Life Lately

I passed by Anthony Bourdain's old restaurant in the week after he passed, and it was amazing to see how much of an impact he left on so many people. He was just such an extraordinary, wonderful person.

For US-based readers, I hope that you'll be able to have a relaxing Fourth of July holiday! I'm extending mine into a very long weekend to hang out with my sister, W (and her dog), in the Washington D.C. area, which should be lovely. 

Please note that this post contains affiliate links that could result in a commission, typically a few cents, for me if you click. Thank you for your support!

Book Chatter

I've been trying to read a bit more after having not read much for fun in quite a few months, and have mostly been sticking to Karin Slaughter crime thrillers after finishing the latest Tess Gerritsen. I also read Roxane Gay's Hunger, which was powerfully written.

I'm eagerly waiting for a few books that I have on hold from the library, in particular John Carreyrou's Bad Blood, about the wild and wacky Theranos story. I'm still completely floored by it, I still remember back when Elizabeth Holmes was on the cover of all kinds of magazines and being widely touted as the richest self-made woman in the US. Now that the story's come out, I often hear that tons of people realized that Holmes's and Theranos's claims couldn't possibly be anything more than highly exaggerated puffery, at best, but wow, that house of cards didn't all come crashing down for a very long time. 

Bad Hair Day: The Update 

It's been around eight months now since I got a Japanese straight perm that totally fried my hair. It's been behaving strangely ever since. Around January a single, particularly damaged patch near the roots was frizzing up like dried straw or steel wool most days, and only the really pricey and kind of odd-smelling Alterna Replenishing Moisture shampoo and conditioner was able to smooth away the frizz for a day or two after washing, and results were extremely inconsistent. 

Then the frizz died down, and was replaced by an even bigger patch of my hair regularly getting these really gnarled, intractable small knots, to the point where there seemed to be no other solution except for dragging a comb through, even if my hair would break off at the knot, and I'd shed what felt like an oddly large amount of hair every day. The Alterna shampoo and conditioner didn't help as much with that phase, which is probably for the best, as it's so expensive and the bottles are poorly designed and don't dispense product well. 

Both the frizzy phase and the intractable tangle phase are over now, and I think I've realized that my hair was changing texture and behavior because so much of it was getting broken and shed right around the point where the permed hair starts, what was at the roots when I got the perm. By now, enough of the hair has broken off that there doesn't seem to be enough of the most damaged hair left to frizz up or get tangled, which is good, I guess.

The bad news is that the shape of my hair generally doesn't look right because it's gotten dramatically thinned out in that one particular section, starting about four or five inches of new growth down. Typically, the hair that grows in for months and months after a straight perm stays quite straight on its own, because its weighed down by permed hair, but because a good amount of it was getting broken off around where the perm starts, a lot of it is showing my natural waves and curl in odd ways. Plus, because my hair is still generally dry and damaged, it all looks quite limp and sad. There's probably going to be quite a few months where it looks a bit awkward while all this grows out. Because I don't feel like putting any energy or effort into styling my hair, there's not much to be done except get regular haircuts (once every three months now instead of my usual six) to cut off damaged ends and have a professional try to tidy the shape up a bit. I've put in an order for at-home Olaplex treatment, which is supposed to repair damaged hair, and the salon version of which was recommended by my stylist. We'll see if it seems to do anything!