Author: chubbycurl34

Maybe it’s not so bad.

~ chubbycurl34 ~ Leave a comment

So I’ve had a couple days with my hair and I’m thinking maybe the cut was a good thing. She said my hair would be a lot Easier to comb through and it is. Plus it’s started doing that curly thing it use to do when I fist went natural. The feel and texture came back. And it seems like my hair is happy again. It does what I want and I feel this might be a chance to start over again and take care of it better. I’m not sure, but I feel like this thing I didn’t want could turn into a good thing. We will see. Something I want to keep an eye on is I do have some sore bumps on my sides. It might be a result of the design essential the stylist used on my hair, but I really liked how it made my hair curl up and I want to get some more today. I hope I’m not allergic to it cause it works nice. 

Back to the drawing board. Wedding hair issue.

~ chubbycurl34 ~ Leave a comment

  So it happened again. I went to the beauty shop. Told the beautician she can clip my ends. I look up and she’s cut my hair real short. Why does this happen? Ends are supposed to be small right ? All the hard work I’ve been doing for the past two year with protective styles and product research down the drain. My hair was shoulder length now it reaches my lip with great strain. Let me start at the beginning. I’m getting married on the 22 of this month. My wedding is 7 days away. My coordinator set me up with her stylist who she told me does natural hair. So yesterday was my practice run. I told her she could clip my ends when we last met up. She text me a week before and ask me if I still wanted her to cut my hair. That should have been the first warning. I corrected her and said you are supposed to clip my ends. I thought that got things straight. I get to the shop on the day and she spritz my hair with some water or what ever was in that bottle. And blow drys my hair straight without putting on a heat protector on it first. Smoke is coming up and she tells me it’s just the products I have left in my hair. My hair smells burnt. She starts clipping and I didn’t see any hair on the. I felt like she was angling  my hair a certain way so I could not see how much was being cut or see it on the ground. After she was done I felt like my hair was shorter but I thought it was just shrinkage. She told me my hair was longer on one side then the other and she needed to even it out. I have to admit I always felt like the opposite side was longer so I let her proceed. I should have said something. But I was scared. It’s a week before my wedding and I really don’t want to find a new stylist. A lot of things have been going wrong with the wedding and I honestly didn’t want to have to deal with one more problem. I said nothing and now I have shorter hair. She then told me that in order to do the style I want for my wedding I needed extent ions and the are $15 .  She said my hairs to short now. 😦 Well I’m putting in large Havana twist after the wedding so I won’t have to do my hair on our honeymoon. My plan is to keep my hair in twist on and off for a couple of months and see what type of length retention I get. I hope it at least looks nice for the wedding. :/ here is a pic of my trial hairstyle. I had curls in the front done with flex rods and a twist out done in the back. My hair in the back is pinned up. She didn’t add enough pins because its been falling down since I left the shops. Oh we’ll back to the drawing board. 

I think my hair is getting shorter

~ chubbycurl34 ~ Leave a comment

Lately my hair has not felt the same. Maybe it’s just me being paranoid, but something is not right. One thing that has been bothering me is people telling me that my hair has gotten shorter. I shouldn’t be because when I comb it I have less hair shed then ever before. I usually tell them it’s just shrinkage.  However it does feel as if my hair is stunted. I dyed it 6 months ago and usually I see a lot of dark roots by now but it’s not the same amount like in the past. I individual two strand twisted my hair today and it seems a lot shorter then the past. Usually my hair drapes my shoulders, curls up real pretty on the ends and moves with out any stiffness.  I washed my hair last night with apple cider vinegar and a shampoo and conditioner my sister gave me samples of. I’m not sure of the name right now. All I know is I used the same name brands body lotion once and it was amazing. I had gotten the body lotion for free at a bridal expo. So when my sister gave me the shampoo sample I was open to try it. I was in a hurry so I did not deep condition like I have been for years. I also didn’t add the melted Shea butter and mixing it with vitamin E and putting it into my hair. I’m still using dark and lovely’s au natural curling stuff.  It smells nice but its not very special. Their products are supposed to be anti shrinkage but today my hair admittedly seems a lot shorter. What is happening with my hair? I’m a little paranoids about noticeable hair loss because weather she likes to admit it my mom suffers from alopecia. When I was in high school my mom would get our hair done twice a week. She liked the big French roll up do’s that she use to do in the 60s that had become popular in the 90s. Only one problem. Years of straightening her hair with perms had broken it off and made it thin and short. When my mother was young she always used hot combs. Her hair was long like down her back to mid back. Back then she always wore her hair up in a French roll. Then in the 90s my sister Marcia started asking for a perm because she was being made fun of. So we all went to the beauty shop with our long back length pressed hair got perms and it all fell out. My mom got the worst of it. So when the French roll came back in style she wanted that style again but she did not have enough hair. So our beautician at the time started gluing hair into my moms scalp and she started going bald. She always tells people its because she had cancer but her hair had fallen out long before they found the cancer. Plus she has been blessed to never have had any chemo therapy even after two bouts with cancer. She tell people her hair came out because of this because she is shame of how silly she was to trust that beautician and now she has no hair. Lately she has been picking on me about my hair. She never wanted me or my sister to go natural. She told us that we would never get men or jobs no one will want us and she’s just looking out for us. Well my sisters a prominent journalist with a husband and baby and I’m getting married on the 22nd of this month so we proved her wrong. But now she fusses that I do my hair to much. ( I do it once a week) and she believes all those tuck and roll protect your ends styles are going to make my hair come out. She says my hair is long and it will get short if I keep tucking my ends under. I don’t do it all the time just most of the time. Now my hair seems shorter when I do twists my old go to hairstyle. I’m worried my hair is coming out like my moms and I’m creating traction alopecia. I’m also worried its generic and one day I’m going to wake up with no hair. My scalp seems sore at times and I really don’t know why. I’m trying to uses as little tension as possible. I’m worried, and if my hair does come out my mom will be there to say I told you so like always. She love being able to get the chance to say that to anyone in our family SMH.  

My hair don’t like me no more :(

~ chubbycurl34 ~ Leave a comment

I’m trying to whip my hair into shape for the wedding, but it won’t do what I tell it any more. It seems shorter like it has broken off but I don’t see a lot of hair coming out when I comb or finger detangle. I finally go a denman brush. I really like it, but its hard to keep clean. It gets all this gunk in it when I use it which is strange cause I’ve been trying to use less product. The dandruff came back so I changed some things up again. When I got really low on the patine co wash and cholesterol I started rinsing my hair with apple cider vinegar. I did this because I read on black girl long hair that it can stop dandruff. After that I melted down some Shea butter and ground up some vitamin c and put the whole thing in my hair. I’m not sure how much because i just eyeballed it. The first time my hair felt great. It was soft and shinny. The next time I must have used to much Shea butter cause my hair was very sticky. I did a braid out for my bridal/bachelorette party but it was way to fluffy and had little to know definition even despite the fact that I rolled it with flex rods. The rest of this week my hair has been a big epic fail that has put me in a funk all this week. 😦 we will see what happens. 

What my hair has been up to these-days. Dandruff ,allergies ,length retention.

~ chubbycurl34 ~ Leave a comment

So my hair has been going through some changes it seems . I’ve been natural for 6 1/2 years but for majority of the time I have had a problem retaining length. My hair has always stayed shoulder length.
In the begging I only used three products constantly. Pantene pro v shampoo and conditioner for ethnic hair, stay sof fro, and organic root stimulators olive oil. For about 4 1/2 years this is all I used. I started reading natural hair blogs and watching vlogs on you tube and I gained a new understanding for what products worked for natural hair and what didn’t. I stopped using my staple products and started my journey to find affordable products and hair styles that would promote growth . On my journey I’ve tried countless amounts of curly puddings conditioners shampoos but nothing really stuck. If it did stick it was out of my price range like miss Jessie’s or entwine couture. I usually try to find something cheeper to take the place of an awesome product.
Nothing was working well for me. Sulfate free and no suds shampoos left my hair dirty and shorter. I’ve really been at the end of my rope. I can’t finger detangle any more it just takes to much time, and with planing my wedding I just don’t have any. I stopped clipping my ends around the middle of last years cause my hair got shorter. Lately I started using some new products and developed a bad case of dandruff. I had never had such a large amount of dandruff nor have I had my head itch that bad. The products I started using was creme of nature argan oil shampoo and hair oil. With tresemme conditioner and cholesterol to maintain my color.
After I shampooed I would add the conditioner and cholesterol to my hair separately then detangle put on a plastic cap and a old winter cap and sleep in it for 6 hours.
As winter started to get into full effect my hair began to get really dry. So I decided it was time for a change. So I started using Palmers coconut oil leave- in for added moisture and I cut out the other two conditioners. Then I saw jojoba deep conditioner for sale in Walmart and I decided to give it a try. Then I was in target one day looking for some more coconut oil conditioner packs and I saw how cheep the palmers coconut oil was and I decide to try that too, and nix the Creme of nature stuff. By this time I had started to see a little dandruff and I thought it must be the shampoo. Things seemed to be getting better my hair felt moisturized and it seemed to get longer and much easier to detangle. I was happy. My hair felt happy.
Then my dumb butt decided to add another hair product to the mix. This is when things got out of hand. I started using Pantene pro v new co-wash cleansing conditioner. I liked it but the down Side was that I could scratch my scalp after I washed and still have old product build up left in my nails yuck! Then the extremely bad dandruff started.
I first notices it at work cause I have to wear all black. My work clothing looked like I had got caught in a huge snow storm and the snow didn’t want to melt. The itching was Terrible but I couldn’t ignore it I had t scratch. My hair was really unhappy and it was yelling it at me.
Recently I read an article on black girl long hair about allergies to natural hair products. Even though not all the product I was using were completely natural It got me thinking. I already have a lot of food and medication allergies. This could be a result of an allergic reaction. I don’t know why that never occurred to me before that I could have allergies to hair products. It really should have been at the front of my mind. I just thought my hair was going threw a thing or having a tantrum. So I used the last of my jojoba and cut out the palmers altogether. I kept the Pantene co-wash and reintroduced the olive oil and added taliah waajid leave in conditioner. I used this stuff some years ago and I found it to be a great replacement for the sta sof fro by soft Sheen Carson.
So far this week the dandruff stopped. It just started itching again today but that could be my nerves. I just saw the worlds biggest Rouches at work. So now I feel like something’s crawling on me every five seconds 😦 in short my hair seems happy and I can’t wait to get off work and spray down my clothes. :/ have a blessed day.

Same old same old thang

~ chubbycurl34 ~ Leave a comment

So what do you do when you realize you’ve tried every method there is when it comes to natural hair? I realize the other day I have not learned anything new in a long time. I’ve tried everything once or twice. Some things I liked and others not so much. Today I was on a friends Facebook page dedicated to natural hair, and I notice the things her and her followers are raving about are so 3 years ago for me. It’s good for them because they are still learning about what’s best for their hair but I’ve been there done that let’s move on please. I only comment when I feel it’s needed and I’m a member of the page out of support for me friend. So far I have gotten nothing new from the group. I’m the old dude in the club so to speak. Maybe this is a good position for me. I can help out new naturals with advice, but all of them might not want to hear me. I still feel like all these years later there’s something more out there that I don’t know about my hair. I guess for now I have to be content with my deep conditioning baggy methods and tuck and roll styles till I find the next best thing.

So you decided to go natural?

~ chubbycurl34 ~ Leave a comment

So you decided to go natural. It seem so simple and elegant so it was a fairly easy decision to make. You did not make this decision lightly. You did all the research and watched all the YouTube tutorials you could stand till you finally mustered up the courage to do a big chop. Now your in this you’ve fully transitioned, your natural. Now what? What do I do with this mass of hair on my head. That’s when reality hit you. I have to learn how to manage my hair. I want to look nice. What hair styles work for what event and situation? I need to figure out how to look presentable by my standards and know one else’s. who am I really. Yeah it just got that deep. I know it’s just hair it does not define you, but people will try to put you in a box just because of how you wear your hair. It’s your decision of if you will let them or if you want to fit in. Even in the natural world there are these so called hair police that will try to box you in to their way of thinking. Just because you big chopped does not mean you are free from oppression. There will alway be someone out there that thinks they know what is best for all and there way of whatever is law. I my self only bow down to God and his law so if I want to dye my hair purple it my business not yours. So you want to go natural hey? It’s a journey that’s different for everyone. This is your journey no one else’s. enjoy the process, the mistakes the love affair with your coils. This is about you defining you by your standards. Enjoy!!!