It's all about the hair spray, baby!!

Fragging hair.  We all have to deal with it, one way or another.  I've never been great at it.  I blame my older sisters for always wanting to do it for me.  Oh, and it's never been like, my top priority, so I have yet to read a book or take a college course about it or anything.  However.  I have, like everyone else, spent some amount of time on my hair about every day of my life.  And I say, if you're going to spend time on something, you might as well feel good about the result.

So when you're pregnant, you have awesome hair, right?  It's a hormonal thing - the hair that would normally fall out doesn't while you're pregnant, so you end up with luscious locks.  And thank goodness, since you don't exactly look great in any other way.  Somebody threw us a bone there!  But after the baby's born and you don't have all that wonderful hair-retaining estrogen anymore, it all falls out.  At once.  It sucks!  This has happened to me, well, four times.  But this last time, I never recovered.  A year and a half later I still have super-thin hair that falls out a lot, as well as loads of little wispies growing in all around my hairline and the nape of my neck.  My search for a nutritional/hormonal answer is another story, but in the mean time, I still have to deal with my lame hair!

But now I get it.  I now know why some of my sisters always complained about having thin hair - a problem I never had before having babies.  Because when you don't have much hair to start with, it won't DO much.  And since looking at cool hairdos on Pinterest won't actually make more hair grow out of your head, and videos of "quick and easy" styles don't actually make the styles quick or easy to do, you end up feeling incompetent and ugly, and wondering if there might be some hair-doing gene that you just didn't inherit.

Well, none of this stopped me from trying.  I have had some success in the past with copying styles I see... but only the day after I hair-sprayed and flat-iron-curled my hair.  You know, it had body.  And when my hair was like that, I really could do a quick messy bun or... well, I'll be honest here, that's the only thing I've really been able to pull off.  Lay off me, I'm a beginner!  So I knew it was possible, but I thought that "texture" and "body" had to come from either curled or dirty hair, or both.  Or, from having been born with "hair that just works," which I clearly wasn't.  By the way, my hair has been a lot more oily since my last baby too, so the dirty option isn't great for me.*

So, having seen my hair actually do something before, I couldn't give up hope that it could do it again, and maybe, just maybe, without having to take 20+ minutes to curl it first.  Besides, after I've painstakingly curled all my hair, ain't no way I'm pulling it into some updo so just the curled ends can hang down.  I want credit for every bend!  But I just can't get my plain ol' hair to cooperate like it does with day-old curls.

Everything changed the other day when I watched a(nother) video on how to do some 2-minute top knot or something.  This one showed a professional stylist doing someone else's hair.  It was long.  It looked thick.  I soon decided the style wouldn't work on me.  But I watched anyway as the stylist sprayed the crap out of the hair before doing anything else.  Then she teased it.  And then she put it in a ponytail and sprayed and teased it some more.  By the time she was ready to do the actual style, the woman looked like she'd been struck by lightning.  There was just a head with a huge, puffy fuzzball on top.  Then she twisted it around or whatever and - tada! - of course it looked great.  The end.  But something had clicked for me.  I finally understood the key to all my problems.  When hair is sprayed and sticky and teased and messed up, it's BIGGER.  And when hair is bigger, either from having been curled and slept on, OR sprayed and teased 10 seconds ago, it cooperates.

This means that I have options!  I have tried this on my own sad, thin, depleted hair, even when it's squeaky-clean, and it works!  It stays where I put it!  It flows up and out instead of falling flat!  It gives me something to actually work with!  Incredible!  I may be the last person on earth to learn this universal truth, but hairspray is magic, folks.  And if you can tease your hair too, even better.  And while my hair is still not my top priority (by a long shot), it's something I have to live with, and knowing that there IS a way for even me to do my hair and like it, makes me feel like a real live grown-up.

Is my use of the phrase "grown-up" here a little telling of how far I still have to go?


*About six months ago, I actually had a human (not a video) show me how to use dry shampoo and I've got to say, it's great.  It really does help a lot.  So maybe the dirty hair thing is kind of doable after all.  But I don't think dirty necessarily equals workable.

Awesome Food-Storage Tacos! Yay!

Every time I make tacos, Devin says "We should have tacos once a week."  And he's right.  They're a crowd-pleaser, they incorporate some vegetables, and they can be as simple or as fancy as you like.

I grew up thinking tacos had to be made with ground beef, since that's the only kind my family ate - and they were still great.  Even now I sometimes sub-consciously think, 'Too bad we can't have tacos tonight.  No ground beef.'  But there are so many more options out there!  And with toppings, too - the possibilities are endless!

This is good news for me because 1) I don't really like ground beef that much, and 2) it's always so stinkin' expensive!  Most the time I just can't bring myself to pay $3.99/lb or whatever only to watch half of it melt into grease.  Besides, I don't really like touching the stuff and it just generally sort of grosses me out.

So.  More options.  Right.  I make some creamyish lime chicken tacos sometimes, and of course there's sweet pork ala Costa Vida, etc. etc.  But my new thing is making food storage tacos from canned roast beef.  I got the idea here.  Thanks, Crystal!  I haven't seen a ton of her stuff but it seems like a great food storage site.

Basically, 2 cans beef (with some or all of the broth) + 1 can green chiles (drained, so the kids don't moan about spiciness) + something for flavor (taco seasoning, dehydrated onion, cumin, whatever) in a pan for a bit and you're done.  I've been using beef from Costco, but I'd like to find a cheaper option.  I swear it used to be $10 for 4 cans and now it's $15!  And when I opened it up last night, it looked like this:

I admit that I had already drained some broth. But still!

I should have weighed it on my kitchen scale* right then to see if it really was 12 oz, but I just dumped it in the pan instead.  Oh well.  Next time!  Anyway, I love this stuff.  And it goes with any toppings you have around.  I think we'll officially start having Taco Tuesdays around here.  And with Pizza Movie Night on Fridays, and Devin's new suggestion to have hot dogs once a week (not sure I agree with that one though), that's a significant chunk of meal planning I won't have to do.


*This was a Mother's Day gift from Devin "to me" but really mostly for him.  He's been wanting one for a long time and I've been resistant to the idea because I figured it would win me over to measuring ingredients by weight and then I'd become a baking snob or something.  Well... ya.  It's happening.  Measuring by weight is magical!  And you dirty a lot fewer dishes!  I am kind of in love.  But I promise to keep in touch with my teaspoons-and-cups-and-close-enough roots.

Bits and Pieces

It can be frustrating learning about medical stuff.  Doctors rarely explain a lot about what they're doing or why they're recommending something, and of course they can't agree with each other, or even if they do agree, they're all going to change their minds next year.  I've learned that I have to be bold and ask ALL the questions and even if I'm obnoxious and/or they treat me like an idiot, I gain a lot more understanding that way.  I've learned that medical knowledge, like any other knowledge, comes in bits and pieces, with lots of trial and error in between.

Poor sweet Sam has pneumonia.  The process through which we arrived at that diagnosis was a little scary, although I felt pretty calm through it all.  He's home, he's getting better, and things are going to be fine.  He's taking cefdinir and azithromycin.  I also have a bottle of cefdinir sitting here for Eliza's ears, which I haven't given her yet.  Here's what I know now about antibiotics:

• OK, they really can be a good thing.
• Even people like me, who generally hate antibiotics, will turn to them when we really need an infection gone fast.
• They only kill bacteria, not viruses.
• The reason they always say to finish the course, even if you're feeling better already, is that if you don't, the bacteria may not be totally gone and may learn to fight off the antibiotic in the future.
• If you take probiotics along with an antibiotic, it helps it not kill ALL the good stuff.
• Some antibiotics have a shelf life (like cefdinir - 10 days), so if you choose not to give it right away, you may not be able to use it later.  This is (surprise!) what happened with Eliza.  I just didn't feel great about giving it to her, and then she started puking so I really didn't want to, and now that she's better & I'm giving it to Sam & feeling like it's fine to give to her too, it's too late.  It will go bad before she finishes the course, which could cause the problem listed above.  So it's better not to take it at all.  Luckily, she seems to be getting better and I can still use the leftover ear drops that I have.  I got all this info from the pharmacist.

I also learned some things about fevers, viruses and bacteria:

• Letting a fever run its course is generally a good idea, but in kids, there comes a point where the fever makes them not feel like eating or drinking, which causes further problems, so at that point it's better to control the fever.
• Fevers are not very effective against bacteria because bacteria can still grow in the heat.  A virus has a small temperature window where it can grow, so a fever is more effective against it.
• Bacteria start in one spot and grow out from there.  Viruses spread out all over the place and then grow everywhere they are.
• A virus (Sam had Rhinovirus) can cause a common cold, which will sometimes damage lungs and weaken them enough to where bacteria can take over - hence the bacterial pneumonia.  The pneumonia itself is not contagious, but whatever virus caused the damage in the first place is... or was.  By now, that virus is probably gone, or not catching anymore at least.  Viral pneumonia also exists but I don't really know anything about that for now.  You can tell by looking at Sam's x-ray that it's bacterial b/c it's in one spot and not all over.

And a couple things about x-rays:

• Air shows up black in an x-ray.  Even I could tell something was wrong in Sam's lungs because they didn't look the same.  But I was thinking, 'Yikes! What's all that black stuff?' when really the black was good and it was the cloudy, spider-webby white stuff that was the problem.
• Collar bones are like little twigs sticking out at weird angles, scared and alone in the middle of nowhere.  It's no wonder people break them all the time.

And just so it's down somewhere, here's what I already knew about fevers:

• A fever is your body's way of fighting something off with heat.  Fuel the fire by eating and drinking lots of fluids to help it burn up the attacker.
• However, when a fever gets too high, it can start to damage your body (including your brain - scary!) so you need to watch it and bring it down if it gets high.
• Scary high for kids: 105
• Scary high for adults: 103/104
• Kids can go higher without as much concern because their bodies are smaller and their temp can swing back and forth more quickly.  By the time an adult reaches 103/104, their big body has some serious momentum and things can get really out of control.
• Peppermint essential oil is the fastest fever-reducer I've ever used, and won't give any side effects like tylenol or ibuprofen.
• If you do go the tylenol/ibuprofen route, you can alternate them & take one every four hours.  But only take/give it if you need to.