We have entered mullet territory

Anyone who's every grown out a pixie will tell you that it is a long, slow and painful process. :P  You go through the short, cool and manageable phase (6 months for my ultra short pixie).  Then you slide into OMG I have a mullet territory, which is where I have finally arrived.

It's been 7 months since my last cut and the dreaded mullet has appeared.  I'm cheap.  Too cheap to go to a salon for two snips at the back of my head, so last evening, I took care of business myself.

Mullet land....

 

Neat and trimmed

Add a cute little braid to keep the bangs back and we have reached sustainability! :D  I read somewhere about the braid idea.....really like the way it adds that soft touch that's lacking mostly, with the short hair.  Plus I miss braiding!  Oh, I used to have hair that I could put two French braids in, one on each side......some day. :)

Plan is to keep the back trimmed up out of mullet-land while the rest catches up and then just let it grow!

The "almost one year" post

Close enough, right?  It's been almost one year since I last dyed my hair with the henna and 7 months since my uber short pixie cut that I got back in August of 2014.

Here's a collage from May of last year through this month showing the progress.

Day to day, it doesn't seem to be growing at all.  I guess it is though. :)  I'm just impatient.  I haven't regretted the decision to stop the dye for one second.  The pixie.....maybe once or twice. ;)

I'll be glad when I can just pull it back in a p-tail and forget about it.  I'm "that" into my hair.  Hehehe.

I'll do another update on March 15th, which is the true one year anniversary of my last dye job.  After that we're on year two!

December Update

It's December already, can you believe it?!?  What a year this has been.  Here's a quick recap before I go into the December "grey hair" update. :)

The last time I dyed my hair with Hendigo was March 15, 2014.  That's 262 days ago, or roughly 8.6 months.

Here I was back in May 2014 with two months new growth.

Two months later, I was getting impatient with the slow growing roots, it was hot and my thin scraggly hair was getting on my nerves!  I went to work on August 1st looking like this:

And went home looking like this:

Hello pixie cut. :)  Now the intention wasn't to always have wicked short hair.  I liked my hair long and I miss it.  I miss the fullness that it used to have too, which it seemed to have lost over the past few years.

So with all my past pixies, I get it cut once and then just let it grow until I can't stand it anymore.

September 2014

October 2014

November must have been a busy month, 'cause I seem to have failed to take a photo update.....but here I am as of today, December 2nd.

 

It's too long to do that spikey thing in the back now, so I mostly just let it go or tie up the bangs in a clip when they get obnoxious.  Here's the interesting part.......I think I found out why my hair was losing it's fullness.  Long story, kinda personal, but might be worth sharing with my fellow women.

For the past 4 years, my hair has been shedding.  Not a normal shedding, but a rapid shed.  So much so that the growth could not keep up with it.  I would run my fingers through my hair and get strand after strand of hairs with tapered ends, hairs not more than 4" long, sometimes shorter.  This was really distressing for me.  I knew that it meant my hair was not going through a normal growth cycle and that I likely would never be able to grow long hair, which I had loved so much in the past.

My lovely hair in 2007

The shed was accompanied by terrible tingling and burning of the scalp.  I had resigned myself to thinning, shedding hair that must be kept short by necessity, or otherwise look hideous.  It was a very scary and depressing place to be!  But, as with all in life, you just deal. 

Here's where things get a little personal, but I'll share a modest amount in the hopes that this information might help another woman who may be experiencing the same thing.

Since getting married in 2003, I'd been on the birth control pill.  My husband and I knew we didn't want kids so that seemed like a great way to make sure an accidental mini-us didn't happen.  I supposed as you age, your body changes and at 26 you're a whole different person than you are at 37 (holy shit, I'm 37! :o).  Through a series of minor events my interest was piqued into researching what these hormonal replacement pills do to your body.  My skin was looking old, thin, dry with dark patches on my face (melasma), my hair was in TE (telogen effluvium) and had been for several years, meaning it was chronic, my personality was dry, dead, snappy.  I felt like I was in PMS 24/7/365.  Combine that with the risk of blood clots/stroke/cancer and I had had enough of these little pills.  On September 13, 2014, I quit the BC Pills for good.  In short, it was the BEST decision I have ever made.  I feel like ME again.  My skin looks smooth and elastic, dark spots are fading away.  I'm fortunate in that my body was able to pick up hormone production immediately and am quite standard when it comes to that sort of thing.  But you know what the most awesome, incredible thing is???  Two months after stopping those pills, my hair shedding reduced to normal levels!  My scalp feels right again!  It no longer hurts to touch my head or brush my hair.  And my hair, it's growing faster!  I firmly believe that the pill was the reason my hair had been failing so badly for the past 4-5 years.  Oh, I have such great hopes that my hair will come back!  It will be silver now, but I want it long again! 

My take away for all the women out there who may be reading this is please, if you are experiencing odd symptoms and are on hormonal BC, don't discount the BC as the probable cause!  It was messing with me, big time.  I've been off it 80 days now, and feel FANTASTIC! 

So, not only will this blog be about how my hair is turning grey, it will also be about getting my length back!  Hmmm, wonder how long that will take???  Peace out!

September and October updates

Catching up a bit from the August 1 Pixie cut. :)  Here's where I was a month later, on September 2nd.  Pretty slow growing!

Add 27 days to that and it started to get quite shaggy.  Funny how hair grows more during some months than others. :)

 

I was wearing headbands all the time 'cause I just couldn't deal with the whispy scraggly top hairs.  So, on 10/12, I trimmed it up a bit.  Leaving the bangs for now, but most of the dye is gone from the rest of my hair. :)

I kinda like the messy punked out look. :)  Easy to wear too.  The only products I use are some organic shampoo and conditioner followed by a mix of Eqyys Megatek (yes, the horse stuff) and Cowboy Magic detangler.  A small dollup of Megatek and a smidge of the Cowboy Magic mixed together and worked through the hair gives perfect texture when dry.  Love the stuff.  I hate regular mousses, wax and hair sprays too, so it's great that leave-in conditioner does the trick. :)

Days since last Pixie cut? Zero!

It's August folks and guess what I said I was going to do in August?  Get another pixie!

So, on a whim (not really) I went to a salon on my lunch break and went from this:

 

To this:

 

Such fun!  Such freedom!  No more pulling, no more headbands (unless I want to), no more barrettes.  Ahhh.  The gray is really mottled looking on the sides and in the back.  The stylist seemed to think another 12 - 16 weeks should do the trick and get rid of the rest of the color.

I want the bangs longer, but that's how short they were, so we'll just have to wait a bit and then the cut will be exactly how I want it.  Hooray!

So happy.  Just wish I wore a little makeup to work today!  Wasn't expecting to get it cut. :)

 

Reverse "Skunk Stripe"

Lol, I couldn't resist.  I put my hair up this way today and had to take a picture. 

Days since last color:  128
Days since last pixie cut: 308

Days until I don't look ridiculous anymore: ????  :P

On a side note:  Gawd that henna gets red as it fades.  When dyed fresh, the indigo balances it out to a nice dark burgundy, but indigo is not color fast.  Goodbye indigo, hello blazing red.  The day I can cut off the last bit of that red I'm gonna have a party.

4 Months dye free and we have a piggy tail

It's been 4 months since I dyed my hair and 10 months since my last pixie cut.  I can finally put my hair back in a piggy tail (with the help of a headband and some barrettes).  Having short hair thoughts again, but I'm *so close* to just being able to swig it back in a ponytail and fuggetaboutit.  Which is really where I want to be......I think. :)

Chillin' in the office. :P

 

Woah, silver streaks.

Piggy tail....with help.



I just added cod liver oil and biotin to my daily multivitamin, along with some protien powder that I mix with water and drink for breakfast.  I'm a chronic breakfast skipper and while that's great if you're IF'ing (intermittent fasting) and catch up on nutrients later in the day, I often don't.  I only eat meat one meal a day, really and that's not enough protien, I know it.  Hair, skin and nails suffer so I'm seeing if the supps will help. :)  Will be a couple months before I'll be able to tell if there's a difference.