We made it. We landed in Denver as winter storm Argos got fired up, had change planes on a 10 minute most-of-a-mile hike, de-ice the new one, got on toward Philadelphia, took off at 2, landed at midnight, no food since noon.
Met by a Philcon friend, taken to Wawa to get really very good sandwiches and on to the Cherry Hill NJ Crown Plaza, which was a room with a glorious view of autumn foliage and the river 12 stories below…
Conventioning, conventioning, conventioning. Autographing, meeting many people I haven’t seen in more than a decade—
Argos hit with such a fury it blew our window open, but the cool air was really nice—40 degrees. Philadelphia seems to like the temperature kept around 73 degrees, and we came dressed for fall. So we were able to sleep well, given the open window blasting 40 degree gales. We had a lovely time, met and re-met, and then boarded the Southwest flight home, which this time took us to Las Vegas. On this leg, partly because I’d strained my once-injured knee in Denver and Jane was handling our really heavy carry-ons, we yelled uncle and took the wheelchair option…felt a little guilty, but not willing to have permanent damage to the knee in another sprint; and it also let me take some of the weight off Jane’s hands, carrying it in my lap. Which made ME heavier for the pusher, but hey, they set the pace, not me. We got out of there with no supper, no food but a bag of fritos (lunch size) and on to Boise, and on to Spokane. Kudos to our dear coach Joan who got us TO the airport in good order, and to friends Tim and Cheryl, for Tim picking us up even if Cheryl was under the weather: friends are people who are there when they say they’ll be, come hail come wrack… we’re home. Arrived home to refire the half-week old frozen pizza, burned my side of it, ate it anyway: hunger is a good sauce, for sure.
Next day, breakfast and unpacking. We’re exhausted. And the house furnace quit. We’re working on that issue.
But we had left the cats the longest ever, from Thursday midday til late Monday, and their manners were impeccable, not a mistake, not a hairball, nothing scratched or overset. They simply met us at the door and have been pretty well glued to us ever since.
Chemically, soap is a “polar-nonpolar” molecule, originally long-chain alkyl organic acids, like stearic acid in tallow soap. The “nonpolar” long chain of -CH2- alkane units is compatible with, soluble in, hydrophobic organic molecules. The “polar” -COOH acid end is compatible with, soluble in, water. Its action is to get the organic end tangled in the hydrophobic organic “coating” on skin or cloth, but itself “coating” the hydrophobic organic with a “skin” of polar looking ends the water can be attracted to and “pull off”. Foaming agents may be used to hold these coated bits of “greasey stuff” in suspension until they can be rinsed away.
As it is typically used, soap has no intrinsic antibacterial activity. For that one must “soak” the contaminant in soapy water for an extended time. Then the soapy action breaks down the similarly constructed cellular walls of the bacteria. It has no effect on viruses–no cell walls.
My hair is chronically dry. I use this non-lathering Wen stuff that costs way more than I like, but it sure stopped the breakage problem.
I have fine flyaway hair that is prone to split ends and breakage, and our “semiarid” climate here doesn’t help. My hair’s a little better now that it’s “greyed” since “grey” hair tends to be coarser, but I’m a natural blonde and blondes don’t grey. They just go straight to white. I don’t dye or color my hair and haven’t since my 30’s. I just stopped buying into that whole thing. My mom is always after me to do it (she’s a suicide blonde – dyed by her own hand!) and she’s put color on her hair for so long she has no idea what the natural color is any more. She’s also 92.
I wash my hair once a week, and let it dry in the air. Every time I get it trimmed, the stylist always comments on what great texture my hair has — and it’s because I don’t wash it every time I turn around and I don’t blow dry or use a curling iron on it. I just let it grow and be how it is, and about every six or seven years or so I get it all cut off and start over. (and donate it to Beautiful Lengths http://pantene.com/en-us/experience-main-section2/beautiful-lengths ) Last time I got it cut was in August of 2015 (And the time before that was in 2008). Got it cut to 3-inches long all over. It’s now grown out to almost 11 inches, so it’s grown almost 8 inches in 15 months.
I have long, thick hair which takes ages to dry, especially at the cool temperatures we keep our house in the winter. I used to wash my hair about once a week or so. In the winter it got to be such a bother that I have taken to stretching it out two to three weeks, to no particular problems. I think any scalp oil just “migrates” along the length of the hair. In the summer when I get hot and sweaty, it can get itchy sooner but, as Green Wyvern points out, rinsing one’s hair handles that fine. In fact, to stay cool under our ceiling fan (no air conditioning) on hot summer nights, I rinse my hair, wring it lightly and just let the water evaporate all night long and keep me cool (exactly why I don’t like to go to bed with wet hair in the winter!).
I think washing one’s hair daily with shampoo just stimulates the scalp to produce oil. It takes a while to break one’s body of that habit when one stretches out the span between washing (I like Wyven’s rinsing idea!) but it’s so much nicer not being held to tyranny of mandatory, daily shampooing.
Many years ago, I used to make my own non-detergent “shampoo” solution using pulverized soapwort root, but it was such a pain to get ahold of the stuff that I stopped. Kept my hair nice and clean, though.
I’ve found that my home made coconut soap works great as a shampoo, but the texture is better afterward if I rinse with apple cider vinegar. Because of my dry scalp condition, I can’t just leave it (the oil and dead skin builds up- it’s so freakin’ gross, and made worse by the fact that I can’t seem to cure it, which suggests that my scalp issues are also an extension of my psoriasis. -__- )
Hm: Myth or Marketing?
One issue in SoCal is the high mineral content (hardness) of the water. My hair won’t get squeaky-clean without something. It tangles and knots even short.
Those with pollen allergies can be glad they’re not living in Australia. On Monday afternoon there was a severe situation with ‘thunderstorm asthma’ in Melbourne, thought to be caused by pollen grains breaking up into tinier particles due to weather conditions.
8,500 people required hospital treatment for breathing problems, 6 died, and 20 still remain in hospital.
Interesting research shows that increasing carbon dioxide levels can result in more pollen being produced by plants, and more potent pollen that causes more problems.
Thunderstorm asthma: ‘You’re talking an event equivalent to a terrorist attack’
Anecdata about the no shampoo/soap discussion above.
The two nerdy history girls occasionally blog about haircare in centuries past, including reporting on conversations with some of the seamstresses at Colonial Williamsburg, who have tried these regimes. At least one of them liked the way her hair looked and felt so much she is continuing to treat it with pomatum and powder and combing & brushing (which with long hair helps the natural oil spread along the length). From what I remember, they explained that this way of treating long hair makes it look more like in old paintings: it lies more smoothly around the head, and is smoother and better shapeable in general, with more volume further down the length; whereas modern washed hair has more springyness near the scalp, giving it more volume around the head but less lower down, and making it less easy to handle for the kind of up-do’s women in the previous centuries wore.
I cannot find the exact blog, but on one of these occasions, in the reactons to the blog, a historian chimed in about how she and a colleague had personally tried two different ancient hygiene regimes for three months, after a discussion about how dirty and smelly ancient people who didn’t wash must have been.
She didn’t wash her body but toweled it to get rid of grime and dead skin cells, but she did put on clean cotton or linen underclothes every day, as per the social rules about one’s white linen shirt (the long tails of which functioned as underpants) needing to be spotless and fresh in a time when using water to wash oneself was considered unhealthy; she did wash her underclothes with soap and water.
After three months she still didn’t smell badly; the clean clothes and rubbing the skin with a dry cloth occasionally were enough to stop a smell from developing.
Her colleague, who followed the opposite regime, washing his body daily but not washing his clothes for three months (his assertion having been that cloth was too precious to wash often, because beating and rubbing it would make it deteriorate quicker), wasn’t so lucky; long before the three moths were up everybody started avoiding him because the smell was so bad.
After all, my grandparents still, like many generations before them, survived on limited sponge-baths daily (with or without soap), probably a rinse-off at the pump after very sweaty or dirty work, and an occasional visit to the bath-house or later a once-a-week shower. With long hair and no hairdryer, washing one’s hair certainly wasn’t a daily occurrence, and often not weekly either, until the weekly showers became the new routine.
Thanks, Hanneke, that’s very interesting.