yay light box!
Selling replacement teapot lids to those of us who have kitties who like to redecorate1.
That’s the second lid in less than a year.
xxx
1 when they casually and deliberately push (usually breakable) items from flat surfaces to the floor and then look at you all “what?”.
I decided against taking a glass bottle of caster oil in my luggage to Japan (pleased I didn’t – things were quite tight), so there were 2 weeks of the 18.5 where I skipped applying. Otherwise I have been diligent with the 5 minutes morning and night.
So, how is it going?
WEEK 18.5
finally i’ve managed to work out how to take a decent photo of the damn thing
WEEK 12.5
WEEK 8
If I look at this dispassionately … I hate to say it, but yeah, it’s not working is it?
Rats! I really wanted to believe this would work. Clearly positive thinking and blind belief doesn’t work either.
xxx
But in possibly positive news, the GIANT cold sore right in the middle of my bottom lip is totally drawing attention away from the venous lake.
eeeep
At least the caster oil is helping a little with the cracking / bleeding all over everything.
xxx
In other positive news, I’ve started rubbing the excess oil into my horribly dry and brittle nails – this is working pretty well. Definitely a decrease in the appearance of ridges. So it is good for something!
artifacts of decluttering: too many highlighters
Was just nodding off after reading a couple of sample chapters of potential future reading1 (all non-fiction) and had one of those “hmmmm … I’ve forgotten something” moments.
Took a wee while to realise that this was it.
Crossed several ActionItems from the list, which was satisfying. Ran through a spiderweb thing morning, which was not satisfying – though thankfully the spider was not present. Generally ramping up the booze-free grump, which now that I know to expect it, can sort of ride through.
Was very pleased when cooking stuffing for our planned roast chicken that we’d end up eating at around 9:30 and so sensibly decided to go and grab pizza instead. This is real progress for me as normally I’d power through and feel guilty because we were eating so late and be up all night with heartburn. Yay for flexibility! Full credit to the holiday for making me loosen up on the perfectionism a smidge.
xxx
1 All non-fiction, I’m choosing between:
✪ Bill Burnett, Dave Evans: Designing Your Life: Build a Life that Works for You
✪ Colin Beavan: No Impact Man: Saving the planet one family at a time
✪ Gabriel Wyner: Fluent Forever: How to Learn Any Language Fast and Never Forget It
I’ll actually probably read them all at some point
abandoned anonymous stuffed animal
It feels like the first weekend I’ve been properly home for ages and I’m really quite looking forward to just being peaceful and not having to run about anywhere. Don is playing golf on both days – so there will be much pottering by me.
Of course I have a small and very boring ActionItems list:
➕ catch up on ironing
➕ give self pedicure
➕ prep slide deck for King Lear (ex-ex-CEO) – doing a favour
➕ RUN = 3km x 2 (at least)
➕ hand wash delicates
➕ start reading a book (any book! just get back to reading!)
➕ more decluttering (most ruthless yet)
➕ get out the light box and take some photos
➕ consider pilates
➕ meal plan
As ever, very rock and roll.
In pleasing news, I’ve returned to writing the morning diaries, am not looking at my tablet while in bed (my eyes thank me), have cut back on the news and the social media. It has all been pretty soothing. So even though I am on day 3 of my very-little-booze-october, I am surprisingly un-grumpy (though still a little grumpy). I’m going to try to keep this up for at least the month – all these things are all super-good for my mental health.
Well, this is quite a bit to update!
And of course I don’t quite remember everything, but for the sake of completeness, I’m going to give it a crack. Lesson regarding all manner of things in there!
Note that I completely screwed up my numbering in the last post, so I’ve edited that one to make sense.
xxx
Door #12 was yet more collagen booster fluid:
Again, nothing tremendous. Again my skin sucked it up like a sponge. Despite the promise of promoting skin elasticity, none was in evidence.
xxx
Door #13 and #14
3D lifting fluid. The promise: improves the firmness of the tissue.
This is where I go a bit fuzzy. I remember this being quite thin and going on easily. I don’t recall there being much at all in the way of improving the firmness of any tissue – about as firm as ever (which is not a lot, but could be worse).
xxx
Door #15, #16 and #17
Lift express fluid. The promise: visibly reduces the depth of fine lines.
Fortunately I took a note on this early on. Cloudy, thicker than last, initially sticky, very absorbant.
This eventually gave me quite terrible milia and made my skin look generally pretty terrible. Perhaps this was to distract me from noticing the fine lines?
I was pretty glad to take a break for two because because …
xxx
HOLIDAY!
I had a really simple skin routine L’Occitane serum and nivea Q10 day cream and actually my skin looked pretty darn fabulous by the end. Could also have been due to the humidity. Or possibly the fact that I was on holiday.
xxx
Door #18 and #19
Back to it with HSR lifting glamour fluid
I can’t locate the ampoules on the Australian site, this link tells me it is a special edition for the advent calendar (oooh! special!). The link also tells me it contains gold particles – lolwut?
DSLR shot! what happens when you don’t have your phone with you, but are compelled to document
The promise: visibly reduces fine lines and wrinkles. Kind of lurid orange-ish (gold!) and reasonably thick.
After almost two weeks I’m going to say that’s a big negatory.
All lines and wrinkles are still in place. I don’t feel at all glamorous (despite just finding out that I’ve been rubbing gold into my face). But hey, at least I am not covered in white spots.
xxx
I cannot say what a relief it is to have caught up on this! FIVE MORE DOORS TO GO!
I was reading pretty voraciously in September. Once again, I really wish I had jotted down a note after I finished each. Here’s what I remember (as ever, no affiliate links).
When I last updated I had just bought and was about to start:
✪ Helen Russell: Year of Living Danishly
Bought after reading a sample chapter – though I can’t remember how I ended up there. Quite light and cute. Much hygge.
✪ Richard Cornish: My year without meat Not just about not eating meat! I enjoyed this a good deal. Incredibly evocative descriptions of food which left me terribly hungry and desperate to run to the Fruit & Veg. Lots about how difficult it is for small producers to … ermm … produce and to remain viable. Strengthened my desire to eat more ethically / thoughtfully / sustainably.
✪ Clive Cussler: Piranha
✪ Clive Cussler: Ghost Ship
✪ Clive Cussler: Havana Storm
✪ Clive Cussler: Pharaoh’s Secret
Oh Clive (and co-writers) with your preposterously outrageous plots and dynamic, rugged, manful heroes who can’t be tamed. I have no idea why I love these books so much – they are so completely ridiculous. A small selection of quotes:
– “although they were technically mercenaries, killing in cold blood wasn’t part of their moral code”
– “like campers in a national park, they planned to leave no trace”
– “like a linebacker tearing through a paper banner before a football game”
– “she shifted her weight and stepped to the side, freeing her first to strike down at his crotch”
– “but like a truck that spent its days on the worksite instead of the garage, his face carried the miles in plain view”
✪ Sue Grafton: X
Bought in December and had mostly forgotten I’d bought it – unusual as I generally can’t wait to get stuck in to a Kinsey Milhone novel. This is the first in the series where I felt anachronisms had crept in – like I’m pretty sure no-one was using the term “hoodie” in the 1980s. And was subway tile the fashion in 1980s kitchens? It was okay – not one of the best, at this point I’m just hanging on for the last two letters.
✪ Celeste Ng: Everything I never told you
Bought in October and another forgotten one. Read in Tokyo in pretty much one sitting. This has really stayed with me and I’ve been reluctant to pick up anything else since. Very much worth a read.
Not too bad! I really need to do more of the downloading sample chapters, I definitely would have avoided some less than desirable previous purchases if I’d taken that option!
glad to be home with this wee creature who is full of adorableness and biting
As I mentioned here I’ve recently been doing quite a lot of mindless scrolling and skimming on the InformationSuperhighway and not much of anything else. It is such an easy trap to fall into – as evidenced by the approximately 89783 times I’ve posted about this over the past [many] years.
This, I think, has had a bit of a deleterious effect on my daily posting – I’ll flick off a quick post on my phone as I’m going to sleep and anything substantial just falls by the wayside. It’s kind of lazy and I’m not really happy with it.
The scrolling and skimming has had an impact in other ways too – I’ll be endlessly clicking about in the morning and skip doing push-ups, or getting out for a run, or writing the daily list (last entries were 27 May, then 28-29-30 June, 1 July, then 16 July, then nothing).
This year I also began keeping a bit of a diary about what I wore, ate, what time the kitties woke me, and other snippets. This stopped abruptly on 4 May. On that day I wore a boden navy broderie anglaise dress, purple tights and a gold necklace comprised of circles. I had coffee, no breakfast, a pot of tension tamer, a spicy chicken wrap for lunch, Lebanese take-away for dinner, drank wine and ate a small chocolate. The kitties woke me at 4:10, Don yelled at them and they went away until 5am. I noted that I did not drink enough water, we had our first automated payroll, I woke up cranky and Bobs was killing me with unreasonable requests for root cause analyses of about 60 processes. Wow – quite excruciating, but I’ve just lost about 15 minutes reading back-entries and am determined to pick this up again.
Today is a public holiday in NSW to celebrate Labour Day. I’m going to devote the day to sorting out stuff. Computer-wise: editing photos, writing updates on reading and music buying, Japan things. Real life: ruthlessly declutter yarn, fabric and DVDs.
And I’m going to hide my tablet (worst enabler) for a couple of weeks in an effort to pay attention to what is going on around me for a while.
xxx
Several hours later and I have not done many of these things at all. I did meal plan, go grocery shopping and make red beans and rice. And we did sort through a very big stack of burned CDs/DVDs and discovered some treasures and some wut?!
And now I’m about to ruthlessly attack some yarn.
tullamarine (melbourne) airport
fabulous souvenir coldsore from the flight down – is now much larger
Honestly, I really don’t know how people deal with lots of flying and travel.
I am utterly knackered, have an enormous cold sore, pain in my left ear (likely barotrauma**) and am so very glad to be back in my beloved home with all of my things close to hand (like the cold sore cream for example).
I’m so glad we’re staying put for a while! There will be much slothing tomorrow.
xxx
** same symptoms as last time – viz, horrible sharp stabby pain.
bessie flies the flag
footy champagne
Today we joined 99,977 other people for the Ducks v Bulldogs AFL grand final at the MCG. It was very exciting to be there!
It was an extremely nail biting game – there was much yelling and cheering and groaning and clutching of heads throughout. We’re all a bit hoarse as a result.
We had several unfavourable umpiring decisions, but basically we just didn’t play well enough (so much not playing well enough!).
Oh well, the Bulldogs hadn’t won a premiership for 62 years and played very well, so one can’t be too churlish about losing!