Happy New Year!

I hope you all had a Merry Christmas, Happy Kwanzaa and a wonderful New Year. I have been lazy lately and didn’t feel like uploading pictures in order to update my blog. I didn’t take much time off during the holiday season, so any amount of down time I had was actually time used to prepare for my book club’s December meeting, which I always host and preparing for Christmas. When you have to cook several dishes for the holiday meals, it can be a bit overwhelming when you decide you will not use any annual leave during the holidays. However, I did break down and took off New Year’s Eve so I could clean and run errands.

Book Club Meeting

December’s book was Naked Love by Darnella Ford; if you haven’t read it pick it up. All the members enjoyed the book and we had a great discussion about the story. When members were calling me prior to the meeting they would ask why I was intent upon reading the book and my answer was, “I love literary works, but I like to read about flawed people and how they deal with life.” Our December meeting is always festive. This year I decided we would not draw names because of the economic situation many are facing and I wanted folks to use that money to help a needy child or person. Plus, the best present was our President-Elect Obama. Of course we had a great spread with my usual dishes. For some reason I decided that I was not going to be overwhelmed and basically wasted no time in getting things done in a timely manner. One of my friends was to come over an hour earlier to help me set up, but she was late and when she got there I was done. My time management was the bomb. It was a great meeting and although some members were missing, the meeting still was one of the best we have had.

Christmas

Christmas this year was a small affair. My cousin’s mother-in-law died in her sleep on Christmas Eve. So that was shocking, because it only seems like yesterday we were burying my uncle after Thanksgiving in 2007. However, we managed to have a festive day with good food, good people, and great drink and of course the mandatory card games. Um, I don’t know how to play cards and ain’t trying to learn but it is fun to listen to the trash talking. Unfortunately, I had to work the day after, but I put in four hours and went home and slept the afternoon away. All my decorations were down by the Sunday after Christmas, again not wasting time.

New Year’s Eve

I had no plans to go to any parties so that night stayed home. I boiled some crab legs and corn and drank Sparkling Apple Cider at the stroke of midnight. Due to my having a blistering headache all day, I didn’t drink any liquor. I woke up NYE morning with my head hurting and I took a couple of aspirin which kinda pushed it to the back of my head only for it to return after I dropped my Apple Cider in Sam’s. Embarrassing. Next time I get a buggy even if it is for one item. (Sam’s allowed me to get another package, yeah!)

New Year’s Day

My cousin cooked the requisite black eye peas, cabbage instead of collards, roast, chicken, rice and cornbread. We ate and sat around watching football games. Another lazy day.

Hair

I had my most recent retightening on December 11th. My consultant and I talked about my locks that have thinned, lost locks and combining the locks that have yet to swell and are just too small. She said that sometimes a lock will lock to a certain extent and she should me how in the thin areas the lock was still in the pattern, but that portion failed to mat for some odd reason. This is fixable on most locks, if caught early. She told me to stop pulling them off, as I have been doing. I only did 3 like that. She said they can be cut, but not just yet. She did some trimming this time because she only had about 30 minutes worth of locks to retighten. We discussed me banding and braiding and when I could stop. Okay I asked if I could stop with the banding and braiding and she said, “No!” Although, I do have some locks that are completely locked, I still have some that are prone to slippage and unraveling. I guess to prove her point, I had a lock on the side that I thought was lock almost completely slip out and I had it banded and braided. :::sighing::: I’ll be 2 years SL on January 9, 2009 and my hair still acts like a baby.

As far as retightening it has gotten much better. I find that if I just retighten without some rigid guideline and do it by feel only, I move faster and get done sooner. When I told my consultant it took 5.5 hours to retighten each side of my hair she was shocked. She says I’ll get better and try to do the retightening without a mirror and see what happens. Well during some down time, I did just that and I was able to finish the front of my head in 5 hours and the back in 2. Better. I also realize waiting until 4 weeks isn’t always necessary especially with my hair being so soft in the back and it slips much easier, so I am constantly retightening in the area. Probably part of my OCD. I don’t go back until February and then probably every three months until I only go once or twice a year.

Congratulations to all the new Sisterlock converts. It is so nice to see so many folks embracing natural hair. Hopefully, I’ll have some pictures up by the weekend or the first of next week. I got my new Tomaka’s Twist right before Christmas and I have been rocking that bad boy for a minute now. Nothing extraordinary has happened to my hair, but being able to retighten my hair on my own has saved me money. Happy New Year!