It was a perfect combination of circumstances that led to me trying a hair mask for the first time last night. It all started when both avocados in my kitchen were overripe and my lunch plans had to be adjusted. I tried cutting all the brown out of one avocado, but it was pointless and I just ended up with a mess that had to be thrown out. On the second avocado I was smarter, and when I saw it was too streaked with brown to eat, I simply set it aside.
[Imagine a picture of a gross avocado here - it was long gone before I thought about blogging this!]
After a tiny bit of research, I found a simple recipe for avocado hair mask – one ripe avocado and 2 tbsp olive oil mashed together. (Another recipe also suggested adding a tbsp of honey, but I didn’t this time.) The internet says a half recipe will do for people with short hair, but I used it all at once, so if you decide to try this yourself I’d say just follow your heart and use however much feels right. Trust your inner voice 
Kristen helped me dampen my hair (since I no longer have the core stability to dump a bucket of water over my head while kneeling over the bathtub), and I smeared the concoction into my hair. I didn’t bother to wash it first, and whatever grime was in my hair to start did not adversely affect the hair mask. A huge glob fell off my head onto the bathroom floor mat, so if you are trying this at home and don’t have a dog, you might want to stand on a towel or tile floor, or just be tidier than me. Nimoy was happy to help though, so crisis was averted.
Once I had the avocado mixture all worked into my hair, I wrapped it up in a hand towel and played Settlers of Catan online for 20 minutes. Matt kindly interrupted his own video game playing to snap this picture, which makes me laugh because I don’t remember having that glass of water in my hand. The moral of this story is that pregnant ladies need to drink a lot of water all the time. Or tea. I’m working on some raspberry tea right now which is very nice. Anyway, if you are going to try this hair mask, be kind to your body and drink a glass of water while you wait for it to set whether you’re pregnant or not.
I must say, the most time consuming part of this whole exercise was rinsing out the avocado because I was paranoid that I would miss some and have a crusty green glob in the back of my hair. If I ever do this not-pregnant, I will probably stick my head under the tap for more powerful rinsing action, but since I don’t have the agility to do that right now, I just stood under the shower for ages combing hair mask out of my hair, then used a small amount of shampoo to seal the deal. This is not a situation that I trusted to no-poo, that’s for sure.
And here are the results! After sleeping on my damp, clean hair I woke up with silky soft, wavy hair that didn’t even need brushing. I am very low-key about my beauty routine, but this is something I’d definitely do again down the road, especially if I ever felt that my hair was dry or damaged.
Here’s the condensed version of this whole process for easy reference:
1 (over)ripe avocado
2 tbsp olive oil (unless your hair is dyed, says the internet, then apologize to your wallet and use jojoba or almond oil)
1 tbsp honey (optional!)
Mash it all together, work it into your damp hair and let it sit for 20 minutes. Drink a glass of water. Rinse with gentle shampoo. Love your hair.