no shampoo, and other eccentricities

[dragonlady7]

So I joined a couple of very active communities a little while ago. First I joined longhair, and then I joined thirty_twod (I always read that name as a verb). So now I'm not just a person with long hair, I'm a long-haired person; I'm not just a kind of top-heavy fat chick, I am a DD plus. Funny how being among others that share a particularly exaggerated characteristic can make you so over-aware of that characteristic-- but it has really helped me in having the confidence to find my proper bra size (I can't explain why that was such a big deal, but it read as vanity for me to say, "No, the size charts don't work, and when they tell me I should wear a 38 band size, they're wrong"-- it seemed like I was being vain, and claiming not to be fat when I was, but it's the truth-- over a DD, the random conventional bra-sizing system of "add a random number of inches to your underbust measurement to get your band size" really does break down. Some of the women on that community wear band sizes smaller than their underbust measurement, just to have enough support in the band so their shoulders don't hurt all the time. But I digress.)

Anyhow, today I decided to try washing my hair without shampoo. I've used conditioner only in the past, but my hair was dull and heavy afterward, and further research has pointed out that the conditioner is laden with silicones and related chemicals that coat the hair strand and initially make it shiny, but over time build up and cause damage, actually exacerbating split ends by filling the split and forcing the separated pieces of hair shaft farther apart, and so on. So putting more conditioner into my hair wouldn't really keep it from developing the damage that always makes me have to trim it eventually.

So I made a paste of water, baking soda, and honey, and rubbed it into my scalp really well, and then rinsed it; after that was rinsed, I rinsed with a cup of apple cider vinegar diluted with about two cups of water. I realized immediately that either I have ridiculously sensitive skin, or most of the longhairs who use this method wash their hair with their head upside-down, because the vinegar stung the skin of my back and thighs something awful! It didn't cause any lasting damage, fortunately. Then I rinsed my hair for a long time under plain water, and toward the end, turned the cold water on to make the final rinse cool. A lot of people insist that this is crucial, so I figured I'd try it.
I dunno, I was cold.

The #1 thing I noticed was that my hair doesn't smell like shampoo. It was very oily when I washed it-- not because it was particularly dirty, but because on Sunday morning I'd oiled it with regular olive oil before I braided it. I've been using oil instead of gel when I braid it for sports, because it seems like a more healthy alternative, and after having been oiled, when I wash my hair next it's much softer. It's kind of gross when oiled, in that it's stringy, but it's very manageable and doesn't even entertain a moment's notion of tangling, so I can see how in the eras before shampoo oil was used to keep hair manageable. It's not bad, it's just not really compatible with the modern aesthetic.

My hair hasn't quite dried yet, so I can't judge the final effect. As it's dried it smells better, but it doesn't smell like shampoo. Or vinegar. It smells a bit like... well, like human, which is something that modern cleaning products tend to want to avoid. So we'll see how I deal with it. It reminds me a bit of the passage in Martha Wells's Fall of Ile-Rien trilogy-- I forget which book, probably the first one, The Wizard Hunters, where Tremaine is smelling Ilias's hair.

I am not opposed to living a very natural lifestyle, I just don't want to fall entirely out of synch with the modern aesthetic. I don't want to be stinky and weird and have greasy hair, I want to look relatively normal and smell nice and not stick out as being weird. I just don't really like shampoo and don't really value a lot of the stuff normal people value, so it's hard not to be eccentric. Ironically enough, the Internet, by connecting me to a lot of people, has encouraged me in my natural tendency toward weirdness.

I have to admit, though, that a lot of my recent trend toward being Back To Nature and reducing my carbon footprint and whatnot is for weird personal reasons, not because I actually care that humanity is destroying the Earth or whatever. I just really don't like throwing stuff away, and hate having to buy new stuff, and don't like having possessions that only fill one purpose, and stuff like that. I hate how I never have the right size tampon, and how just when I get to like one kind of shampoo they change the packaging and the formula, and also I honestly cannot be bothered to buy a car.

I really ought to get my own car. The power steering on the Prius failed on Saturday and it's likely to be an expensive and stupid repair. Meanwhile I'm stuck and can't run any errands or get to work or practice, bah humbug.

I rollerskated to the post office today. I had not skated outdoors since August or so, when I was first learning to skate and totally sucked at it.
I neglected to put on elbow pads and was acutely aware of it the entire time, but didn't even have a moment of thinking I would fall. It's just that from roller derby I'm used to falling, and used to anticipating falling, and used to thinking about how to get up from a fall, and suddenly realized that part of my natural falling style involves a mild risk to the elbows.
Anyway-- it's very strenuous to skate outdoors, I realized. There's no distraction or rhythm of going around corners-- skating a roller derby track is a relaxing rhythm, really, of crossing over and then one outward stroke around the wide part of the track and then crossing over stepstepstepstepstep out, in, stepstepstepstep out, in, etc. Outdoors you just kind of whoosh, whoosh, whoosh, whoosh, whoosh, whoosh, ohshitpothole, whoosh, whoosh, whoosh-- I got excited when there was a turn to make so I could cross over.
The only unnerving thing was that dragging my toe stop to stop was like pulling rubber across a cheese grater, and I was too frightened of damaging my wheels to try to do the stop where you put your rear foot perpendicular to your front foot. I'll try it on a rink floor, but it just seems like begging for trouble to do it outdoors.

I rollerskated because I didn't have time to walk. Suddenly I'm the press person for the league; the previous person's mother is in stage 4 lung cancer so she's kind of busy dealing with that, and I was all, you know what, I whine a lot about having no time but at least my mom's not actively dying. So I took over, and Z gave me a huge list of people I should contact. I'm just trying to get over my mild but unpleasant phobia of calling strangers on the phone.


Anyway, I'm completely eccentric and weird now, and kind of like it. I just sort of wish I didn't have this job anymore, but if I quit it I have to find another, so I'm trying to hold off on that for now.

Oh-- I got the first bra I've ever had that really fit me [see earlier post, photo under cut] from Figleaves.com, by the way. They're a UK company but (duh!) since there is basically nowhere in the US to get DD+ bras in attractive styles, they've been smart enough to add a warehouse this side of the pond, and have a site in US dollars. The unique feature that, thusfar, sets them apart from other sites is that returns are free-- so if, like me, you're a really hard to fit size, in a size range that varies at random by manufacturer and apparently by the whim of the factory employee (I've heard tell of bras within the same line having variances of up to three inches in the band, in the same labeled size, to say nothing of the completely random shit they make up about cup sizes-- there is no science in the entire industry, I promise), you're going to need to buy and return about six bras just to find one that fits.
Figleaves accomodates that, and so they've become my new Favorite Site In The World. Just thought I'd share that-- I know it's not only larger cup sizes that have trouble finding bras, it's just that the larger cup sizes wind up having this be a crisis rather than a minor inconvenience, due to there being, you know, fifteen pounds of unsecured breast-flesh wreaking havoc on downtown Tokyo when the bra fails to appease them.


And oh yes. We got our team photos done. Nickel City Knockouts: we are sexy bitches.

My mom said the photos were "very racy", and now I'm kind of worried that I have gone so far that I don't see that at all. What on earth does she mean? Are bare arms sinful, now? Did I miss something?

Comments

[that-redhead.livejournal.com]

Your pictures are racy? She obviously hasn't seen the Dollies photos, heh. My team must be a bunch of sexpots, lol.

[dragonlady7.livejournal.com]

> sexpots

*fans self*

So the Knockouts, the other night, after a team practice, were sitting around and having a cooldown session that involved asking each other a series of questions.
Holly's question was, "Think of everyone in the league. Who would you 1) marry, 2) fuck, and 3) throw off a cliff?"

My answer was, "Uh... can I give you a top 5 for each of those?"
But even that would be a struggle. ;)

(An amusingly high proportion of us chose Supernova (http://www.flickr.com/photos/8011073@N08/469882294/) for #2. Can you blame us? But the funniest part is that she wasn't even there that night so she still doesn't know this.)

[that-redhead.livejournal.com]

I would definitely choose Supernova for #2 as well, lol.

I can think of a few for #3, but as for #1, I dunno.

[ethangilchrist.livejournal.com]

Nah. Not too racy at all. Sexy? Sure! Hell's yeah! But not racy. At least not in the sense I think she means it.

[deannahoak.livejournal.com]

They're great photos. :-) She is just worried that y'all look too good!

[mother2012.livejournal.com]

Racy? Not for athletic uniforms. Perhaps she's looking more at the flirty poses. Or perhaps, after a winter of covered legs, she isn't used to seeing them. That happens to me.

Thanks for the bra site.