August 18th, 2023

Hey!  Look what I almost sort of remembered how to do?  French Braid!  Wow! I'm so tickled with myself right now!

Sure, sure, it's not perfect.  It looks a little wonky and I seem to have oopsed a section down toward the bottom, but still, I did it !  And yes, it required a couple of pins to keep it all in place (and a significant amount of hairspray) but it still counts.

Are you tired of hearing about my hair yet?  I know I'm getting tired of trying to figure it out.   The electric rollers thing is working out pretty well, but I don't always have the time, the energy or the umph required to deal with all the steps involved:  First I have to think of it in time.  Then I have to go to the linen closet and pull out the rollers and the clips and plug it in.  Next comes waiting for it to heat up.  After that comes the actual rollering which is both time consuming and a little painful.  I still burn my fingers a little bit every time.  Then is the time spent just  walking around looking like a satellite waiting for the rollers to cool off.  Followed by unrollering and putting everything away, giving the freshly unrollered and unbrushed/uncombed hair a general blast of hairspray and waiting for that to settle. Lastly, brushing or combing it.  All that means thinking ahead!  Which sometimes just doesn't work out for me.

Plus it's just nice to have lots of options for my hair.   One of the best parts of having longer hair is having more hair style possibilities!  I love that part the most.  So now and again, I fiddle around with my hair trying to come up with another new idea.  In this case it was a new/old idea.  A long, long time ago, I braided my hair on a regular basis. It was quick and easy, kept the hair out of my way and looked nice. Bonus! One braid, two braids, big braids, tiny braids,  pinned up, left down, crisscrossed across the top.....there are a lot of choices  with braids.

So I thought I'd play with it a little bit and see if my hair was finally long enough to actually braid.  Turns out it is, just  barely, but it is.  Ooooo, exciting!  Something else to mess around with :)  I love when that happens.  So while I was playing with various sorts of braids, it struck me!  "French Braids!"  Which was immediately followed by, "Do I remember how to do that?" which was then followed by, "Can I still do that?"  There is only one way to find out!

It took multiple tries and failures and by the end of that first day, my arms were tired out just from being up in the air so much.  My right arm in particular (you will recall that was broken in two places back in January) doesn't bend exactly right anymore so I have to accommodate for that.  And then too, I'm working with fingers that, thank to arthritis, also refuse to properly cooperate. ARGH!  So Frustrating sometimes.  But I kept at it.

My personal policy in regard to physical limitations is to find a way.  If I cannot do something the normal way anymore, then I need to find a different way of doing it!  Honestly, most of the time, I actually do find another way. Not every time. But most  of the time. And I was pretty sure that I would figure it out this time too.  It's not a life altering function.  The fate of the earth does not hinge on whether or not I can french braid my hair anymore.  But it was important to me. And that was sufficient reason to keep trying.

I'm actually rather pleased with the results.  Imperfect yes, but I still did it!  And I think, with more practice, it will get even getter.  Not perfect probably, but good enough.  :)

I do see, in this photograph, how very grey I am getting.  Funny how I don't really notice it when I look into a mirror.  Ah well, I earned every sparkly bit of it.  One of these days, soon perhaps, it will all be either silver, grey, white or a combination.  By then, maybe, I will have that french braid thing down cold!  Yay me!

Have a great weekend.  Hugs all 'round ya'll