On Hair

So Blogger is still down, which is very frustrating and actually made me start looking at other free blog hosting options. You see how fickle I am?

At any rate, I have the feeling that I will be blogging much less these days, now that I am working, so moving the blog might be a moot point. We’ll see.

I am once again writing this in Word and hoping to post later. If I can’t post today, I’m definitely moving the blog.

The reason I wanted to post was (of course) because of the sheer cuteness of Viva. This morning, I was doing her hair. Earlier in the week I had sectioned it off into little square and triangle sections and twisted her hair into Bantu knots, but when I went to pick her up Tuesday afternoon they had all come out, so her hair was just in these really cute kind of curly twists. I have not been able to replicate that, naturally, but I didn’t want to start from scratch. And even twisting the knots back in takes at least half an hour, depending. So this morning I took each section, did a double-stranded twist, and then started piling all the twists on top of her head and kind of entwining them with one another, then clipping the ends of two twists at a time with a tiny butterfly clip – ending up with about 8 multicolored clips all around the crown of her head. I neglected to take a picture, but it looked cute*, and most importantly, it only took about 15 minutes.

At any rate, Viva then said she wanted to be “the barber” and proceeded to put butterfly clips in my hair as I was trying to get her shoes on. This pretty much was as awkward as it sounds, almost akin to playing Twister. Then we fed the fish, brushed her teeth, grabbed her lunch bag, and left the house.

After I dropped her off at school, I went to the bank and the drugstore, and got back home about 9:30. I started cleaning the bathroom, and for some reason, brushed the top of my head with my arm in the process. Hey, I’ve been walking around with various-sized butterfly clips of various colors randomly clipped into my hair! I had no idea she used that many. I must have looked insane (well, even more so than usual) when I dropped her off this morning.

* At some point here I will broach the importance of hair in the black community – specifically, how important it is that you do not allow your child to go around with her head looking a mess or you will be in for a talking-to, or at the least, people talking about you behind your back. In my case, it is even more fraught with meaning, as it is quite possible that people think Viva is adopted or at the least has a white mother, the implication being that I will not know how to take care of her hair properly.

The more hard-assed among you will ask why I even give a shit what people think of how I take care of my child. It’s not that easy. I like to do Viva’s hair. She likes to sit in my lap as I do her hair, and it’s a nice way for us to be close in the mornings (or Sunday evenings, when I wash it and comb it out and try to work out a style that will work for the whole week). And I love to see other little black girls whose parents take the time to do their hair. On some level, I do buy into the idea that taking the time to make your kid look nice is an expression of how much you love your kid.

Hey, this is threatening to get longer than the original post. How did you trick me into that?

NOTE: I was able to log into Blogger at 11:27 AM and tried to post this, but I’m having a persistent problem with the server connection being reset while the page is loading. Flip flop floop! I’m moving my damn blog. I’ll try and post this again after lunch.

1:58 PM. Switched from Firefox to Internet Explorer, tried again. "The page cannot be displayed.” Frickin’ frickety frack!

Friday, June 9, 2006, 1:05 PM. Finally able to post this thing. I am beyond pissed off.