Long, Flowing Locks

(Okay, so here’s the recreation of the post I lost yesterday.)

A couple of months ago, Sweet Dub’s sister, Diva, offered to take Viva to the beauty shop to get her hair done for the first day of school. Viva is getting older, maybe she needed a change. Diva is an empty nester, with no one at home to spoil. She offered not only to take Viva to the beauty shop this one time, but to take her regularly and pay for her hair to be done – to free up my Sunday hair-doing time and to spare us the added expense, since we are on a tight budget.

All well and good. Viva came home with her hair in tiny cornrows in a lovely way pattern across her head, with tiny braids spilling down her back. She looked very different, much more like a tween, and she liked having her hair in a more sophisticated style:

 

 

So every three weeks, we would drop her back off at the shop and Diva would pick her up, pay for her style, and take her out to eat. It was nice for them to have their own one-on-one time together.

But as time went on, the braider put Viva’s braids in more tightly, even though I had asked that she put the back part of her head in loose braids (she completely ignored that request). Viva complained that her head hurt, that it itched, and when I investigated what was bothering her, I found she was getting large red bumps at the nape of her neck. No, no, no. I do not like that. That is a one-way ticket to traction alopecia. Bumps be gone!

So I took the style down (a three-hour undertaking, as it involved tiny cornrows criss-crossing her scalp and intersecting in some places), deep conditioned her hair with a cap overnight, and then the next day restyled in some double-stranded twists, similar to this:

 

Image credit:  naturallycurly.com how-to video

 

I told Diva that we wanted to take a break from the cornrows because I was worried about the health of Viva’s hair. She said she was sure they could find a loose style which wouldn’t hurt, so Viva’s hair wouldn’t be clamped down to her head so tightly. I suggested box braids as a compromise (without the eyeshadow and...er...chestiness of the model below):

Image credit:  naturallycurly.com style gallery

 

Do you know Viva came home with her hair blown straight and pressed?!  Sweet Dub was furious. I was less than happy. 

 

Can you guess why?  Stay tuned for part two, coming tomorrow.