Siobhan and the No Poo Challenge

Hi, I'm Siobhan, and I'm an obsessive compulsive hair abuser.

It all started when I was 14. I got some shitty drug store box dye (because who would've believed that I liked the Misfits and Avenged Sevenfold if I didn't douse myself in Hot Topic clothes and dye my hair black? There's something to be said for authenticity here, folks). After that, I was hooked. Except unlike my mall goth wardrobe, my knack for dyeing my hair never went away.


One summer night right after I graduated high school, I got bored and decided to dye my hair blonde.

Another night, about a year ago, I decided to dye my hair red. 

Then, I decided to jump on the Ombré bandwagon last summer. 

The result, after I realized how much upkeep it was and dyed it all back to brunette? 

Dead, lifeless, ambiguously colored, split-ended hair that had to be chopped off to my chin. And while I'm enjoying the short hair for the most part, I miss my locks. Which is why I'm trying to ensure that when they do make their comeback, they'll be as healthy as humanly possible. Not only am I not going to dye my hair anymore, but I'm trying to revitalize it from the inside out by using less hair products in general. After doing some reading up about the least malevolent products, I kept bumping into the "No Poo method," which involves abstaining from the use of any shampoo or conditioner in order to restore the natural oils and nutrients from your scalp to your hair. You can read the specifics here. 

Basically, you use baking soda and vinegar to clean your hair. And bitches go nuts for this shit. They say it makes your hair amazingly soft and voluminous. So, I'm gonna try it for a month. No Poo February! 

"But, Shiv! How will you go a month without shampooing your hair?! Isn't the vinegar going to smell like shit?! You have so many handsome suitors just dying to take you out on dates, how are you going to juggle that?!"

       Actually, since you put the baking soda and the vinegar on your hair in the shower while it's still wet, there's no smell at all once it dries. So I'm fairly confident that George Clooney won't notice a thing while we're out to dinner. 

"But, Shiv! You workout all the time and have like the best bod ever and are just generally awesome, isn't your hair gonna get all gross after that?"

       Well, as much as I love excuses, (and I would so, so use this as an excuse not to exercise if I weren't already ankle deep in an exercise regimen) it really doesn't affect my workout schedule. You can just use the baking soda and vinegar method as much as you want, although it's suggested to do it about once every four days. Still, you can rinse with water on the off days. (remember that actual shampoo doesn't have any antibacterial properties, it's just loaded with perfumes) so your hair isn't getting any cleaner with shampoo, it's just masking your hair with pretty smells and stripping away the natural oil. 

SO, Day One. 

The initial experience was a little weird. As expected, the baking soda solution doesn't lather, so kiss your ability to run your fingers through your wet hair goodbye. The vinegar had absolutely no smell once my hair was dry, which was good. The many, many blogs that I read about the No Poo Method were basically all the same in that they warned rookies of the first day, and for good reason: my hair feels like shit.

This is apparently completely natural, since my hair is having a little identity crisis whilst rekindling the flame with it's naturally produced oils. And since my scalp's oil glands are just yawning during their wake up from an eight year nap and conversing amongst themselves about how much oil they should be letting out, it takes a little time to get used to. To clarify, my hair just feels a little starchy. Kind of like when you hairspray the shit out of it and then brush it the next day. It feels like its got texture, and its crazy voluminous already. 

That's day one, with just a tiny hair clip in. No teasing, no hairspray, no product. and my hair is only shoulder-length! Hopefully this volume sticks around! A lot of what I've read about No Poo suggests just keeping your hair back in a bun or under a hat for the first week or two, so thank heaven its beanie season. I'll be updating this every few days for progress updates, so if this is some internet troll that doesn't actually do anything beneficial for your hair at all, get your arsenal of jokes ready now. 

Until next time, friends.  

On Dreaming.

There are probably only about 5 things in this world that I hate more than insomnia, 4 of which safely fall under the “physical exertion” category. That said, I would be pretty okay with this whole greeting the sun every morning thing if it, maybe just once, entailed just a tiny bit of productivity. I have this awful, awful habit (right up there with assuming its okay to put red wine in a Starbuck's cup and going about my day, expecting my chihuahua to answer when I say “why you gotta be so cute?!” and donning sweatpants entirely too often) of pushing every troubling, anxious thought out of my head all day long. And then its 2 AM. And my roommates are asleep. And my puppy sighs and sasses me whenever I make the grave mistake of disturbing his peaceful sleep with so much as a cough. And then my troubling and anxious thoughts rise from the back of my brain into the forefront, where, for hours at a time, they marinate in “oh goddamnit” juice. Between the coulda-woulda-shoulda's, and the have-to's, I hardly even notice that the few birds crazy enough to still be in State College have started singing welcome songs to the sun.

Whoever it was that first suggested that “you can sleep when you're dead,” clearly never experienced 3 consecutive unintentional all-nighters sans coffee. (Wakefulness at that point, I'm pretty sure its safe to say, IS death.)

The thing about insomnia that most bums me out, though, has to be the lack of dreams. For how much over-analytical chaos I have running through my mind at any given minute of the day (example: are my eyebrows too thin? My nails are flimsy- hope thats not a warning sign of some weird vitamin deficiency. Do I even own vitamins? It doesn't matter, I have to set an alarm to remember to brush my teeth twice a day, I'd never remember to take a vitamin. Oh my god, I probably have a vitamin deficiency. Can't I just.... fix this with yoga? Ha, yoga. Jeeze, I probably can't even touch my toes at this point. I wonder if I look as out of shape as I feel. P90X tomorrow, for real this time. Or I could just go buy some vitamins. Yeah, definitely vitamins.) I think it helps my dreams increase their awesomeness factor exponentially.

My dreams range from being these abstract, nonsense, insane experiences to ones that seem so real that I've been known to shoot a text or two off in the morning confirming with my friends that no, they did not buy an Indian Elephant last night (even though I could have sworn-). And the best part about my dreams is that I remember almost every detail of every one of them (or so I think). 

I've met a lot of people that have said they never remember any of their dreams and to put it frankly, that sucks. Dreaming, in my opinion, is equally if not more important than any experiences we may have in our waking lives.

I once heard of this study that concluded that sleep was a human necessity and at first thought “well, duh.” But in hearing more about it, I was pretty amazed. Scientists had actually found a way to recreate all the chemicals in the brain that naturally produce during sleep that allow you to wake up feeling recharged and rested— and thus assumingly replacing the physical and mental need for sleep altogether. But scientists were stunned when they found that humans still needed sleep to survive. I think of it as nature's way of affording us an escape from the realities of life that can be so overwhelmingly daunting at times. We are not only able, but physically and emotionally required to slip into another state of consciousness, which we are free to explore and imagine and, (for the few of us lucky and skilled enough to lucid dream,) create.

On that note, sleep well. Go everywhere tonight, from the comfort of your own bed. In the words of Mark Twain, “Explore, dream, discover.”

P.S. pictures of my loved ones sleeping always relax me and bring a smile to my face. 

my puppy, Piccolo, snoozing in my palm. 

my niece, Ashley, during a car ride to Maryland. 

oh, hey.

For the handful of you that I will (probably painstakingly) convince to read this blog, thank you for doing so and a big congratulations on surviving the first sentence. To level with you, o' faithful reader, I don't exactly know what either of us is doing here. I do, however, feel that its important to warm my creaky little corner of the internet with some sentiment and personality before I go about my daily reporting on things like what chewing gum flavor I'm most enjoying this week, or what my favorite color nail polish is (as if I could ever choose just one. Please.) That said, I should note up front that if consistency is what you're after, I am most likely incapable of providing it. 

The point of this whole thing is simple: there isn't one.