Thought For The Day: Audrey Hepburn’s Words

I adored Audrey Hepburn. I loved her in every movie she was in, and even in her final years, I thought she was the epitome of grace, beauty and womanhood.  In a pixie cut or in the long hair of the later 60s, she was always stunning.

I still remember as a child, seeing Breakfast at Tiffany’s for the first time.  Whether she was wearing pigtails, or a glamourous updo, I remember being fascinated by her hair in that film.  I was thinking about her today, and I remembered reading this quote several years ago.

I read it again today, and I want to share it with you.  Really think about the words, and I hope it strikes a chord with you, as it does with me.

“For beautiful eyes, look for the good in others;

for beautiful lips, speak only words of kindness;

and for poise, walk with the knowledge that you are never alone.”

I’ll let you ponder this, as I wish you all a wonderful weekend.

Today Is a Bad Hair Day

All I really wanted to do today for my blog was a style tutorial.  However, my hair is not in the mood to cooperate.

My hair is just too slippery today.  I tried a French Twist, and it slumped.  I tried a Figure 8 and it fell out.  I did a 5 Strand Braid Half-up, and it just drooped.

I won’t say I’m not frustrated, because I really am.  Yet as I wrote in this post, we all have bad hair days from time to time. 

Why is my hair so slippery today?  I washed the same way, with the same conditioner that I always do, and I thought that I had rinsed it as long as usual, but for a reason that eludes me, my hair just doesn’t feel the way it usually does.  That’s just the way it is today.

So, I’ve settled for just wearing a messy Wrapped Hairstick bun, which is one of my bad hair day go-to styles.  One really can’t go too far wrong with this one.

It’s meant to look messy.  One day this month, I’ll give instructions on how to do the Wrapped Hair Stick Bun, but for now, I’ve had enough of attempting to style my hair. 

I’m pretty sure that if I tried to document this hairstyle step-by-step today, I would get more frustrated than I already am.  I’m not about to do that. 

I think I’m going to forget about anything to do with hair for the rest of the day, and just watch a movie.  Yes, that is just what I’ll do.

Feeling Good About Reassessing My Goals

I woke up this morning, had a shower and washed my hair.  I was very pleased with how my hair looked when it was dry.  The trim really helped.

As I’ve discussed before, the chemical damage on the bottom few inches of my hair is driving me crazy.  The hair is still shiny, due to the good care that I give it, and the damage isn’t always obvious in photos, but I can feel it. 

Anyone who has damaged areas in their hair knows just how different that damage feels than the rest of the hair, especially when wet.

In days gone by, I would not have had the patience to even keep my hair as long as it is.  I would have cut out all the damage even if it meant a pixie cut.

However, I am slowly learning a bit of patience.  It is taking a bit of trial and error though, to figure out just how much to regularly trim. 

I had really thought that cutting 1/3 of my growth every three months would be a good enough compromise, but I really watched my hair over the past two months, and I realized that the damage catches up to my ends more quickly  than that trimming regimen allows.

So now, as I mentioned yesterday, I will be trimming off half of my growth until the damage is gone.  It’s going to be quite easy for me to both see and feel where that damage ends.

It’s made me have to readjust my timeline, and it’s going to be much longer to get to my next goal, which is BSL.  I was already getting impatient to get there, but I really have to remember that this is a journey, not a race.

I charted my projected growth and trims with my new trimming plan, and I should still be able to get to BSL by the end of the year.

I will be able to reach waist length and longer by the end of next year for sure.

While it’s disappointing to still pay for damage that I did to my hair over two years ago, it’s been a learning experience, and I know that however long it takes, I will reach my goal.  It’s just going to take longer than I’d hoped.

I’m not going to try to kid you or myself; it’s not going to be easy to be as patient as I need to be, but it’s a choice between long, nice-looking hair in the long term or long raggedy looking hair in the short term.

To me, it’s not contest.  I’m always about quality over quantity.  I just need to keep my eye on the goal and exercise more patience than I had originally thought.

I’ll tell you a secret though.  If it wasn’t for this blog, I would have been sorely tempted to get rid of all of the damage, which would have taken me just around shoulder length.  I know I would have regretted that, so again, I’m so grateful to be accountable to you who read this.

‘Til tomorrow, my friends.

Two Steps Forward, One Step Back

It was time to trim my hair today. I’ve mentioned before that I planned to trim one third of my growth every three months.  This is to remove the old damage, of which several inches are left, and also to keep my ends from looking raggedy.

However, when it came time to trim, I realized before I even took that first snip that I was going to have to trim off more than just a third of my growth.

My hair had been cut in a very sharp v-shape, and I want to start leveling it out a bit.  If I just cut off 3/4 of an inch, almost none of the length would have been trimmed.  There was such a tiny bit of hair at the point of the vee, that it was almost pointless to trim it and expect that my ends would look less jagged.

So I thought about it for a long time and ended up doubling the amount that I trimmed.  So in essence I cut off about half of my growth of the past three months. I really didn’t want to lose the length, but on the other hand, my ends looked terrible.  I would rather have hair an inch shorter than planned than have longer hair with ends I despise.

A really important part of growing my hair is doing my best to make sure that it remains as healthy looking as possible.

If it takes me double the time to achieve my goals, so be it.  This is really where patience is going to be needed.  The sooner I get the rest of the damage cut out, while still managing to keep growing, even a bit, the better.

So, I’m not exactly ecstatic with losing more length than I hoped, but it did beat the alternative of having ends that I was unhappy with.  That past damage is really coming back to haunt me more than I thought it would.

I must admit that I do hope that this is a good growth month.

Off-Topic Tuesday: June

June is here! I love the month of June. However for me, it was ushered in both pleasantly and unpleasantly. 

I had been unwell for several days, but I thought I was on the mend. I went to bed at a reasonable hour last night, and I was shocked to wake up before 2 a.m. I was cold and shivery, and it immediately hit me; I have a fever. D’oh!  I needed to use the bathroom and take some Tylenol for the fever, but I was so chilled and chattery that I just couldn’t get up the nerve to get out from under the covers.  So there I lay for an hour and a half, until finally, I got up the gumption to get out of bed and put on some warmer clothes. I took my temperature.  101.9. I was not happy, to say the least. I took Tylenol and an anti-nauseant, as I felt that I was extremely nauseous, and I used the bathroom.

I was afraid that I wouldn’t be able to get back to sleep, but when I turned on the TV, I quickly realized that I did need to go back to bed, where I fell asleep for almost another two hours.

So it’s been another wasted day around here, with my fever going up and down according to my Tylenol level, and I feel very nauseous and ill.  I seem to be in that altered state that comes with fever and I don’t feel entirely lucid. Not an auspicious start to the month.

However I may be feeling though, June is certainly here in all of its splendour.  It thunderstormed in the night, but today has been beautiful, sunny and warm.  Although I’ve been too unwell to really get outside and enjoy it, it’s so lovely to see the June sun shining on the lush green leaves of the trees as they sway in the light breeze we have today.

Days like this take me back to childhood, and the promise of summer holidays just a few weeks away. Even now, all these years later, I still feel that elation that June brings with it. I imagine I’ll feel that way all of my life.

Today I’ll leave you with a recent photo of my dog Barclay. It’s a favourite photo of mine.  We’ve always suspected that something was up with him, but finally Barclay we caught in the act of being a secret agent, using his shoe-phone to report on the cat.  We blew his cover.

Thank you again to everyone who reads my words, and please know how much I appreciate it.