bring on the chemicals

Yall. What a crazy night in Boston...to wake up and hear all that went on while I was blissfully sleeping...unbelievable. Relatedly: nothing makes you feel dumber than hearing that the suspects are from Chechnya and immediately yelling at the NPR guy on the radio "WHERE THE EFF IS CHECHNYA??"...like, seriously, Erika? I need to put down the novels and pick up a map, apparently. I try to make myself feel better by remembering that the countries in and around Russia and Eastern Europe and the Middle East change names/borders/etc like once a week, and the map of that region has probably changed 200 times since the last time I was in school, but...still. It should go without saying, but my thoughts and prayers continue to be with Boston (and now Texas, sheesh) this week. What a terrible week...hopefully they will catch this other suspect today and let Boston start towards healing. Jesus, please.

And I will preface the rest of this about-to-get-really-shallow blog with the acknowledgment that I know this is like, lower than a zero on the Scale of Actual Problems. I recognize that complaining about my hair at a time like this is like...reprehensible. But it's been on my mind, and you people give good advice, and ya know...a girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do.

But seriously, yall. My hair.

As part of the Great Chemical Purge of 2012/2013, in an effort to lower the amount of weird endo-enhancing, estrogen-disrupting hormones I expose myself to, we embarked on the notorious Bird Food Diet. That has been well-documented, I would say, and somewhat well-adhered to. You know, except for when I'm at work and there is always delicious non-BFD food in the break room...then I fail to adhere. But that's beside the point. But I also tried to up our game in terms of decreasing the amount of weird chemicals we expose ourselves to in other contexts, like cleaning products and health and beauty products. For the most part I am pretty satisfied with the less-chemically products we've switched to, but when it comes to shampoo and conditioner, I am about to throw in the towel.

Those things are TERRIBLE.

BRING ON THE CHEMICALS.

I've tried maybe 3 different brands of shampoo and only one kind of conditioner (it's a HUGE bottle...ugh...and I hate to waste it, even as I hate to use it), and these things don't do jack. I may as well be rinsing my hair in saltwater every night and call it a day. It's not the in-shower 'performance' of the products that bugs me so much (a lot of people complain because  the more 'natural' products don't get sudsy/foamy like conventional shampoo does, which is weird, but not a deal-breaker for me)...it's the fact that MY HAIR IS AWFUL.

This is how I feel about the situation. NOT HAPPY.

I have long hair. But it's not like...unreasonably long. It's very straight. And here's what I do all day: sit in an office. Sometimes I get up and walk around. That's about it. So please tell me why, if I leave my hair down, I inevitably have GIANT RATS' NESTS of matted tangles all over the back of my head at like...3pm? SERIOUSLY? Like, if I'd been running...20 miles...with my hair down...with 50mph winds...and then I rubbed my hair around in some chewing gum...I could understand the matted-ness. This should not happen when all you do is sit around an office. It's disgusting. My hair is tangly, NOT soft, and even borderline frizzy sometimes, which it has never, ever been in my whole life. It's too STRAIGHT to be frizzy. Until now. And let's not even talk about how ridiculous it is when I wake up in the mornings. It's like if you got your prom up-do with 5,000 bobby pins and a bottle of hairspray, and then never took it down and slept on it for a week, and THEN took it down...imagine what would greet you? That's what I get to tame every morning. And you wonder why I wear a braid every day.

Obviously the question is...maybe my hair IS like this naturally, and it's been the chemicals I've been using (via shampoo and conditioner...I've never regularly used any other sort of 'product') for the last 29 years that leads me to believe I have non-frizzy, relatively silky, manageable hair. In that case, God bless you, chemicals. I can't wait to welcome you back into my life, as soon as I dump down the drain use up the rest of this 'natural' crap.

If anyone has any arguments as to why I SHOULDN'T re-embrace the chemical-filled goodness, this is your opportunity to convince me. I'm happy to continue using the green-er products that DON'T SUCK (ie: body wash, shaving cream, cleaning products, SOME makeup, laundry detergent)...but this shampoo/conditioner thing is just not going to be one of them (unless someone has a proven product recommendation that WORKS). I hate giving up on what should be a fairly painless lifestyle change (WAY easier than, say, going GF)...but hopefully I have adequately demonstrated that it is NOT painless. It is ridiculous. And that is why I have to say once more: bring on the chemicals.