Another Hairy Story

This is not a style or hair blog (far from it!), but yes, I’m going to talk about hair…again! :p

Alopecia areata is a common autoimmune skin disease resulting in the loss of hair on the scalp and elsewhere on the body. It affects about 2% of the population, including 6.5 million people in the US alone. It usually starts with one or more small, round, smooth patches on the scalp and can progress to total scalp hair loss (alopecia totalis) or complete body hair loss (alopecia universalis). Each September is Alopecia Awareness Month. This year’s theme is Look At Us! It’s pride in those who have suffered from this disease, what they’ve accomplished, and where they are headed.

I know some people are probably annoyed by my girls’ long hair, but I promise, it is not for show nor for lack of care that it is long. I shared my story of how I have been donating my hair for years now (see links below), and my girls have asked to be a part of that. Last year, both Melody and I were ready to make a cut. Emily has never gotten a haircut in her whole entire 5 years of life, so I think it was definitely time! She decided she would make the cut this year after her birthday and before our trip to Disneyland. You can see our photos below, along with links to more photos from each cut. 🙂 We had previously donated to Locks of Love, and this time we donated to Children with Hair Loss.

You can read all about my hair stories in the links below:
*It’s Been Almost 2 Years…
*Making the Cut: The Story of My Hair
*Making the Cut: My Hairy Adventure
*Making the Cut: The Fourth Donation

MELODY
BEFORE – This is Melody’s 2nd “big” cut, and her first time donating.

DURING – She was definitely not as nervous as she had been for her first real haircut.

TA-DA! – I think she had a little more than 8 inches cut off.

AFTER – Cutie!

Check out more photos HERE.

JOYCE
BEFORE – I am always nervous for my cuts, even though this was my 5th donation.

DURING – Long hair is easier to manage for me than shorter hair.

TA-DA! – Looks okay until you see me in the morning. :p hehehe I think I had 10 inches cut off.

AFTER – But it is definitely lighter! Woohoo! No heavy hair!

The girls got their hair done while I was having my hair cut. Check out those photos HERE. They had a good time, and had some fab braids done.

EMILY
BEFORE – 5 years in the making!

DURING – She was super nervous.

TA-DA! – I think she got 10 inches cut off, and it was a whole lot shorter than she expected.

AFTER – Super cute, and awesome for our Southern California trip! But she also has crazy hair in the morning!

And for more photos of Emily’s cut, click HERE.

It kinda weird to think that this package has hair in it. :p
But so awesome to see stories like these:

If you are in the Bay Area, next Thursday is National Alopecia Areata Awareness Night at the SF Giants vs. SD Padres game. It is $17.75/ticket if you have a group attending this game. (Info in previous link.)

And if you have gray hair, but wanted to contribute with hair donation, there is news for you! A friend at church grew his hair to donate to Silver Wig’s Fund.

Well, thank you for making it through a super long post. I hope that kinda makes up for the lack of posts around here for the past 3 months. :p

What are some unconventional ways you have blessed others, or would like to bless others?

Pros and Cons of Shorter Hair

Again, these are my opinions and my experiences with short hair. My hair is usually longer than shoulder length, so I’ve only had short hair a few times in my life…after I donated. My pros and cons plus commentaries of other people’s pros/cons are italicized.

Click here for Pros and Cons of Long Hair
Click here to read my HAIRy story about donating my hair

Me and my goofy girl (who jumped into my shot)...the first days/weeks are a little odd to me. I think because the ends of the hairs are not really the ends? But this is the latest (and only) pic I have of after the cut.

 

Pros

• Light and airy
• Easy to wash = LESS TIME
• Use less shampoo = LESS SPENDING
• Dries faster = LESS ELECTRICITY USED (although I air dry when I can whether with long or short hair)
• No more strands of hair hiding in my clothes (esp inside the back of my shirt!)

–A pro that didn’t make my top 5 but still up there is: Hair won’t get caught in coat zipper
-its cute, chic, hot depending on how you style it.
-it doesn’t get in your face that often, plus when its windy it doesn’t blow all over the place like long hair does. (I beg to differ as there were some mighty gusty winds and I could not see to put Emily into her carseat after storytime.)
-Easier to brush and manage.
-Healthy because hair needs to be cut every once in a while (not necessarily)
-easier to style, variety of cuts, more dramatic, it’ll be a new look, less split ends, shinier hair, hair at the roots are always more moisturized than at the tip, so you’ll have healthy hair, no more snags and tangles, and you can always clip it with cute clips. (Emily has short hair and it has tons of tangles all the time, depends on your hair’s texture.)
-in summer, it’s nice to have short hair that doesn’t stick to your neck all the time (Depends on how short. A longer bob(?) would definitely stick to your neck.)
-helping other by donating hair to organization like Locks of Love (Yes!)

Cons

• Can get in your way, esp if you can’t put it up all the way
• Messy in the morning
• Can’t hide hairs that are sticking up in odd places
• Thicker short hair = poofball
• More maintenance (in my opinion, once I go short, out comes the straighter/flat iron)

-you can’t really style it like you would with long hair. since its so short, you can’t really like tie it up and also its hard to curl because there isn’t that much of it.
-if you don’t like it or it doesn’t frame your face well, then you have to wait like a year for it to grow back long enough.
-less styling options, once you go short you can’t go long (I notice that once I went short the first time, my hair got super thick.)
-can’t be put in a ponytail, and if it can, the hair always comes loose (This bothers me a lot, esp when working out, or having to bend down to pick things or children up.)
-Cold for winter (although a cute hat could fix that =]) (Who wants to buy me a hat?)
-Sometimes shorter pieces tend to want to do their own thing and be a pain in the you know what. (I feel like it’s not fixable at times.)
-lose the sexy feeling of long hair

Here are the sites I found some of the pros/cons:
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20071205154708AAHpYMP
http://answerology.seventeen.com/index.aspx/question/866473_Pros-and-Cons-of-Short-hair.html

– Joyce

What do you think about short hair? What are some pros and cons?

Making the Cut: My Hairy Adventure

*Note: Photos below. Click here for backstory.

Here’s what went down on Saturday when I went in for cut for Locks of Love.

We went to The Spa at Stacy Monroe’s. Melody was quite skeptical as to what was going on. I think I saw a raised eyebrow. We arrived there and the girls at the front desk seemed confused. But redirected me to the high schoolers of the American Cancer Society Club who asked me for my name, and we waited on the couch.

Jamie, my stylist, came out and she got started. She said the minimum was 8 inches. It keeps changing on me. She tied my hair up and made the cut. So, for salons like this, they help you make the cut, but if you want your hair to be styled, they charge you the regular fee. Jamie was nice enough to at least even out my hair for me. At Great Clips, it’s a free cut and free styling. I was in a hurry last time, but there would have been a free shampoo too.

Melody did end up having a good time. We also got one of those nifty oil keychains thingies. She didn’t want to leave. Hopefully, she’ll have a good first haircut experience when we decide to make the cut for her. hehe She still has her baby hair.

And that was that. It’s just a straight cut, but it’ll do for now. I do have a $100 gift certificate (that I won from Parent Bloggers Network) from spafinder.com that I can use later on. 😉

Before the Cut – Front

Before the Cut – Back

Before the Cut – Back

Making the Cut

Making the Cut

After the Cut

– Joyce

Making the Cut: The Story of My Hair

**Note: See gallery below for Before and After photos.

When I was an infant, I had the whole nasty cradle cap thing going on all over my head. My mom said the doctor prescribed some stinky shampoo to wash my head. In the playpen, I’d always rub my head on the mesh. It left stains (I think from that shampoo). Yuck! And to top it off, I didn’t have too much hair. It just didn’t really do what it was supposed to…grow. As a child, I think I’ve only had really short hair once…in 2nd grade.

My dad didn’t really like us having long hair, because there were 3 of us girls, and it wasn’t so great for the drains and vacuum cleaner. Oops! It must have been some subconscious thing of dealing with the lack of hair when I was younger, but I liked keeping my hair long. It was somewhat of a catch 22 because it was hard to manage (during wash and dry, and windy days), but it was also easy to manage (just pull it up into a ponytail if you don’t want to do anything else with it). I think I’ve only been to the salon a handful of times in my entire 29 years of life. It just wasn’t worth it to pay someone to do a trim…which is the only thing I ever got. It’d be like 2 inches at most.

Before graduation (in college), I decided for a change (I have no idea where it came from….Norm probably “suggested” it). I think I went with him to his stylist in Chinatown, and they just did a straight cut. All gone! For the first time in forever I had short hair (not as short as the future cuts I got though). I was actually still able to put it up and on that day no one noticed I had my hair cut so short. I left it down the next day, and the Sunday School student I had seen the previous day was so surprised. I can’t remember exactly when this was, but since it was around graduation time, I’ll say it was the very beginning of 2002.

Sometime early in 2004 I found out about Locks of Love. I thought that was  a neat way to “give” a little something. It’s such a simple act (kinda…remember, my hair grows super duper slow). So I looked up information about it online. At that time, they used to post up participating salons. The closest one was in Concord. That was a 40 minute drive away…just to have a haircut. Well, I did it! The stylist chopped of 10 inches of my locks!! Yikes!

So my hair still grew back pretty slowly, but now it was really thick too. I wanted to grow it to donate again, but because it needed to be a certain length from my hair trial for the wedding in 2005, I had to get it cut. It would take too long to grow to 10 inches before then.

When end of 2006 rolled around, and I was about 5 months pregnant, I decided to make the cut again. By this time, Locks of Love didn’t put up a list of participating salons, but I heard all Great Clips did the cut for free. Because they wanted to make sure that all the hair was usable for the wigs, they trimmed the ends (even though I don’t get split ends or anything (rare for long hair, I know)). So I ended up donating 13 inches!! Now I had a simpler routine which was great. And it grew enough when Melody was born so that I could still put it up, and not have it in my way.

Man, my hair grows so slow. I was going to go for a cut before Chinese New Years this year, but never got around to finding a style. (Norm went for a style change though…after how many years? Or I think it’s been like that his whole life.) I’ve never really had it “styled” before. It was always just a cut straight across. The last time there was a little something going on, but you couldn’t tell really. I’ve been meaning to get it done, but I didn’t want 13 inches taken off again, because that would be too short for me.

In the “city” paper this past week, there was an article about the local high school’s American Cancer Society Club. At the beginning of the school year, they had students pledge to grow their hair to donate by the end of the year. So…on Saturday, April 25th, I will join them in donating my hair…once again. And a note…it’s been 2 years and 6.5 months since the last cut. I remember because I got it cut on the day of Davina’s birthday party.

Hair? (’80)

The Usual Length (’01)

Before the 1st Cut (’02)

After the 1st Cut (’02)

Before the 2nd Cut (’03)

After the 2nd Cut (’04)

Before the 3rd Cut (’06)

After the 3rd Cut – Day Of (’06)

After the 3rd Cut – 3 Weeks Later (’06)

After the 3rd Cut – 3 Months Later (’07)

– Joyce