I'm bald again. Actually, I was bald again a few days ago, but am just posting about it now. Good ol' trich - it's like that pain in the ass friend you just can't get rid of. I'm just proud that I had the guts to swim at the lake sans-headscarf (and also in a bathing suit probably looking like some sort of mental patient or torture victim with my scars) yesterday with several people around. That's the nice thing about the lake on a weekday after school is back in - the only people there are mature adults, retirees, and residents - none of which really care what you look like because everyone's there just to enjoy themselves. Anyway, it was very nice. And I am bald. And sometimes I like it, and sometimes I wish I had my long curly golden-streaked hair back.

I last shaved my head over 3 months ago, and it had been growing in nicely for a while, and then trich resurfaced, more and more. Today it looked so awful all different lengths that I thought it would be best to even it out before work tomorrow. So, I took my hair clippers and evened it out. Turns out that the hair loss is not exactly uniform, so I now have visible bald/really thin spots. It probably looks worse than it did this morning. FML.

I can't believe my new employer asked me to get a doctors' note by monday to allow me to wear headscarves. This is unfortunate for the following reasons...

a) My doctor's office apparently closes at 4:30pm on Fridays and is closed all weekend, so they were closed when I phoned to inquire, and won't be open until after my monday morning training starts.
b) Do they ask for a certificate of verification for any religious person who wants to wear a head covering to work?
c) Does a wig count as a head covering, or is 'head coverings' just limited to fabric?

Perhaps if I waltz around without anything covering my hair, they'll discover that me not wearing headscarves is actually less respectful to my coworkers than me wearing them.

Anyway, since I'm not able to comply with what she wanted, I'm going to have to come up with a plan of attack. Options:
a) try to use makeup to make it look like my hair is normal, or
b) present a copy of my Trichotillomania Learning Center magazine front page article.
Maybe a combination of both would be most effective.

On the release form when you apply, you give them permission to research your online identities... so if they found me on facebook or livejoural, they'd already be well educated on the subject! Oh well - I shall think of this request as less of a personal attack and more of a chance to educate someone about the disorder.


P.S. Thanks to the Those Headcoverings blog (http://thoseheadcoverings.blogspot.com/) for featuring my story!

The best (*cough*) thing about trich is that it's cyclical - once you're in, there's no beginning and no end - just phases that take you around and around.

( Around and around we go, the phases that make up the circle of trich. )

Tonight I buzzed my hair off - not completely bald but probably around 1/4 or 1/2 an inch. It's so tiring to get up half an hour early to try to make my hair look like something when there's so little there! I spent almost two months longer in the hair-having phases than last year, so that's definitely an accomplishment. Looks like my trich cycle is about a year long, seeing as I shaved my hair last year at the beginning of November, and here we are just one month after that and I'm shaving it again! Fall = trich flare-up, apparently!

Anyway, I guess I should be used to it by now. This is the third time I've entered phase 3, but it still blows! Hopefully if I give off the attitude that I don't care, nobody else will care either. I mean, I know all of my close friends and family won't think anything of it, and I don't really care what strangers think, but I still feel a little nervous with people I know a little bit like at work, because I haven't sat down with all 70 realtors and 15 or so administrative staff to tell everyone what the deal is. Oh well - I'll take it how it comes!

It's not often I write really super-excited entries, so brace yourself---


YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEHHHHHHHHHHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!! (That's right, yeehaw!!)


I didn't want to go around talking about it because I didn't want anyone to know if I failed, but I didn't fail - I succeeded, so now I'll tell you!!

I got another job! A second job, if you will, for the afternoons. Someone (*winks*) commented on a post a few days ago telling me to be creative in my job search. So, I took that to heart, and when cruising the classifieds I stumbled across nannying. Nannying is something that there will always be demand for, you can begin with little education, and pays fairly well. I posted myself on a Canadian Nanny website, and almost immediately got a reply from a mother of three young children. The next day (yesterday) I spent a couple hours fine-tuning my resume, cover-letter, and references, and sent those over. I nailed down an interview, and then spent an hour jogging my memory of the first-aid/cpr skills that I was certified for (and put that on the resume, so wanted to make sure I didn't forget it all in case it came up). Today I went over sample nanny interview questions just before I left so I'd be prepared for anything. Turns out, I didn't need to know a thing. I came in, and two of the three children were there (the other was at school). The mom invited me in, we sat down at the kitchen table, the kids coloured in colouring books, we chatted about the kids and how things work around their home and the $12/hour with increase over time pay, and then she asked me to start tomorrow around noon, and I said yes. When I left, the kids stood on the front porch and waved to me, and now I won't live under a bridge.

Then, I sang Miley songs in my car on the way to the grocery store because I was so happy. And I remembered that I hadn't spent my birthday money yet, so at the store I spent 1/3 of it on a the Hannah Montana Best of Both Worlds Concert CD, and the other 2/3 of it on groceries, and it was great. Nothing gets the party started like a screaming audience just before the bass starts pounding before Hannah Montana busts out "I might even be a rock staarrr!"

I might even be a ROCKSTAR!

Also, I got fudge brownies to celebrate.

Also, a new episode of House is on tonight! Yay!

Also, a new episode of Bones is on tomorrow night! Yay!


Unfortunately, our building's elevator isn't working right now, so it's stairs to get down to the parkade. Fine for me on the main floor, not so convenient for anyone on the 4th floor.
Also unfortunate is the new couple bald spots on my head. But, that's the plus of having hair- comb it strategically and use makeup underneath, and nobody has to know!

I'm feeling very badly trich-wise for the past couple days, especially last night and this morning. I've been pulling at my eyelashes, because you know, they're feeling the way that they do... like they "want" to be pulled out. It's very hard to explain if you don't have trich. Anyway, so I've pulled out a bunch from approximately the same area that's bugging me- no bald spots or anything, but I still feel badly because I worked so hard to get lashes like these, and now I just can't leave them alone.

I think the important thing to do is look behind what's different/gone wrong between my fabulousness a couple weeks ago and my less-than-fabulousness right now. I think the main two factors include being stressed (related to moving, and work), and a change of routine that doesn't involve my normal trich-recovery strategies such as recording urges/progress, relaxation, stimulus control, etc. So, I'll have to arrange my life in such a way as to get back on the bandwagon, because I so love having near-normal hair and eyelashes that I don't want to give them up without a fight.

( 7 week pictures. )

Rumour has it that 3 months equals normal eyelashes, so if that's true, I'm half way there! It seems really soon to post more pictures, but that's because I procrastinated so much last time. So anyway, here's...

( Trich stuff- Starting week 7. )

It took me an hour to unpack all the stuff that the staging lady packed, and repack it in a way that makes sense. Last move I had the issue of having a little bit of everything in every box, which made it epically (winks at lenimonkey) difficult to find things when I got to the new place. So, this time, I'm organized. I have boxes, labelled with the appropriate room, and then numbered. The number is writen down in a notebook, according to room, and the contents of each box is listed. So if I'm in the kitchen and wondering which box contains my canned peaches, all I have to do is glance at the notebook, select the appropriately numbered box, and I'm done. So, my goal is to get everything packed by tomorrow before work, so that she won't mess up my system.

My lizard, Carlos, has been eating less crickets lately, so one 'package' lasts longer. Today when I went to empty the last of the crickets out of a package, there was just one - GIANT - cricket. I'm pretty sure it ate all the other crickets in the package. I'm also pretty sure that the cricket is too large for my lizard, so tomorrow I'm going to have to get another package and somehow catch and set the giant one free.

I got some mascara today, so it's fun to play with. The only thing I don't like about mascara is that it makes eyelashes look weirdly crispy and crunchy. I'm not sure if anyone understands that but me, but my opinion remains. What I need is more of a 'tinted moisturizer'... something that is barely noticeable, and will make my lashes more soft than they were before. If anyone wants to invent that, I'll buy it. Because, y'know, I now have longer eyelashes than I've had in over half my life. Continueing on.

That's right, I have to go do more packing, so the "continueing on" of the last paragraph really isn't leading anywhere. I'll part with this:

In Quebec, they are just now putting a stop to the annual "Chicken Massacre", where everyone gathers around a ring of chickens, all decapitated (the chickens, not the people), and bet on which chicken will run around the longest once it's head has been hacked off. This is a good thing, that it's stopped due to the shear volume of protesters, but it still turns my stomach to know that this EVER happened. I am extremely angry at the human race for ever allowing a single animal to suffer. If my dog so much as feels uncomfortable climbing steps, I rush over and lift her up. I think anyone that can take a cleaver and cut off any part of an animal, especially while it's still alive, and doesn't feel the need to take their own life afterwards, needs some serious removal from the general population. I'm livid. I accidentally ran over an already-killed squirrel once on the road, and it haunts me to this day. I can't even imagine how suicidal I'd be if I was forced to engage in decapitating chickens, dog fights, cock fights, or anything else that causes pain or suffering.

The chaos has begun! My patio is getting re-vamped as we speak. It's a very confusing situation, because we wanted to have the apartment ready for showings on the 26th, but I'm moving on the 29th, and the stager is on vacation from the 28th until the 31st. The difficult part besides remembering all of those dates, is that there will be a few days where my furniture will have already moved to the new apartment, but the stager won't be around to bring in the rental furniture.

At any rate, I have approximately one week to pack... so what am I doing here?

Oh that's right, I wanted to mention that for the first time in... *counts fingers*... 9 and a half months, my hair was good enough to go to work without a headscarf on. Yay me! So, I have most of my (1/2 length) eyelashes, full eyebrows, and about 90% of my hair. Take that, 6-weeks-ago-Karen! More to come, due to the fact that it's trich-recovery-tuesday. Good stuff.

Something unfortunate happened last night. It's been 10ish days since I last pulled, but last night I went into skin-picking mode. Looks like I'm going to have two things to recover from now!

Yippee! My trich article was featured on the front page of the TLC (Trichotillomania Learning Center) InTouch Newsletter! How cool is that!? The answer is VERY.

Also- the article links to my blog here, so to all newcomers, welcome! Feel free to leave a note and introduce yourself.

It was neat to see that this issue was quite young-adult oriented, with two articles written by twenty-or-unders, in addition to all the news about exciting upcoming trich studies, event information, etc. I love connecting with everyone involved in the community, but it's especially nice to connect with people my age.

This is really a new generation for the trich-community. In the past, many people with the disorder were well into their adult lives before even realizing that it had a name. Nowadays, there's tons of information available about it online and from TLC, so parents and their trichster children can learn about it as early as possible. There's a theory that trich is caused by genetics, but becomes harder to treat as time goes on because instead of a reaction to a trigger, it becomes habitual and ingrained in your daily life. For example, the first time a trichster pulls is an isolated incident caused by a powerful biological cue, but when you pull for years every time you sit on the couch leaning against the armrest, it then is a habit. So, if the isolated powerful-biological-cue pulling incident is treated quickly, there is likely a better chance of a high level of recovery than someone who has been pulling for years on end. I have no proof of this, but it sure makes sense to me.

Anyways, now I'm rambling. So, in short, TLC is awesome, getting my article on the front page is awesome, and any new friends who come across this post from that article are also awesome :)

I think I'm going to try to grow my hair out so that I can go scarf-less again. It was really fun having a little bit of hair- say, two or three weeks of growth. I haven't been able to do that recently though due to bald spots (as my mom put it, you have bald spots on your bald spot!). I haven't had too bad of a time with it lately so those spots are filling in, as it were, and I might be able to get away with it soon. I hope so... the weather will be getting warmer soon, and I want to walk around with the cool breeze on my head... and face, and arms, etc. We'll see what happens- don't hold your breath!

In other news, the temperature is still fairly crisp outside, but it's by no means snowing- it's quite sunny and lovely, and that makes me feel good. It makes me feel like going for a drive or a walk- both of which I did today!

Most importantly... kalio's coming over in may!!!!! YAY!!!!!!!!!!