I realize that one is supposed to embrace her natural hair texture—it’s 2018, after all—but mine has always been too inconsistent to happily leave it to chance. That doesn’t mean I don’t, on occasion. Some days it just might air dry with a nice, all-over wave, but on most others it just frizzes up, maybe even curls a little on one side. Best case scenario, I’d sleep on it and wake with a nice, subtle wave, just needing to straighten my bangs out a bit.
In other words, I’ve pretty much figured out how to get it how I like it without too much effort, but I preferred the way it looked on the days I took the time to get it straight, and then added back some “natural” wave with a curling iron, which is a level of effort that just can’t happen on vacation (and which sounds completely ridiculous).
So before we left for Italy, I decided to give a Keratin treatment a try. It has, so far, been summer hair magic for me.
I love almost everything about summer—except the mosquitos. (Although they seem to love me.)
After our trip to Thailand, I got a lot of questions about how we protected ourselves and the kids. Now that it’s the season for camping trips and lingering outside at sunset, I thought it might be a good time to return to the topic.
At the time, a reader—Lauren Oster—wrote in to share a story full of great tips that she wrote up, and which ran in Health Magazine. For the story, she interviewed the scientists behind a 2015 study on repellents and the overall takeaway was that as much as we wish essential oils or candles could suffice, “if you really need to keep mosquitos away (if, say, you’re traveling someplace where mosquito-borne illness is a concern), you’re going to have to reach for something synthesized, like OLE, picaridin, or DEET.” “It’s also worth noting that “natural” bug sprays aren’t regulated by the EPA (unlike those containing OLE, DEET, and picaridin) and don’t have to provide evidence to back up safety or efficacy claims.”
DEET is still the standard against which every other repellant is tested, and most experts still reach for it when necessary. The data on its immediate and long-term safety is much more extensive as its been around so long.
However, we became Picaridin converts on our trip. It worked—I didn’t get bit at all! even in a jungle—without ruining plastics and synthetic clothing the way DEET can. It just felt better overall.
Remember a few months back when I shared our new book selection process for bookclub? Well, we switched it up again. We’re back to the host choosing—with a slight variation. The host for the upcoming month makes the pitch for two or three titles and puts it to a vote. Last night was my night to make the pitch (I’m hosting August), and about 45 minutes beforehand I’d narrowed it down to seven choices. So I put the question to Instagram Stories and the DMs came back fairly unanimously in favor of Yaa Gyasi’s Homegoing. I pitched that alongside Sing, Unburied Sing, and A Gentleman in Moscow (which were also the clear runners up and have been on my to-read list for a while now), but the big takeaway has been that this list of seven books is a strong one. So if you’re looking for some books to pick up this summer, I can assure you that each has many fans…