The months are going by faster and faster! Or is it because it’s time to retighten again, though it seems like I just done it a few days ago. lol
The extra rinsing/washing I’ve been doing has helped those final 3 locs pictured above lose the braid pattern in the middle of the loc.
Excuse the look on my face y’all. Just got back from my walk but hey the locs are lookin’ good if I do say so myself!! lol
Hey y’all! I’m sitting here drinking another green smoothie. Well it’s more like a dark olive green but a smoothie it is. I tried something new in it today. I’ve got some “Big Red” mustard greens 
that I’m growing for the first time so I put a couple of leaves of that in, spinach which took it up to 2 cups of greens, frozen cherries, blueberries, a fresh plum, coconut creme 
, 1 heaping 1/2 teaspoon of mullein powder (used for respiratory ailments like sinus congestion), cinnamon, nutmeg and almond milk. I get the coconut creme from the same place I get my coconut oil from. That’s tropicaltraditions.com. It tastes pretty good. The mustard greens are not as strong as I thought they would be. That’s why I only used a couple of big leaves and finished the rest out with spinach. If you are trying green smoothies for the first time I recommend that you use spinach leaves. They are much milder than say kale or the other greens. Combined with the fruit, you don’t even taste them. The Big Red mustard green are classified as ornamental but are edible as well. My kind of plant though I think all fruits and vegetables are beautiful. The colors and combination of colors when they are put together is nothing short of a miracle.
Well, today makes 3 weeks of walking at least 5 times a week. Most weeks it has been 6 days. Of course life happens so I have not been able to do all 7 days but that’s ok because these past 3 weeks is more than I have done physical fitness wise than the past year. We are up to 7 miles non stop walking except for the occasion re-tie of the shoe and rock removal. Sometimes I even felt like jogging a tiny ways and I do mean tiny.
Disclaimer: All of the products mentioned in this post have been purchased by me. I have no affiliation with the producer/manufacturer or distributor of the product nor am I being paid to review the product. The opinions set forth in this post are solely my personal opinion.
Hi everyone! I thought share with you as I have done on my You Tube channel about an herbal cleanse I’m experimenting with for my scalp. After all this is somewhat of a hair blog right?
With this locking journey, I am discovering what my true hair texture is, what it really likes and so on. After my last retightening it dawned on me that I have an oily not dry scalp and dry porous hair. If you’ve been with me for awhile on this blog, you’ll remember me saying once the warm weather rolled around I was going to start rinsing my hair daily or at least every other day until it’s time to retighten. During those 4-6 days, I’ll spritz the locs.
Well, I noticed that on day 5 sometimes day 4 of the retightening session, my scalp would start acting up as it’s done for as long as I can remember. By the time I get to the top of my head (I work from back to front) my trouble spots would be itchy, a bit sore and of course when I scratched, would flake. What really made me take notice was this last time when I scratched and the flakes fell they were oily! How can that be when I had stopped oiling my scalp 3 months prior?
All these years I was thinking I had a dry scalp?! I was only making matters worse by adding more oil, washing my hair infrequently and when I did wash, it was with sulfate shampoos or too oily shampoos. Since I first put the braidlocks in, I started washing weekly but prior to that I was washing any where from every 2 weeks, stretching to 4 weeks as my hair grew longer and was more time consuming to maintain.
Thanks to MzCJA, I was inspired to do some research on herbs and came up with an herbal cleanse for my scalp. Check out her blog for her posts on her herbal infusions. I’ve been playing around with it for about a month now adding some herbs, taking some out but I’m so far satisfied with the batch I made yesterday. I’ve been using it for the most part on my scalp and as part of the base for the shampoo for the locs themselves for the past month. I’ve been massaging it on my scalp every other day and rinsing it out.
Here are the ingredients if you would like to try it:
2 cups Aloe Vera Juice
2 tsp Lavender flowers
1/2 tsp Fenugreek Seed powder
A few drops of cedarwood essential oil
1/2 tsp of the following dried herbs:
Thyme
Comfrey root
Comfrey leaf
Patchouli
Nettle
Chamomile
Burdock root
Horsetail (Shavegrass)
Hibiscus flowers
Marshmallow root
Coltsfoot
Rosebuds
Irish Moss
White Willow Bark
Marigold (Calendula)
(Skip the rest of the reading if you’d rather see/hear the video at the end of this post.)
Slightly boil the aloe vera juice. While you are doing that put all of your herbs in a jar. Pour the hot aloe over the herbs, put your top on the jar and let them steep. I usually do mine for at least 2 hours and I like to use a jar with a lid on it since it seems to hold the heat in longer than in a coffee cup.
All of these herbs have either astringent or emollient properties and some have both. Others have follicle stimulating properties. The result has been that my scalp feels cleansed but not stripped. I’ve been spraying the remainder on the locs since I’m now working out and they feel clean without being stripped as well. I’m still doing a weekly shampoo and I’ll do a another post at a later date after I’ve had time to observe how my locs react to this African Black Soap I just got as a giveaway.
OK, I just had a senior moment…I just realized I published the post WITHOUT the video. duh! So if you are reading this and want to see the video give me a moment alright! 😉 Some of y’all know what I mean! LOL
http://www.youtube.com/get_player
Disclaimer: All of the products mentioned in this post have been purchased by me. I have no affiliation with the producer/manufacturer or distributor of the product nor am I being paid to review the product. The opinions set forth in this post are solely my personal opinion.
Hey y’all! For the past 2 weeks actually, I’ve been participating directly and indirectly in a YouTube green smoothie challenge. I’m really glad that she had the challenge as it’s put a fire under my butt to get more fruits and green leafy vegetables that I would not normally eat on a regular basis in my diet. It’s been going on in 10 day segments. The new one started today.
It’s also motivated me to start back exercising. It’s been raining here a lot lately but it was dry enough for DH and I to get out and play volleyball the Saturday before last for the first time in a long long time. Starting this past Wednesday we went to the park that’s very close to the house. It has a “lake” with a walking trail around it that is 1 mile around. Forgive me but when you’ve grown up around one of the Great Lakes you tend to poke fun at anything that is labeled as a lake. To me it’s a pond at best or more like a watering hole. lol Anyway I’ve been walking almost every day doing at least 3 miles, doing 4 miles most days. I intend on keeping this up and on the days the weather is just too bad, I’ll put on some Funkadelic, James Brown, Micheal & Janet Jackson and dance! Yeah! As another one of the YouTuber’s I’m subscribed to says “Move your Meat!”
Just a quick one to note the 13 month mark for the locs. Have I mentioned at any time, I LOVE my locs! 😉
I thought of something else that I wanted to share as I reflect on this milestone. “Free your mind and the rest will follow. Be color-blind…don’t be so shallow”. That is a verse or the chorus from a song by the group En Vogue sometime in the nineties I think. It may seem unrelated to locking but it really does apply. At first I was only looking at information from braidlockers and Sisterlockers. Then I said to myself this is not how you live your life so learning about how to work with your hair should be not be any different. You might miss out on a gem just because you rejected it from the start based on narrow minded thinking and prior conditioning.
When I was overseas I went into the military base beauty shop to inquire and set up a future appointment to get my Jheri curl touch up. (Stop laughing ‘cuz if you are anywhere close to my age…you wore one too. lol) Anyway, the only beautician in the shop at the time was white. I told her wanted and she said she knew how to work on Afro-textured hair but she was a bit apprehensive. I made the appointment for the next Saturday. Something in my spirit said give her a chance.
So next Saturday came and I was there 10 min early for my 8:00 am appointment. Y’all, she had me in on time and out by
10:55 am. No that is not a typo or an exaggeration. I asked her to shape the top like I wanted and trim my ends. She did exactly that as I was especially impressed with the trim. Y’all know a lot of these stylists are scissor happy and there is a code language to getting what you want. If ya want a cut, tell em you want a trim and if you want it cut, you better be prepared for your hair to be a whole lot shorter than what you went in with. I made my next appointment for 8 weeks later as I only went in for touchups.
At the next appointment, I told her how much I liked my hair which I really did and that I had received so many compliments on it. She was relieved so I asked her why was she so nervous at first. She told me that many blacks refused to let her do their hair because she was white (actually German). I told her that I don’t care if you are brown, purple, green or got polka dots, as long as my hair looks good, is healthy (in that case as healthy as it could be with a relaxer type chemical) and it did look good even after a fresh touchup. Before her I never liked a fresh touchup. Y’all this was the first time I had been satisfied with a beautician’s work on my hair. Not to mention the service time. She was always on time and never for the almost year that I was going there, was in the shop more than 3 hours and y’all know how long it takes to put all those perm rods in your hair and the drying time. Plus y’all know about them perm salon days where you spent d*mn near ALL day in the shop or at least 4 hours…if you’re lucky. On top of all that, it was the first time in my memory that my hair touched my shoulders. I was so sad when the base closed because that meant I could not go to her any longer. After that I never had shoulder length hair (even stretched) again until now.
I’m getting to my point so hang with me. lol If I had dismissed her from doing my hair just because she was not of my culture, I would have truly missed out. Just because she was white did not mean she did not know anything about Afro textured hair. Obviously she knew not to leave that chemical on my fine textured hair for too long, something the other beauticians I went to did not because as I said, my hair got shorter and shorter. My routine and products did not change from her doing my hair as opposed to others. So that had to be the difference.
I said all that to say don’t reject someone just because they may not have locs started with the same method as yours or even locs for that matter. I have gotten so many gems of information that has been helpful to me on this journey from Free-form lockers to Relaxed ladies…that about covers the entire spectrum. As Cherie King says and I’m paraphrasing “Locs are just larger strands of hair. Some are thicker or thinner than others just like loose hair”.
You can apply this message to your life as well. Thanks for all the support in my journey so far.
The day is finally here. One year ago today, I embarked on this journey that I had no idea where it would take me. It has been another big accomplishment for me in that I did not have initial intentions of locking and I put them in myself. Honestly, I have enjoyed every day and minute of it. I have not had one bad hair day, or “ugly stage” as far as I’m concerned. If others though that..well that’s their problem, not mine. That may sound conceited but coming from a person in the not too distant past who did not have a lot of confidence in the way she looked, this is like the first steps on the moon. These locs represent a phase in my life where a new me is emerging. Building upon the positive of the past, infusing, combining and bringing out the repressed but equally positive parts of my being. I feel that these locs will be with me for a long time to come as they are a manifestation of this long new phase. As I mentioned in the last post, Saturn is transiting my first house, the house of self. The little bit I do know is, that it is the house of your personality, what people see when they first meet you. It’s also what I like to call your steering wheel. Kinda like how you go about handling yo business and are your “glasses” as to how you view the world. The feeling of this process which describes the meaning of Saturn is very much a slow and patient emerging, just like the butterfly pictured at the top of my page. I was fortunate enough to be graced with her presence last year on my back deck. It took some patience on my part and her’s but she finally let me get a good picture with her wings wide open. Ready to take off on the next adventure to see where life takes her.
Do I have any regrets or disappointments? Not really. I’ll admit that I was hoping for at least the same length I started with or a little longer. However, my main concern was that they did not come down so that I could wash my hair as much as I wanted and I got that.
To anyone who might be reading this blog because you are thinking about locking and are starting out with 6+ inches of hair, be fore warned that you may end up after your 1 yr mark with the same length you started with or a bit less. I’ve found this to be consistent amongst other lockers as well. I guess because there is more hair that has to go thorough the condensing process. But what goes up, must come down…eventually.
I even got brave last week and started co-washing. For anyone not familiar with the term that means washing your hair with conditioner only. Conditioners have mild cleaning agents in them which make them good for this purpose while leaving really porous hair like mine soft. Plus I still had some in the house from my loose hair days. Y’all know I hate to waste stuff I’ve paid money for. So far so good. Only problem with that is…even worse H-I-L disease. WOW, I thought my hair was feeling good before, whoa it’s scrumptious now. I don’t twist or twirl the locs, I just keep squeezing them like they’re Charmin. Some of y’all might be to young to remember those Charmin commercials. But they are so soft and fluffy, I can’t help it. Can’t y’all hear my locs hollerin’ “Damn will you PLEASE stop touching me”. lol All in all, I never thought I’d be this much in love with my locs.
Quick post noting the 11 month point! 30 more days till 1 year!!
There’s not much changes from last month. A few more have condensed in the front area probably hastened by the increased rinsing that I’ve been doing since last month. I plan to continue this through the summer. Though it’s been unseasonably cool this past week and right now, I’m sure the real summer heat is just around the corner. I sure am not complaining about the cool weather. lol
I’ve been asked by Kicukalah why I don’t use A/C and is it unhealthy? So I thought I’d address that in a post instead of in a comment.
First off let me say that I don’t condemn anyone who uses A/C. That would be indicative of the saying “get the stone out of your own eye before teasing someone else about their stone”. Y’all, I used to have the A/C turned up in my house so high you could literally hang meat up in there and it would not go bad. Yeah, no joke.
Getting to this point of not using A/C has been a long process taking place over several years. About 7 or so as I’m going into the 3rd summer of not using A/C. The initial reason and generally always the first consideration for most choices I make are monetary. Monetary in considering the on going costs vs the value I’m getting. The other is that I hate being dependent on something that I have to earn money for especially when you factor in the income taxes, gas taxes, sales taxes and all the other taxes that have to be paid. That’s only the beginning. To have $200 you’ve got to earn $250 (an estimate), so that you actually have $200. If anyone doubts that just take a look at the gross amount on your pay stub, then take a look at the net amount. Big difference huh?! Then you gotta pay your bills and buy all the stuff you need, so that you can get to work to earn that x amount of money you need to pay for whatever. ***stepping down of the soapbox**** When I began what was to originally to be a reduction in A/C use that led to no A/C use experiment. In 2001 when I started getting serious about getting debt free, I began looking for every which way to Sunday, up and down all around in which I could save money to apply toward my debts.
Here’s some background on how I got to no A/C use. This house is in an older neighborhood with many established trees. That helps greatly in reducing how hot the house gets. Also there are lots of windows for such a small house so I can take advantage of cross-ventilation when there is a breeze. After a while, I was finding while sitting down I was getting chilly with the A/C set on 78 degrees so I would turn it up to 79 or 80. Then gradually each summer I would turn the thermostat up till the summer where I was up to 86 degrees. There was a 1.5 year break when my mother was living with us. But when I got to that point I thought to myself, since you got the temp up this high lets try going without for a few days. Well that turned into 90% of the summer of 2007 which ended up being the hottest and driest summer on record for us and all of the summer of 2008.
As far as A/C being unhealthy, my take on it is this. A/C is a relatively recent thing available and affordable to the general public as in 1970s for some late 1980s for others. I fall in the later category. Most people could not afford to have central A/C in their homes. A/C is one of the largest users of electricity. The more watts an appliance uses the more it’s gonna cost you each month to use it. I refuse to have a $300-700 electric bill in the summer. Yeah, there are people here in this area who pay that much on their electric bills in the summer. I ain’t one of ’em. It goes back to what I talked about in the third paragraph. I like being efficient with my time and money with time being much more valuable to me than money. That saying time is money is BS! You gotta have time in order to make money but time does not need money. Time goes on despite how much you have or don’t have and each person is only given so much of it, regardless of how monetarily wealthy you are or not. I personally don’t know of anyone who was on their death bed saying “I wish I spent more time at the office”. If I’ve got to spend more time at a job or multiple jobs that I hate because my expenses are high, then yes, it’s unhealthy for me. I firmly believe stress is the #1 cause of weight gain, and all these dis-eases that are unheard of in cultures that have not been “civilized”. ***Ok, now I’m really stepping off the soapbox***
I’ve also found that my appetite has regulated itself back to where it was when I was younger, before having A/C. Back then in the summer my appetite would slow down because I’m just not as hungry when it’s hot. I’ve been able to maintain a 40 now 50lb weight loss and I know this is one of the contributing factors. And yes I’m in an area of the country where it’s hot and humid in the summer. I’m now much more adaptable to the heat. Being constantly under A/C makes your body much less tolerable of the heat. I only wish I would have done this when I bought the house. I would have saved myself thousands of dollars that I can really use right now.
So those are my reasons for not using A/C anymore. See what get when you ask me a question? lol
I was going through my post list looking for new comments to old posts and came across this draft that I completely forgot about dated 4/14/09. It’s still relevant even though it was done 3 months ago. lol
I hope that everything is OK where you live. Storms came through here, bringing with them high straight line winds early Monday morning so I’ve been without power for almost 2 days. It went out at 2:15 am and I just got power back about an hour ago around 4:45 pm. It’s reminded me how 1) Procrastination sometimes pays off, 2) Reducing/eliminating meat intake pays off in ways other than health and 3) how dependent we are on electricity.
Yes, I procrastinate sometimes though I’m looking at it in a positive way or maybe trying to justify it. lol What I mean by looking at it in a positive way is that I being an Aries, have a tendency to be impatient, make snap decisions and charge forward without thinking. Basically leaping without looking first. This characteristic was very prominent when I was younger. Now that I’m more seasoned lol I think a bit more, sometimes too much. That’s my Virgo rising which has become much more pronounced in my persona. What does that have to do with stormy weather or anything for that matter you ask or for some of you other Sun/Rising signs not known for patience ahem, Cancer, Leo, Sagittarius, Scorpio, you’re probably saying get to the point already!?! lol OK, I was planning on going grocery shopping this past Friday and for one reason or another, probably laziness, I did not go.
Since I did not go grocery I did not have extra stuff that had to be refrigerated and with this 38 hour power outage that could have been longer, I did not have to worry about loosing food that I just spent hard earned money on.
That leads me to the second point of reducing/eliminating meat intake. I’ve significantly reduced the amount of meat that my husband and I eat over the last 3-5 years. Since we still like to eat out on occasion, I’ve decided to cook very little meat at home. We still eat salmon. That translates into having very little meat in the freezer that could have spoiled in this prolonged power outage. The goal is to get to 100% vegetarian in the next year or two.
Lastly, we have become very dependent on electricity for day to day living. Now admittedly, I really enjoy the Internet as I’ve met some wonderful people in just the last year or so and missed not being able to go online for almost 2 days. However, I enjoyed the sounds of nature and things other than electronic noises. I went back to my first love of reading books. Some people were complaining about the loss of electricity but it got neighbors outside talking to each other. Though for the most part it was the neighbors that usually talk to one another anyway but still it got people… out of the house and into nature. Since hubby & I canceled satellite TV a couple of weeks ago and we do not use A/C, the power outage was just a minor inconvenience. That’s another way my procrastination paid off. I was looking into go with bare bones basic cable TV service since they were offering a package with the broadband I already have with them that was cheaper than what I was paying with satellite and broadband service. Well on my birthday, hubby surprised me by saying he was not going to watch network/cable TV anymore. What?! Who are you and what have you done with my husband? Y’all I love this man but this is the same man who complained the last time the satellite was out because the dish had gotten misaligned and they could not come out for 2 days to fix it?! Whew, I’m so glad I had not already called to change over to cable because having to cancel that soon after starting it I’m sure they would have charged me a cancellation fee.
Well, that’s my 2 cents for the day.
CeraIsis 