Oh! Bye October? Hi November, Stay and Chat A While

Ouch.. my last post was saying bye to September and when I wasn’t looking October flew out the door too!

I miss you guys so I was happy when I found myself with no plans tonight. I’ve already put on a coat of nail polish, once it’s dry I plan on moisturizing my hair and putting it into chunky twists.

Fitness

I am on my third week of diet/exercise! I find my food choices have improved drastically. I miss chips but I find that allowing myself some yummies in small portions infrequently helps me from going absolutely crazy. My friend S and sometimes L have been at the gym like fiends. And we’ve reached the point where we get bummed out if we miss a day so we’re there quite often. Usually after work. It’s night-time dark by 5:30 PM here (thanks Daylight Savings…) so all I want to do when I get home is jump into my flannies (flannel jammies) and veg. Tonight I’m lucky enough to do that because I ran 10k on the treadmill this morning (ack!). Tomorrow I’ll be gyming in the evening.

Why am I hitting this again so hard? I tried on a couple of dresses I have and was just so done with looking the way I do. I don’t want to gym to get ‘skinny’. I may have said this before. I want to gym so that I can see positive changes in my body. I want to look and feel strong. I want to run easily and I want to be comfortable in the clothes I wear.

My biggest hurdle when working out is definitely my period. It’s not the early mornings or the last 2 kms on the treadmill. It’s feeling like a bag of crap and still putting on my gym wear and getting out there. It’s avoiding foods that make me feel cozy when my insides feel like they’re getting chiseled away at. So let me tell you it’s going to take everything in me to just buckle down and do it.

Life

My bf and I are planning a NYE not here. We’re going to kick it in the big city with a couple friends and enjoy some time off together that isn’t here. I’m really excited. It’s just what I need to look forward to. We’ve both got our time off approved and so we’re going to book hotels/flights this weekend.

Also! Between the two of us we have 3 (potentially 4) holiday work parties to attend. Mine are Friday and Saturday of the same weekend and it just so happens to be on a boat (holla)! To save ourselves from a drive home in what will be plenty of snow, we’ve got a hotel Saturday night and will just take the shuttle there. I’m so excited. It kind of gives me a boost to work out hard so I feel great that weekend.

Raffi has his winter tires on so I’m just waiting for the snow to creep lower down the mountain and eventually cover the town. I do love when it snows. Especially that first full snow. Everything is muted. Quiet. Still. And it looks gorgeous. I’ll have to make sure to capture my surroundings this winter.

It’s also been raining for literally, the past 4 weeks. A solid month of rain. We’ve had 3 rainfall warnings during that time. My new gumboots have definitely made themselves useful.

Rocco

Rocco has been behaving. He rocked a bomb twist out Sunday evening when my bf and his family came over for dinner. He’s so soooft! I’ve gotta moisturize him and put him up so he can stay that way. I also desperately need to order some Shea Moisture Curl Enhancing Smoothie. It’s a great product and keeps my hair moisturized, smelling great and feeling so soft.

Money

I need to do better at budgeting and sticking to it. I can put away a large amount of savings no problem. Then I give myself a little spending money. But then when my money runs out… I end up picking up my Mastercard… I never hold a balance on my card, but that means I have to get the money from somewhere (savings) to cover my purchases. Not the route I want to be taking. So I need to figure that out. But I decided to have an automatic transfer to my RRSP every paycheque so that’s one less thing to worry about. I just need to decide what sort of retirement portfolio I want to take part in… I also need to figure out what that really means, yknow?

I hope you’re all doing well and I can’t believe this year is wrapping up so quickly. It will be Christmas then New Years’ before we know it! I’m thankful for every day I get.

Two Years Natural

HAPPY BIRTHDAY ROCCO!

I just want to take a moment to say.. TWO YEARS?! Holy wow. It doesn’t seem that long ago that I was getting my hair buzzed off. I wasn’t sad to see my fragile, broken strands swept away but I was sad I didn’t have a scarf to keep the cold air off my newly exposed neck.

There are going to be so many photos in this gig. I need to one-up my one year anniversary post. Plus there’s going to be some cameos from my Big Chop buddy! My momma!

Rocco: The Early Years

I think my hair had better things to do than grow when I was younger. Legit. My hair follicles were unproductive. I rocked a mean TWA until I was like 4… and then I rocked a fluffy ‘fro. My hair took its sweet time to make an appearance and I wasn’t wearing cornrows or braids until I was about 5 or 6. No biggie. My hair had other things to do, I get it.

Throughout school I wore my hair in braids, corn rows, we hot combed my hair *cringe*, I got my hands on a curling iron and I rocked rolled out bangs like nobody’s business. Around 9 I got my first relaxer. One lady in town relaxed my hair, but it was pricey so I didn’t go very often and they didn’t sell boxed relaxers where I lived. In between I mostly flat ironed it and occasionally wore box braids.

When I moved away for college I was loving that I had access to more hair products so I relaxed my hair and then got it cut at salons. I’ve only ever had maybe two good hair cuts and one of them was at a salon in the mall. Michael only charged me $7 as a ‘bangs cut’. I tipped him well. But when I went back for another cut he was gone. *sob*

After a couple of years I realized this life was no longer for me. Now I know I wasn’t taking the best care of it. I didn’t deep condition it and I flat ironed it like crazy. After straightening it I would have a collection of matchstick strands surrounding me. Rocco was not in good shape.

I had a wise idea of trying to get it sorted out at a local hair salon. My hair dresser had no idea what he was doing and decided to wing it (and I foolishly let him). You can bet I wore my hood up leaving that salon. A couple of weeks later I lopped it all off. Two years later, here I am.

Natural Days

I still stand by the fact that my TWA was the most freeing period in all of my hair history. Washing was easy, drying was easy, moisturizing was easy. There was no detangling, no combing, no SSKs, no major bed prep. There was no blow drying, no teasing and no straightening. I barely had to do jack shit. I slept with a satin cap, and for my 6 am runs I whipped it off, suited up and was out the door. It was sooooo eeeeeasy!!! #sospoiled

Why Am I Still Natural?

This hair of mine is versatile. Sure, there are days when my hair is dry, tangled, uncooperative and makes me wanna just put a hat on. This tuft up there is so unique it makes me happy. When someone says, your hair would be so long if you straightened it. Sure, I could straighten it but then what would I do with it? It would just sit there. I feel as though my natural hair allows me to be creative and get funky and have fun with it. I find my hair matching my mood and it gives me that extra kick of funky charm 😉

Not to mention the community. The online support, suggestions, finding your hair twin, making your own hair products, tweet chats, finding a product your hair loves, this is all gold people. The encouragement, the helpful suggestions, the conversation surrounding natural hair can be so positive and so uplifting and so inspiring. You’re never alone on your journey and you’re always learning.

Rocco’s 2 Year Length Check

I find myself forgetting to do length checks. But that’s because this is just my hair now. It’s less of an experiment in hair growing and more, this is my hair. But since it has been a while I’m excited to see how Rocco’s been doing length wise.

Front:

I’m looking at about 8 inches all round. I’m not mad at that. My ends could use some dusting this spring but otherwise. Thanks for reading!! Have a great Friday!

Rocco’s Previous Milestones:

9 months natural
8 months
6 months
My natural hair story