She Always Wins!

Week before last, my niece was pleading and trying to manipulate me into doing her hair. Said her cornrows were “jacked up” and need to be redone. Personally I couldn’t see anything wrong with them. I told her spritz her hair with some moisturizer and brush her edges and call it a day. Well turns out her do was only a week old anyway. She just wanted a different style.

Anyhoo, I figured she’d get her way some kinda way. And she did. She took her hair down the next week, and my sister put some flat twists in the front. She kept telling her mom over and over not to brush the “texture” out of her hair cause she wanted to wear a puff. Well y’all here it is…two days old and really, really napped up. I told her not to comb it or brush it in the morning. Just tie her edges down and fluff up her puff in the morning with her fingers. I’m talkin’ to her about preserving her ends now. Hope she understands. She rarely gets to wear it out of braid so now I’ve got a new learning curve on my hands.

Well it’s pretty darned cute if I may say so myself. And so is she!  

“I wish I could’ve been mixed”

Yeah right?

Ok, I’m over to my mom’s, and my niece is sitting on the sofa feeding her face. She speaks, and I give her some big wet smootches on her forehead. She looks up at me with those big brown eyes and says, ”Auntie. What am I going to do about my hair?”

So I tilt her head around looking at her cornrows, which are as usual, swirled around in some intricate design. He dad’s sister-in-law (the other aunt) keeps it done up in these styles for about twenty bucks a pop. No matter how fancy it is, she can usually get it done in a couple of hours. I don’t always like all those designs but hey, I haven’t really wanted to do her hair lately so it’s not like I have any room to complain. Anyway, other than her braids starting to turn in on themselves just a little bit from new growth, and a few of her little bebes starting to show along her front hair line and kitchen area, her hair, overall looks fine to me. So I ask, “What’s wrong with it?”

She shoots me this look like I have two heads with two brains…both of which are obviously clueless by her 12-year-old standards.

“I need my hair done…but mama doesn’t have any money.”

I shrug, “Why are you telling me this?” I ask.

“Cause I NEED my hair done,” she says. Then she gives me another look with the big brown eyes and says, “I don’t want mama to do it. She can’t braid, and it takes six hours for her to twist my hair.”

“Well I don’t see anything wrong with it. All you need to do is brush your edges a little bit. It still really neat looking, it’s not frizzy. You can see a little new growth. Other than a few little bebes it looks fine to me.”

 ”Grrrr….” she says. “Fine then.”

Ok…now I’m starting to get it. I’m a little slow somethimes, but I get it now. She wants me to do it, and she probably figured since I was lovin’ her up a few minutes earlier, it wouldn’t take much for me to give in and say I’d do it for free. (Yes, I take money from her mama to do her hair. If she can pay her sister-in-law, she can pay me too…shoot.) But I haven’t been in the mood to do my own hair, let alone her hair too, not even for the money, hence the reason the other auntie has been doing it so much lately.

Anywhoo, I’m on to little miss big brown eyes now, and it ain’t gonna work.

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“Oh girl, You Got That Good Hair”

At work, this lady had been wearing cornrows for awhile. She finally took them out. So when I saw her this morning, I noticed and decided to make small talk about her hair…

Me: “Oh…you took your cornrows out.”

Coworker: “Yeah, I just got my relaxer done over the weekend. I’m trying to get my hair to grow back. I don’t like short hair. It was breaking off so bad that I cut it all off and decided to start all over. I’ma let it rest and then I’ll put the braids back in.”

Me: “Oh. Hmmm. Why relax it while you’re trying to grow it out?”

Oprah Disses Nappy Hair

Psyche! Just another one of my silly nappy dreams

On cNappymeNow, someone posted a thread about using threading as a means to stretch your hair to show more length — as opposed to using the traditional nap destroying method of blowing drying to achieve the same desired result. Now if you’re not familiar with this technique, click FOTKI to visit her album to see some examples. I did, and I was simply blown away and amazed at how incredibly long, thick and lucious her naps are. Oh…my…stars! They are simply to die for.

Now apparently, the technique can be used as a style if you do the threading neatly enough. I also remember my mom saying her mother grew her hair out using black thread after she experienced horrible breakage during a life-threatening illness as a child. Now as a means to stretch your hair overnight, you simply wrap it from root to tip and go to bed. When you wake up in the morning, you unthread your hair and wallah! It’s sufficiently stretched, enabling you to wear a really fluffy fro or puff or just allow you to not have to fight with a tight head full of nappy hair the next day.

I will add that it just seems to me that it would be easier to put your hair up in some big ole plaits or twists. But if you just wanna try something different…then hey, go for it.

So anyway, I respond to her post that I love her hair and that it’s amazing that the nylon thread doesn’t cut your hair. She responds back she’s also amazed, and said she’d double check with her aunt to find out EXACTLY what type of thread is used.

Mind you, this is the last thing I read before I go to bed.

And now for the details of my dream.   

My Unstyled Napps and My Driver’s License

Ok… I was totally unprepared for this. Up until last summer, I had been hanging on to my out-of-state driver’s license and refusing to get a current one. Well, I lost it. So I went dang near all summer without a license. But things kept coming up where I needed to show a picture ID, and of course I had none. Sooo, I was forced to go get an updated license.

Got really, really, really nappy hair? Then cNappymeNow is the place to be. Come on in and join this exciting new forum. We’d love to have you. Click cNappymeNow for more information 

Boy-oh-boy did I have to jump through a bunch of hoops to get a new one. First, I had to go downtown and get a copy of my birth certificate. Then I went to take the driver’s test. When I got there, since I didn’t have an old license to turn in, it was like I had never driven before. So not only did I have to take the written test, I had to drive too.

Now how hard could this be. I thumbed through the book really quickly, and passed the written test with flying colors. Up next, the driving test. Long story, a little shorter, I flunked. Badly. Apparently you have to score like 12 and under to pass. Everytime you do something wrong they GIVE you points. When I got finished, I had 45 points. Yep 45 points. You da thunk I hit a dang baby stroller or something. So she told me to come back the next day.