I fell off the wagon

That is, the no-poo wagon. Well, not completely, I still have one leg on, but I'm not on for the long haul. I gave it a good try, but after yesterday, I decided I couldn't give it another three weeks at a fair try. Really, my hair was looking great, it was really clean. It just didn't feel like I wanted it too. It felt kind of dry and I've never had dry hair, so it was really bugging me. Of course, I figured the answer would be a nice deep conditioning treatment. So I found a good homemade recipe and gave it a try. When I got out of the shower, my hair combed out so nice, it felt smooth and conditioned and I was sure this was the going to be a good hair day. I had a lot to do, so instead of letting it air dry, I decided to blow-dry. So, I blowed, and blowed, and blowed, but no drying was happening. Then I discovered that my hair was not wet, but GREASY! Gross! Well, it wasn't totally gross, it didn't smell bad, and even as greasy as it was, it still felt clean, not greasy like going 10 days without washing. Apparently I had over-conditioned. As I was closely inspecting my hair in the mirror I also kept finding white flakes. How could my hair possibly have flakes with as "moist" as it was? The answer: They weren't flakes, they were little pieces of egg. See, the conditioner had eggs in it. Either the water in the shower was too hot and cooked the eggs, or I didn't get it completely rinsed out and just fried up a little egg while blowdrying. Either way, it was nasty. I didn't really want to use the baking soda again just to go back to where I had started that morning, so I decided a quick trip to the store for some emergency shampoo was in order. I pulled back my greasy hair (I'm not sure I even needed a hair band, it might have just stayed where I combed it all on it's own), grabbed Claire, and flew out the door. I realized when we got to the store, in all my distress, I had forgotten make-up as well. Needless to say, if you had seen me at the store you would have had to follow through with the obligation to tell me I looked like a greasy hippie.
I didn't want to go back to the regular old shampoo with all the nasty chemicals in it, so I found some by Avalon Organics. It's yummy and my hair loves it. After doing a little more reading, I've decided the reason my hair wasn't taking the baking soda washing so well is because we have hard water. I think with soft water it would have done much better. I'm not disciplined enough to haul purified water into the shower with me every morning, so, when we get a water softener one day I'll definitely try it again. For now, I'll stick with my new shampoo and use the baking soda wash occasionally for a good clarifying treatment.