site has been like finally stepping out into the stream and watching the currents I myself create. Because I have stepped into the water, and put up the site, I have met so many wonderful people, been exposed to many great ideas and voices, and found new friends from all over the world.

I have discovered that the more I've thrown myself to the universe, the more it has given back to me.

Curlocide

2008-08-25T23:58:00.000-07:00

Yes. I know I can be paranoid. Especially when it comes to tightly curly hair. That being said, I was looking at a magazine for African-American hair last night. It had been a while since I looked at one (since I'm happy with my hair and don't want to change it). And I saw something I remembered I kept seeing over and over again when I used to read them for real (and in the adds supporting them): Our curls are treated as if they must be "cured" rather than embraced.

Actually, there was almost no African-American hair in there. These magazines would be more appropriately called "Hair of Any Other Race (Provided It Is Not As Curly), Yak Hair, Nylon Hair, and Lots of Chemicals—Anything Other than the Curls You Are Born With".

I understand not all magazines are this way. Maybe I have a knack for picking up the ones that are. And I understand dissatisfaction is big business...you don't make any money if we are happy with what we are born with. I guess it's a huge issue with me because I used to feel exactly that way about my hair. I spent my teenage and early adult years ashamed to have the hair I did. I was blind to the beauty and joy in each of my curls. I couldn't appreciate how our hair is unique, fierce, proud and stubborn.

Why did I want to break my curls' spirit? Why did I settle for broken strands of hair that were a chemically induced imitation of someone else's hair, rather than wear the glossy spirals I was born with? Feeling shame for my natural curls was what I was taught in childhood, since my hair had been straightened ever since I remember. My African-American grandmother hated curls, so she painstakingly straightened my hair and set my straight hair every night. I guess there seemed to be something shameful in them to her, like a dirty secret growing from our scalps.

So I guess I felt afraid of the hair that might erupt from my head without chemicals. The message I got was that it must be some terrible stuff I grew naturally, otherwise, why would we use lye-like chemicals to "treat" it? Almost as if we were using the most powerful disinfectant possible to kill them. Like a virus. And all the magazines I read seemed to nod their heads in agreement, and sidle up to me to tell me my curls were unacceptable.

The photo above is the hair I saved when I cut off all my chemicals, after finally catching a glimpse of what my real hair looked like for the first time in my life. I saved the two last pieces I chopped off, and taped them into a book. A dozen years later, even protected within the pages, that processed hair still breaks apart. I used to think this was the only way I could wear my hair.

The photo to the left is of my hair now. It's the same hair, but after I learned to love it, to celebrate it, and above all , let it be what it needed to be. I feel like I cut off a stranger, and grew back a friend.

Our curls are perfect just as they are. I believe that if there were more images out there of how beautiful our natural curls are, the more we will see them as a wonderful, affirming option for us. And less little girls like me will think destroying their curls are the only option for them.

Every year that I used chemicals, my hair continued to grow back in good faith, giving me yet another chance to do right by it. It took decades, but I finally stopped hurting it and began to take care of it. I came to treasure my curls for the curls they are. I know my hair has forgiven me for what I did to it. It will take me a while longer to forgive myself.

I Rescue Worms

2008-08-24T12:27:00.000-07:00

It's not like I'm ashamed of it, but it is a little embarrassing. I'll be walking along on the sidewalk and I'll see a worm wriggling in fright stranded in a desert of cement. What am I supposed to do— walk on by? The problem is that I kind of don't like the people walking behind me to see me do it. It's a bit of a "uh oh, crazy person ahead" sort of thing, and I don't want to put them through worrying if they need to cross the street to escape me or not. I always look furtively around before I pick up the poor worm and place it gently into the grass. I've been known to circle the block and come back for a plump worm in distress if there are people walking behind me the first time around.

I don't know when it started. I've always loved insects and bugs. Always was poking at them and trying to bring them home. I don't remember my focus falling to worms specifically, but my mom remembers vividly the time I brought home the Big Bowl of Water. I do remember the water. I can't act like I don't. The water was the neatest thing. There was this little pool of marsh water in the woods of Kentucky where I found little swimming things that opened and closed like little swimming commas. Who could resist them? So I scooped up a big bowl full to bring home and watch them. I don't remember the rest, but my mom sure does. She said one day the house was filled with mosquitoes and she couldn't figure out where they were coming from...until she discovered my bowl of marsh-water behind the television.

I do remember pouring water on stranded worms in junior high. I could never tell if the worms were happy about the water, though. They'd be nearly mummified when I'd find them on the concrete at school. I'd pour water on them as an emergency first-aid, and they'd start twisting around like crazy. Couldn't tell if it was convulsions of joy and relief or what. It made me feel a bit uncomfortable. So not very satisfying.

And I've always been one to pick up odds and ends on sidewalks or by the sides of the road. It's amazing the treasures you can find when you make peace with the fact you look like a crazy person doing it. I got an entire butterfly collection one summer by walking down the side of the road and picking up road-kill butterflies still in perfect condition, then taking them home and steaming their wings open and placing them in cotton beneath picture frames. I've picked up huge leaves that I carry home like giant parasols to put in large vases of water to admire. They keep me leafy company for months.

I guess what really started me rescuing worms was my friend Carrie. She rescued snails and worms. She'd be walking and come across a gardener who had tossed her snails out onto the sidewalk. And Carrie would stop, ask the gardener if she wanted the tossed snails. Invariably they'd say no, sort of confused, and Carrie would then gather up all the snails, cracked shells and all. Then she'd carry them with her until she found a safe leafy new home, and set them free.

So I guess every worm I save is also in honor of my friend Carrie. It's such a tiny bit of energy and appearing normal that I lose to lean down and pick the worm up and put it back in moist grass. Yet for that tiny blind creature, I have just returned it's whole life back to them. I guess it's like being a benevolent worm-god. But with such powers, I try to mostly use them for good. And I know now not to bring any more pond-water into the house. So that's progress.

The Mushroom

2008-08-22T12:25:00.000-07:00

My hair became a mushroom when I was about eleven. As a child I was obsessed with having long hair. Since it was so curly, the only thing anyone knew to do with it, on my mom's side of the family, was to straighten it. My grandmother spent an hour every night setting it in about twenty little buns all over my head and smoothing in French Perm hairdressing.

I don't know why we decided to go to a salon. Maybe I was constantly hounding people (as was my way) about why my hair wouldn't grow any longer than a little past my shoulders before petering out. Whyever it was that I wound up in the salon, I did. A woman took me into the back room and had me look at some photos in a book. I said I liked one of them (I think I picked the prettiest looking girl with the front of her hair flowing in the wind) and before I knew it, she'd cut off a chunk of my hair in the front (in sort of a mullet). Then put a Jheri curl over my straightener (which was over my very curly hair). She loaded me up with Activators and Moisturizers and Deep Conditioners, and sent me back, stunned, to my mom.

Once home, the consensus among my mom and grandmother was that the rest of my hair was now too damaged. So they cut off the remaining longer mullet hair in the back, and thus began the Summer of the 'Shroom. Soon after, I went to visit my dad for the summer. He took one look at all the greasy activators and moisturizers, and forbid them. So I was left with my round head, no hair dressing, conditioning or activator. All I knew to do was to brush it every morning, and pat it into as round a shape as I could. And as the summer progressed, so did my mushroom. By the end of the summer (looking back at the photos taken from that time), my afro had grown to an impressive girth.

When I returned to Kentucky for school, my hair was quickly straightened again, and this time set in curlers every night, giving me more of a cake-frosting look, with stiffly molded flips all over my head. Thus ended my mushroom hair, and I rapidly entered a Very Awkward Adolescence.