Recovering/Brushing

So, I've had the flu (or a flu-like illness) this past week. Good news is that it seems mostly to be over. Bad news is I'm weak as hell after spending six days in bed, and not really being able to eat three of those days. :( It's gonna take awhile to get my strength back up so I don't feel I need to go lay down after doing... well, anything.

Bleh. This stuff sucks.

The upshot is that a week in bed was possibly good for my aching back-- we'll see after I've stopped taking flu-painkillers and start moving around again. Also I've started a six week back-pain-be-gone system, which, with continued use over the years, took away my adviser's wife's back pain for these past couple decades. I'm hopeful.

But the important thing to note today is that my hair is long. Yes, officially, my hair is long. I got out of the shower and looked into the mirror as it dripped down my back and I thought briefly, 'I'm never going to be able to brush this by myself. I'm way too weak.'

The thing was, that's an old thought resurfacing unexpectedly from the last time my hair was long back in Chicago. When I wasn't feeling well or when I'd had a tiring day or something, my arms would wear out trying to brush out the tangles after a wash-- that, even with the two handfuls of conditioner slathered through. And when I say my arms would wear out, I mean that sometimes I would get about halfway through and ask Michael to do the rest because he would just have to reach forward and brush, whereas I would have to spend extended periods of times contorted into strange hair brushing positions in order to run the brush through the full length of it. It was tiring.

But that was then.

I've been doing the baking soda rinse wash / vinegar rinse condition now for about a year and a half. My hair was chin length when I started this. But now, now it is long. And now that it is long, here are the problems with the baking soda/vinegar thing:

1) My hair loses its body if I wash too many consecutive times with too much baking soda and vinegar. A couple times yields no change in the light curly bounce, but four or five times and it starts to get flat.

2)

No, it's really just the one thing. And that can be rectified by either waiting a couple days to wash again (ponytail days) (but let's be frank, most days are ponytail days anyway) or by just being careful not to use too much during the next few washes.

When I had short hair and started using baking soda and vinegar instead of shampoo and conditioner, it started taking only six brush strokes to brush out my hair after a shower rather than then [many] that it took before. Now that I have long hair, it still only takes six brush strokes to brush out my hair after a shower.

So when I looked in the mirror today and saw all that wet hair, and the thought of brushing it filled me with dread for the enormous amount of strength it would take to accomplish that feat, it was only momentary. Because then I realized that my hair doesn't knot the way it used to when I used shampoo. And even in my post-flu weakened state, I could still brush my hair all on my own.

And that made me happy. Just wanted to share.