90 days of challenge. 90 days of 90 days jokes.

Today I started another blog with a friend of mine. I haven't decided yet if I will post a link to it here. Anyways, we are doing a 90 days challenge, which I had thought to start this past Monday, but didn't manage so well. Then I met my friend for a trip to the planetarium (saw jupiter's belts! and 4 biggest moons!) and told her about it, and she was so damn excited, that we are doing it together and it began today with an hours exercise walk early in the morning. Which right now is 7:30. But since the days are rapidly increasing in length (almost 7 minutes per day!) we will hopefully be getting up even earlier to do the daily walk.

So. 90 days challenge to live like we wanna live, to turn those desires into the habits of a healthier lifestyle.... or so we plan.

I also 1) applied for swedish citizenship today, which cost 1500 kronor, and 2) bought a new (used) bike. Even though spring has come waaaaaaay to early for 63 degrees north, there is still a lot of ice all over the ground, and I am totally scared biking on it. So much so that I might actually start wearing my helmet. 

Beauty Saturday

Warning!  This post has to do with my skin.

This is take-two after the first picture I placed here was a bit ghost-facey.  But look at my hair!  Although it looks lightened, this is really just a product of two things.  First, the shitty light sensor in my webcam, and second, a cheap beauty product diy bender.

Let me explain.  Every once in a while I read about all the toxic chemicals in beauty products these days and some of those times, I feel determined to take matters into my own hands.  I never do it, that is, until today when I checked the health rating of my face lotion here.  This prompted me into a google chain-search from home made face lotion to "the oil cleansing method" to castor oil for keratosis pilaris, a skin condition I have.   So out I went into the world, to buy a bottle of castor oil and a jar of coconut oil (my new remedy for my skin condition), and the ingredients to wash my face with oil - the "oil cleansing method."  Health toxicity craziness aside (I really tend to not give a shit after the first 5 minutes of thinking about this stuff. I mean, while I don't want my future kids to develop a third eye from too much ingestion of whatever, trying to live without absorbing crazy chemicals is completely futile), while a good chunk of my practical behavior would seem to say that I don't care or don't like to take the time to care about how I look, there is a good 35% of me that wants to try to care.  And I would also like to try to care in the cheapest way possible.  This led to:

Regimen


Oil swishing of teeth with sunflower oil - is backed by research actually using the scientific method!  I read several pieces of source material this morning, but I mostly wanted to try it because it seemed so weird.  I did, however, gag and almost throw-up approximately 6 times.

Oil wash of face with olive oil - meh

Oil wash of face with mix of coconut oil and castor oil - very sticky

Hair wash with only cider vinegar and baking soda (bikarbonat) - like washing with sand!

Lotioning myself with coconut oil/castor oil mix - almost painfully sticky

Results

Can't really say anything about the bacteria count in my mouth, so I'll hop over the oil swishing.

Oil wash with olive oil - I didn't really do this right, so I was naturally a little underwhelmed.

Oil wash with coconut oil and castor oil - actually pretty amazing because my face feels clean and not dried out, but doesn't feel greasy at all.  I even put on a light patting of the mix on my face after I showered, as my face felt a little dry after wiping away with a towel (google "oil cleansing method"). No visible blackheads on my nose (where I usually see them), and no shininess where I am usually shiny from oil production after washing with soap.  TMI?  Sorry.

Hair wash with vinegar and baking soda - see above picture!  I had been wanting to do this for awhile mostly just to see but also because all the harsh sulfates in shampoo make me itch like crazy (i use very simple soap without lathering sulfates for this reason - although I have a few shower gels I really like and use occasionally for their smell).  SO, my hair feels all light and fluffy in a good way, and is not at all dried out even though it sort of looks like it in the picture, and most importantly, it is not greasy or dirty feeling in any way.  It basically feels great.

Lotioning - this was rather difficult.  It felt like I was trying to pull my skin off because the castor oil is so thick it creates a load of weird friction.  But the oil soaked in rather well, I'm not greasy, and I assume it will take some time to help with the keratosis pilaris, so I'll have to get back about that later.  I did rub pure castor oil into a scar I have on my shin, which is about a year old.   Maybe I should take before and after shots to see if the scar really does fade over time.  The most important thing is: I am not itchy!  I am usually always itchy after showering from getting dried out, even after putting on regular lotion.

Conclusions 


While I'm down a lot of money from recently buying a new jar of regular face lotion on top of today's purchases, today's purchases were still cheaper than the regular face lotion and will probably last 3 times as long.  I am super happy that I do not feel greasy or itchy, but this whole process took more than an hour, which is a lot to ask of someone who only can seem to care about 35% of the time.

Don't ask me for a definition of "the time."

UPDATE:  I really feel like I should add that I was particularly not-clean before all this.  I hadn't washed my hair in maybe 4 or 5 days (whereas I usually wash it every 3 days at the most) and had also sprayed in dry shampoo earlier in the morning before I went out to buy this stuff.  My dry shampoo, although it works, tends to make the hair feel dirtier, with a coating of weird chemicals, even though it looks better.  I also hadn't washed my face with soap in probably 2.5 days, although I do frequently wash with just water and a wash cloth.

Yelp

Okay, so today is the big day!  I'm going to stand up (with a group) and try to sound like I know what I am talking about in Swedish.  All other times don't really count compared to this one, cause it's a real presentation.

So, in the words of my favorite senior citizen ex-coworker:

"Buck up or Fuck up"

Beginnings!

Yesterday I packaged seeds from some heirloom tomatoes.  Tomato seeds have to be fermented first to get rid of the gel sack surrounding them. 

Likewise, my own gel sack of nervousness must be done away with because today is the first day of school!  I have already been to school though, 7 on-and-off years of it, much of which I made a royal mess of.  So now is my chance to do things right.  The end goal: to be a librarian or archivist, and to have been a damn good student during the process.  I’m 30 years old and finally ready to own my decisions.  No parent or other sort of bully has forced me into this education, I did it on my own.

(That sounded like more of a condemnation than it was.  Truth is, I’ve always been a bit of a pushover, letting the desires of others dictate my decisions.  I’ve swallowed their wills, tried to incorporate them as my own, and thus neither succeeded very well or formed much of a will of my own.  And… my history also comes with some very strong-willed characters.)

A parallel metamorphosis to grabbing life by the balls has also shown itself to be a 180 degree shift in time perspective.  I’ve focused so much on the past, almost only on the past, and now I find myself looking forward.  I’m interested in creating, as well as is possible (which maybe isn’t very well) life experiences that are to come.  

The timeframe for all this is a little unclear, but it sure is serendipitous, what with starting school over again, wanting to have kids etc.   Or wait, maybe that’s just part of growing up.  I’ve already noticed I am miraculously slow at that; I even look a lot younger than my age.  ANYWAYS, although the time frame is unclear, I know exactly when I was conscious of this change in perspective, and that was on August 30th, sometime in the morning, when I saw this lil ditty: 

In other news, last night me and my man were talking about the dent that some people have above their ass crack.  We discovered that it is called the coccyx, and when doing an image search (uhhh, yes, i wanted to see pictures of other people’s coccyxi.  Or cocci?) the only real picture of a coccyx was on a cadaver.  In fact, it was on the cadaver of an adult male with the knees pulled up so the body was closest to, let’s say: a diaper changing position.  

With all respect to the kind and rational man who decided to donate his body to science after death, I am really glad I am not a doctor.  I wonder if that donation also included a provision which allowed photos of his cadaver to be google-able?  I guess there probably is a wide world of cadaver pictures to be found from the comfort of one’s home, now that I think about it, but I don’t think I will ever EVER get that image out of my head.