Sometimes when I lean my head back to relax and close my eyes for a bit on the subway, when I lean forward again, sometimes the metal edges of the walls of the subway car steal a hair or two. The violation of my hair follicle always makes me grasp my head, and the area that was leaning against the wall always feels a little flatter. I know that this happens from the two objects leaning against each other, and pressure, bla bla bla. All I could really hear in my head though were my mother's warnings to take care of my hair or risk losing it all with age.

A lot of my personality is encased in my hair. Is that weird to say? Anytime someone asks me to describe myself or how I would like to be described, 'curly' inches it's way into the picture - and by all means I am not one to object. So at times when I feel like I have been neglected the curls - well it kind of makes me feel sick to my stomach. Melodramatic, maybe - but absolutely true.

My mission has become to be the ultimate caretaker of my scalp and hair. As I pay closer attention to freshness and youth retention in my skin (moisturizing, SPF, and limit sun exposure), body (exercise and eating right - though I haven't done much of either well in a while - and you didn't hear that from me - but I did improve on regular vitamin consumption!), and most importantly my hair and scalp, I find that there are certain measures that need to be taken to continue maintenance. You know - so that if you could compare my body to a vehicle without regular checks under the hood and maintenance, it would just sputter and give up in the middle of the road. Yaya is not giving up in the middle of the road.

Before I took to the army of products itching to be deployed to battle on the shelves of drugstores, department stores, and salons, I sought to declutter my own stash. I found my pot of Yes to Carrots hair mask from the StyleFixx Girl's Night Out goodie bag (see what was in it here) and brought it with me to the shower.