Update

I called two salons yesterday about my dreads.  One offered to "fix" them for $50.  Then I asked what they meant by "fix."  Turns out they would just cut off all the loose hair and roll the dreads really well with a lot of a product.  While that would make them look better for a week or so, it isn't a permanent solution.  Goodness only knows what they would do about the tips.

Salon number two sounded a bit more legit about their dreads, but, based on my over the phone description, say it would probably cost $150-$200.  This is money i would be willing to pay if I thought it would be a permanent, or at least long-term, solution.  I purchased a mini-crochet hook, the most highly recommended method of dread maintenance, yesterday morning.  Last night, after hauling yet another load of my crap up to my new apartment, I settled in to see if I could even make headway against the dreads on my own, or at least figure out if they were repairable at all.  I sat right on the counter in my pjs and got up close and personal with the mirror, that crochet hook, and my poor, ailing dreads.  Friends, I couldn't fix even a hair, not one.  The knots of my dreads, once so tight and compact, are migrating out the unraveling dreads, and the remaining dread is shrinking.  As the knots weaken, hair is liberating itself from the dreads like crazy, and there is more loose hair every day.  I am thinking that even with salon help, my dreads my be doomed.  I think if I really want dreads, good dreads, these are already lost.  I'd need to pick them out and start over, which is what some people have already started recommending.

First, I'd like to offer a sincere apology to all my friends who helped put the dreads in.  I feel like I've failed you and let you down after all your hard work.  I promise not to ask you for help taking them out, or to put them in again some day if I decide I want to try again.  My hair and I will have to muddle through without bothering you for a while.  Thank you for all your hard work and sacrifice so that I could try this, I wish I could give you the return in your investment you deserve.

What I would do differently if I ever do this again:

1. Have longer hair.  Short dreads are possible, but harder.  They take a lot more maintenance, and a little unraveling is a much bigger problem.  Longer dreads lock up faster and stay better. There's also more you can do with them, instead of just put a headband on everyday.  I couldn't wait for my hair to be long, and thought I could deal with the issues that come with short dreads.  I was wrong.

2.  Bigger sections.  I love my tiny, tiny dreads, but I think that's probably part of the problem as well.  Larger dreads lock up faster and stay better as well.  I still don't want big, fatty dreads, but I think I would go larger than what I have now.  I thought I could deal with the issues that come with tiny, short dreads in straight, stubborn hair; I was wrong.

3.  Decide that if I really want dreads so desperately and so badly, then I'd better save up for them.  Instead of trespassing on the goodness of my friends, I should save up the $500 or so to get salon dreads, which might include a road trip to a good salon.  I should also budget for maintenance appointments for the first year or so probably.  Basically, I should make sure I want dreads instead of a trip to Europe or a new computer or my own apartment.  I thought I could deal with doing it the cheap, homemade way with short, skinny dreads. I was wrong.

I've started breaking the news to my students.  The dreads are making their farewell tour.  When I have time to pick them out in the next week or two, I will.

Two Weeks Later

Two weeks ago, I wrote Fear and Dreads, timidly admitting that I may have to take out my dreadlocks.  I read the comments, considered the feedback, and looked long and hard on my dreads.  I decided to give my precious dreads another month.  Maybe they were just going through a phase, maybe I was just being panicky about the ends unraveling.  Two weeks later, it's official:  the ends are really and truly unraveling again.  Twenty days after taking the rubber bands of the tips, I would estimate that half of the redreading that Di, Nick, and I did in late July has unraveled.  Six hours of work by myself and my self-sacrificing friends, a month of patience with rubber bands again, and it seems to have made no difference.  With each washing my dreads get tighter, which is good, except my magic mom-hair rebels against being that tightly knotted and wound, so it pushes the knots out the ends.  My dreads are shiveling and unraveling.

The snarling and loose hair is also getting worse.  When I wrote two weeks ago, most of my dreads had at least one kink, the worst ones had two, and some had full-blown loops.  In the short space of fifteen days, they have continued to mutate.  Nearly all dreads now have two kinks, zig-zags, or loops.  The best have only one.  The worst ones now have three to five.

The larger loops have now started to cause hair to slip out of the end half of the dread, meaning I now have loose hair at the roots and more loose hair sticking out half way down.  The kinking and looping is worst on the dreads that spend all day underneath my headbands, but the way the dreads look, I can't go to school without wearing one.  

I don't know how much getting my dreads "repaired" at a salon would cost, but considering that getting them done initially costs $300-$500, I'm worried it will cost $100-$200 to get them repaired, which may just be another temporary fix.  I think fixing them myself is getting to be out of the question.  It would take more hours than I am willing to put in to fix them, and, once again, it would probably only be a temporary fix.  My hair is winning.  It's rejecting the dreads like a bad organ transplant.

However, my dreads still look pretty decent when they're pulled back, with the roots well hidden.  I'm still getting compliments on them nearly every day.  Many of the teachers at my school I considered conservative and "mommish," have come up to tell me how cute my hair is and how much it suits me.  Honestly, the dreads do suit me.  Even people who don't like the dreads admit that they fit who I am.  I still look in the mirror sometimes and think to myself, I love these dreads.  They look amazing and beautiful; I'll never change. Other days I look in the mirror and think to myself, Hell, those things have got to go.  They look awful, gross, and nasty.  Ew.  They have to go NOW.  Then I'll wake up the next day and have switched.  Sometimes my perspective switches partway through a day.

My dreads look good enough that the thought of their doom makes me grieve.  But I think it's time.  I'm still exploring a few last ditch options:  I bought a mini crochet hook, and I'll call a salon today to price out repair.  But if those options don't pan out, my dreads will probably be gone within a month.  Oh sorrow, sorrow.

Overheard in My Classroom:

"Miss Eddington is almost a kid; she just understands us so well."
I'm not sure how I feel about this.

In another class, my students are studying Anne Frank, and one student referred to Mr. Kraler and Miep, the two employees/friends who hid them for those long two years, as the Franks' "secret-keepers."  Oh Harry Potter, how you have influenced the world.

I'm still a kid at heart.  And I still love 70s linoleum.
They new how to paint linoleum back in the day.  Seriously.

My 8th grade students are studying Anne Frank and the Holocaust, and one of the activities I do to help them understand what it felt like to be a Jew during WWII is to have them wear yellow stars of David.  They have to wear the stars in public, for at least an hour, and have a witness sign that they did so.  We talk about stereotypes and labeling and have a really good discussion.  It's an assignment they typically like.

Well, today I was introducing the assignment and covering a few "don'ts" that you have to cover with 13-14 year olds.  No, you may not color your star or write "I'm awesome!" in the center.  No, you can't cover it with jacket.  No you can't wear it on your leg, your forehead, your behind, or your belly ("You're not a sneetch," I told them.).  After class, one student who had come in late and missed the discussion stayed behind to get the instructions.  Even though he had missed the sneetch discussion, the first thing he did was hold his star over his belly-button and exclaim with delight,

"I'm a Jew-bellied Sneetch!!"

Then he got to see Miss E. laugh uncontrollably and roll her eyes at the same time.

http://www.amquix.info/humor/sneetches/sneetchlogo.gif

Goal Achieved

This year I have mostly 7th graders.  This means I spend a lot more time teaching them to write their names on papers than I would if I had mostly 8th grade, which is what I usually have.  It also means that I get many, many more parents coming to see me during parent teacher conferences.  7th grade is the first year of junior high, and the students and their parents are nervous, and worried about making the jump from elementary school with one class, to junior high with eight.

For the fun of it, I decided to keep a tally of how many sets of parents/guardians/representatives (sometimes the students themselves if their parents were busy) have come to see Miss E. tonight.  When I was informed that the line outside my door to talk to me was getting long and onerous, I realized just how many people I was going to be talking to.  But that's ok, I like parent teacher conferences.  I always a lot about a student by meeting their parents, hearing them talk, and watching their interactions with each other and their student.  So I set a goal:  50 sets of parents/guardians/representatives.  It looked like I'd achieve my goal easily, after all, I had 37 while there was still an hour and a half left.  But then, the steady flood of people through my door carrying purses and progress reports dried up.  I began to get worried.  Soon there were only ten minutes left and I was sitting at 49.  49!  One short!

But I'm happy to report that my tally now stands at 51.  51 sets of parents/guardians/representatives have come to ask about their students' grades.  51 smiles, 51 enthusiastic "Come on in!  Have a seat!"s, 51 "Do you have any questions for me?"s.  I'm all enthusiasmed out.  You could probably call me and tell me you were pregnant, propose matrimony or world travel to me, and I'd just respond with a distant, "Yeah?  That's cool."

It's time for me to go home now.

Good night.

On the Move

  

That blog title can be taken multiple ways, and many of them are correct.  I am on the move in the sense that I am literally moving.  I'm leaving the apartment I've been in for the last year and a quarter and the roommates I love and admire and am hauling all of my stuff, car load by tiny car load, to a new, empty, and thus far blank apartment.  There are a lot of reasons for this move, some serious, some silly, and all of them too long for a quick blog I'm posting during my prep period when I should be doing something else. But I will say that I very much like my new place so far, and that I'm enjoying moving in and nesting, even if I haven't moved any furniture yet, so am living among neatly stacked piles of clothes and books on the floor along every wall.

I'm on the move in that time is passing quickly.  It's midterm of first term already.  It's parent-teacher conferences already!  Twenty days of school are over already, meaning the school year is 11% over.  It's nearly Jeni's birthday, meaning that September is almost over and October is almost here, I'm almost 26, and fall is beginning.  Things I think of as happening just the other day this summer are now three months ago.

I'm on the move in that life is changing quickly for myself and everyone else it seems.  I sat on Jen's bed a few weeks ago talking about all the craziness in my life, and then last night as I attempted to maneuver my Costco cart with one hand while talking in the phone, she declared she was selling her house, her family was moving to Driggs, and wanted to know if I could take care of their cat for two months.  My sister is changing careers, states, and schools again. One of my roommates dropped out of graduate school and is moving home to work out necessary details to go on some sweet, sweet travel adventures.  Things change quickly.

I'm on the move in that I am very, very busy.  I spent most of Sunday packing stuff for the move, Monday I taught a full day and left straight from school for the leasing office to sign my paperwork and pay my rent, etc.  The evening was spent hauling and unpacking boxes.  Tuesday I taught a full day, modifying my lessons so that I could study for my G/T Endorsement class for part of each period.  I had 100 pages of straight text, no pictures, boring textbook to read by tonight.  I only have 25 pages left.  Over the course of the day, four different people came to observe my classroom and teaching for various reasons, including one lady whom I've never seen before or since and have no idea why she was there.  After school I had a meeting with a parent, then drove to my old apartment, grabbed a quick load of stuff, trying to leave before traffic got bad.  When I got to my new apartment, more time was spent hauling and unpacking, then there was a run to Costco and Smiths for groceries and apartment essentials.  Then a couple friends came over to see the new place and Tuesday was gone.  Tonight I had a meeting with a parent before school, and I'm trying to prepare lessons and read the last 25 pages of this week's assigned reading in this awful textbook.  After school there is a faculty meeting until 4:00; at 4:30 I need to be at my G/T Endorsement class in south Orem with the every last boring page of the reading completed.  At 7:00 I'll stumble out of my class, decide whether to stop by my old apartment for another load of stuff or just go straight to the new one so I can wash my dreads, make some real food, unpack some stuff, and maybe get to bed on time.  Exercise would be nice, too, but that's not very likely tonight.  Tomorrow is more teaching and then parent-teacher conferences from right after school until 7:30.  Friday and Saturday are fairly normal days, except that I need to cancel rock climbing with a friend to grade 200 essays I need to have finished by Monday, and probably start on the next reading assignment in the boring textbook.

And I'm on the move in that I've already spent too much time writing this as my reward for finishing the chapter in that textbook.  I'd better go see if those speed reading lessons I took in college are going to pay off.

Moving on.

Fear and Dreads

It's time to say something that has been steadily gnawing at my mind.  It's something that first occurred to me months ago as a passing thought.  It's something I've tried to hide from, ignore, bury deep, cover up, and deny.  It's gone from passing thought to hidden doubt, to mild worry, and is now an all out raging fear that needs to be expressed.  But I haven't said anything, I've soldiered on.  But today, it's time to confess:  I'm worried, concerned, and troubled about the future of my dreads.  They may, in fact be doomed.

I'm frightened, Auntie Em.

This summer, in early July, after adventures in the ocean and chlorinated swimming pools with my nieces and nephews, the rubber bands on my dreads were dissolving into globs of goo seeping into the core of my dreads.  So I stayed up late one night in the dorm room bathroom in Ithaca College while my nephews slept, and I took out the rubber bands, a painful process that involved extracting the now fragile and twisted rubber bands in pieces.  In many places the goo stayed.  I can still find bits of it now, months later.

Right after taking the bands out in early July.  You can see the late night doubt all over my face.  

After washing my hair a few times, I actually liked the way they looked band-free much better.  My hair certainly felt much better without over a hundred rubber bands in it.  Compliments continued to come in from unexpected quarters (people at airports, gas stations, old ladies, etc.), and I thought that all was well.  But about a month after I had taken the bands out, it was pretty clear that the ends, far from dreading up naturally like I had hoped they would, were unraveling instead.  Pretty soon I had about four inches of loose hair.  It became clear that I would need to do something about it. 

Just before redreading the tips in late July.

Of course, that meant that Di and I and Nick-in-her-basement once again spent hours working on my hair.  At the end of another several TV shows and a couple mini-movies, my tips were redreaded and secured once again with bands.  This time I was careful: no pools, which was hard during the month of August. 

Tips all tightened up and incubating in their bands again.

Mid-late August, the tips look were looking secure.  And the bands were starting to get fragile again, it was time to take them out.

But the front always looks best.  That's because that's where my face is.  

After giving the tips a month with bands, on the eve of my three month of dreadiversary, I took out the bands.

Soooo much softer.

Three months strong.  

Now, a little over a week later, I am faced with an unpleasant reality:  my dreads are beginning to unravel again.  Not only that, but now, after three months, there is a veritable swamp of loose hair, some of it in very large chunks. 

The loose hair can supposedly be fixed if I find a microscopic crochet hook and put in another 10-20 hours of labor.  Also, now that the dreads are a few months old, the dread/not dread process is beginning to show.  Some of my dreads have just grown out, with no dreading at the roots.  Others have begun to dread on their own, which is good, but they’re not dreading up cleanly.  My dreads are growing in zig-zags and loops.

This is probably the worst one, but most of them have at least one loop or  zag or both.

Supposedly, if I control the dreading process of the roots by constant maintenance, I can help prevent some of that.  This will involve working on every single dread individually, then rebanding the roots for another month, and hoping that fixes the problem.  I would need to repeat this process with each dread as it needs redoing—probably every few months.  So what I currently have are an inch to two inches of snarled roots forested with loose hair, then some loops and zags and more loose hair, followed by a few inches of solid dread (smooth but scratchy, the way it’s meant to be), and then topped by one to three inches of loose tips.  Here’s a pictorial tour of the way it looks when I’m not trying to hide the problems.  The way it looks is disheartening.  I keep wearing thicker and thicker headbands to try and hide the problems at the roots.  And I don’t know if it’s going to get better.

The harsh reality.

Do you know that problem with roots?  They grow.  They take over.  

This is with a headband.  And it still looks like that.  :(

So now I am forced to acknowledge that my dreads may be doomed.  That's hard to face.  I went into this so committed, so ready to put up with any snags and problems, so mentally prepared to give any necessary time and maintenance my dreads could ask for.  Now, I’m staring down the barrel of probably 20-30 hours of work to get them looking passable again, which may not even matter because the tips may continue to unravel.  Maybe, if I put in another 20 hours blunting the tips, I can halt the unraveling, but that’s a maybe.  I don’t know if I have enough solid dread in my dreads to actually work in all that loose hair and tip without tearing apart the dread I do have. 

When I went into this, I thought that dreading was a drastic enough process to overcome my hair.  You see my hair will always default to classy no matter what I’ve tried to do to it.  I've curled it and permed it and punked it and now dreaded it.  Every single time, my hair will win.  I curl it and it goes back to straight.  I perm it and it gradually loses its curl.  I chop it off and feather it and dye it purple, and it always looked like a mid-30s mom-bob by the end of the day.  Now, I have backcombed and rolled and banded and rebanded and begged it, and it is rebelling against these dreads with all the stubbornness it has.  And it has a lot.  It’s genetic.  My sister has my hair, too, we got it from the matriarchs in our family.  Looking at my mother and her mother I know certain things.  My hair will never go gray, it will always be thick, Pantene Pro-V commercial thick and strong and smooth. 

But that magic hair is destroying my dreads.  If I want to keep my dreads, it will require an all-out war and siege against my hair that I may not be able to win despite my best efforts.  Do I put in another 40-60 hours to champion what may be a losing cause?  Do I enlist my friends’ help again to mount another offense?  Do I acknowledge defeat, and gather friends to put in 20 hours to take out the dreads?  It’s the middle of the school year, so I can’t just shave my head.  Do I apologize to the friends who have given so much time and effort to helping me get this far and take out all their hard work, or do I enlist their help for more hours of painstaking labor in this possibly doomed venture?

Now don’t get me wrong, I love my dreads.  I’ve enjoyed every day with them.  I love having hair that looks the same whether I drive with the windows down on the freeway, spent the night on the couch, wore a bike helmet five miles, camped for days, or any other adventure.  All I have to do is throw on a headband and I’m ready for a date or school.  I love that my hair stopped producing grease to the point where I often forget when the last time I washed my hair, because, although I wash it more than once a week, I once let it go for almost two and noticed no real difference.  I love the way they look on me, especially on the front.  They give my usually flat hair a volume its never had.  I love being the girl with dreads.  I feel like they suit my personality well.  I like the people who come talk to me because of them.  I love how much my students love them.  I have a few friends who hate them, but mostly the response has been positive.  Even my parents and my conservative sister-in-law have told me they like my dreads. 

But my dreads are transforming from the tame, groomed dreads, controlled by the bands I had in the beginning, to a war zone.  I may have won the battle with the initial dreading, but I feel like I’m losing the war.  So how much more time and effort do I put in before I abandon ship?  How long to I hope this is just a dread-phase that will go away after they “mature” a bit more. 

What do I do?

Musings on Growing up

Yesterday I found myself at a coffee shop in an unfamiliar area, killing time before an appointment and meditating on life.  Since becoming a teacher, there are two things I nearly always have on hand:  scratch paper and a red pen.  Put those two together, and this was the result:

You know what growing up means?  It means making decisions, big ones, decisions that come trailing consequences both good and bad, both apparent and unforeseen.  Being grown-up means being aware of just how much you don't know when you make these decisions.  Gone are the days when you knew what you were doing, when an afternoon was sufficient to research an issue and feels sure.  Now you can spend weeks, months, or  years researching, thinking, and evaluating and still come up a little uncertain, because you've made enough decision now to know how many surprise conflicts, issues, hidden expenses, and aggravations yet unknown are waiting just around the bend in the road.  And the prospect makes you afraid, and some of the shreds of adolescence in you will vote for ignoring the decisions altogether.  Turn up the TV, reach for a cookie, concentrate on the other details of life, and let opportunities and decisions slide by while you close the blinds and order take-out.

But those shreds of adolescence are not your enemy, nor should you seek to smother them or stamp them out so you can proceed toward down the path of your choosing toward that bend in the road with grim, skeptical, fatalistic adult determination.  Instead, use all your adulthood to decide which road you will take and to make the best preparations you can--pack an extra pair of underwear, $20 cash for an emergency, and the phone number of the towing company.  Let your adulthood worry and over plan as much as it can for what's coming.  Pack your six duffel bags of clothes and equipment for every weather and contingency.  Then, decision made and unknown future chosen as best your adult self can manage, and with preparations made based on what you know or imagine will be ahead, then gather up those shreds of adolescence and wrap them around you like a cloak.  Tell them that that the grown-up you has prepared for everything, nothing is going to go wrong you can't handle, and, most importantly, convince those remaining bits of idealistic, adolescent you that you are embarking on an adventure and it is going to fun.  Lie if you have to.  Because those fragments of youthful optimism are what's going to keep you from losing your smile and your soul as you go around that bend in the road and get blindsided by the stuff waiting in the shadows.

Those pieces of the youthful you are everything you've spent years training yourself not to be:  idealistic, stubborn, willful, rebellious, naive, and blind.  But all your adult knowledge educated guesses about what's coming up now that you've chosen a path are only going to make you afraid.  Whisper to those shreds of naivete that when difficulties come up they should be as stubborn and pigheaded as they have ever been; give them a free reign to be rebellious.  Tell them you're going to put them back in charge for a little while, and that you're going to keep forward as blindly ignorant of what's ahead as you did when you were 15.  You've used all the adulthood you have to make the decision and prepare as best as you can, the adult open-eyed, grim determination will only lead you to despair along the way.  It takes all the stupidity, blind optimism, and unreasonable, unbearable stubbornness and cheek of a teenager to travel the road ahead and enjoy it.

After all, this is going to be an adventure.  It's going to be fun.

Grown-up Girls Solve Their Own Problems

If you haven't been following my grown-up girl saga  involving sewer pipe, doctors for your lady bits, and mysterious insurance companies, you can read about in part one and part two.  If you don't care about my grown-up girl saga and you definitely don't want to hear about insurance or gynecologists, I'd recommend not reading those parts, or this post for that matter.

Like any grown-up will tell you to do, I mustered up my courage and confronted the problem:  I called my grown-up insurance company.  After a brief discussion, the problem was identified.  The reason they didn't want to cover my grown-up girl doctor appointment and all his lab work was because they didn't believe I was actually a grown-up!  Really, that's what the problem was this whole time.  Those weren't the exact words they said, the exact words were more like, "We're not listed as your primary insurance."  If you translate that it says, "We thought you were still on your parents' insurance, little girl."  I informed them that they were my primary, indeed, my only insurance and that they had been for years (years, That's how long I've been a grown-up.).  They told me I'd need to call my previous insurance company and have them fax over my letter of termination.  Now, call me crazy, but when you get a letter of termination from your insurance company, doesn't that sound like you should be dead?  But their doomsday terminology not withstanding, I immediately called DMBA and asked them to fax a letter over to Educators Mutal and let them know that I was dead, or a grown-up, whichever they took "terminated" to mean.  They told me the letter would arrive within a half an hour.

Three days later, a day after a third grown-up lab bill arrived at my apartment to inform me that I owed another hundred grown-up dollars from my grown-up salary, I got another email from my insurance company informing me that there had been new claims filed to my account.  With very un-grown-up haste I rushed to their website, typed in my password, and sat back with a downright childish cry of delight.

I don't owe the doctor or his labs a single penny.  My insurance company was forced to acknowledge that I am, indeed, grown-up enough for them to pay for my bills.  Now I am fighting the very un-grown-up desire to go blow the $400 I'm not paying my gynecologist on something awesome.