Fake Tans or Sun bed? June 19, 2008

Notice that the list of choices in the title excludes the natural sun. Why? Because there is none around here!! Hello Ireland, it’s JUNE! Maybe I’m still too new to Ireland. After 9 years here I still foolishly expect seasonal consistency. No wonder people talk about the weather: if you feel like complaining, rejoicing, reminiscing, being hopeful, musing, worrying, or laughing about it, the weather’s the thing: it allows us to exercise the full gamut of emotions.

Anyhow, about the fake route to sun-kissed: It all sucks, don’t you think? Even Ascot recognises it – tongue in cheek, apparently (something on the BBC website mentions the jovial drawing attention to streaky tans). It’s ugly. I tried it. My knees looked dirty and a leg wax took it all off anyhow. So I decided in desperation (I wanted to show my lower legs in a skirt for my child’s first communion in mid-May; as it turned out, it was so cold I was in stockings anyhow) to go for the sun bed option.

The beauty salon in my nearby town was hopping. I thought it was the fake-proof solution. But soon I was able to recognise the sun-bed look (which just about 100% of the adult female population in this town is sporting this rainy season): a bit too brown even behind the ears. A suspiciously even and dark tone.

But that’s not what put me off: I began to notice on my own tummy and face what seem like pale “age spots”. I’m a bit freckled anyhow, but a brunette with no family history of skin cancer, so statistically not really high risk. But I didn’t like the look of these discolorations. I suspended my sun-bed sessions on sensible and cautious grounds. Wouldn’t it be a shame to be dead in a decade (age 50-ish), before my last child graduated from university? Before I figured out what it is I want to do with my life? (ha ha ha ha ha. Actually, and sadly, that’s not a joke…)

But sure, in the end, I want to be tanned, and if the real sun isn’t going to show itself, I’ll probably go back, pay the Euro 1 / minute, and use up my Euro 20 (that was the cheapest) bottle of “moisturising” coconut-stinky cream. (why doesn’t my own almond-oil/ grapeseed-oil/ jojoba-oil mix suffice? The beauty salon couldn’t really say, but it was imperative that I spend …. er, that is, that I protect my skin using THIS moisturizer…)

Ahh, summer.

Aaaaa-CHOO! It’s Hay Fever June June 19, 2008

Pollenna. That was my solution last year. And this year? It doesn’t seem to be working quite as well. I’ve been taking them as needed, not more than 2 / hour. The pollen seems to attack early morning and late evening mostly, with strong whacks if I’m outside just a bit too long doing silly things like pulling up weeds.

My other coping mechanisms have been to treat myself as though I have a cold. Vicks under the nose, Otrivine nose drops if I’m desperate for a night’s sleep and feel stuffy. That Otrivine stuff is dangerous – I can feel it burn through the blockage in my sinuses. However, I do sleep soundly until the next morning, when I’m awoken by the early pollen attack. And usually don’t need it two nights in a row, somehow.

Practical and dietary solutions include

• dressing cozily (it’s been rather chilly around here in Carlow anyhow),
• avoiding alcohol (not entirely, but it does make me feel stuffy),
• drinking lots of herbal and detox teas (I’m a coffee person but my desire for coffee vanishes completely during hay fever season),
• adding honey to my tea (not local enough, though – local honey is supposed to be the trick for getting your body used to the local pollen – but at least it soothes my throat),
• replaceing milk with soya milk,
• going to bed early (that is, around 10 pm instead of my usual 11:30)
• and keeping tissues at hand!

When a pollen attack happens, I drink lots of water – 500 ml or more washes down effortlessly; and, after wahsing my hands with soap to eliminate any lingering pollen, rinse my face to ease the eye itch.

Here’s my most unusual trick yet: I bought some vit E + coQ-10 tablets, as it said on the packet that the tablets would use more energy from the food I eat. I need all the energy I can muster, since another symptom of hay fever is total exhaustion; and it seems to be working a bit. At least I dont’ feel like crashing in a sleepy heap every mid-morning and mid-afternoon.

Writers Write June 11, 2008

I bought Maeve Binchy’s “Writer’s Club” to see what she had to say. Basically, one must actually write to produce some writing. That same day, I bought Isabela Fonseca’s “attachment.” Not sure where that story’s going yet but I’m ploughing through! My most recent excuses for not following Maeve’s advice: hay fever. If you don’t suffer from it, you’ll think I”m joking; but it’s exhausting. So much so that that’s all I’m writing today! Au revoir.

Monsanto and Me June 3, 2008

I got a letter in the post the other day from my Dad, with a newspaper article attached. The article is about
Monsanto, the monster company that, as my father put it, “ using GM seeds to establish a type of feudal system across the world…” According to the Montreal Gazette article, 12 million farmers worldwide who will plant GM seeds this year sign contracts agreeing not to save or replant seeds – so not only does the world lose biodiversity, but the farmers have to BUY new seeds each year. Further in the article, a Canadian farmer being sued by Monsanto says he never bought their seed, which costs C$80 per acre compared to C$20 per acre for conventional seed. How nice for Monsanto. Perhaps that has something to do with the “thousands of debt-ridden farmers [who] have committed suicide” in India.

Monsanto has lied before to maintain its profitability, according to a film called “The World According to Monsanto.” Apparently Monsanto execs refused to be interviewed for the film, and spokesperson Trish Jordan dismissed it as a “rehash” of old issues long put to rest. She says the “concept that Monsanto wants to take over the world is just folklore.” Tell that to the bankrupt farmers and the innocent farmers sued for “patent infringement” when really Monsanto should have been sued for corrupting seed supplies.

Back to our own little lives: When my husband read my Dad’s cover letter, he said, “So has your Dad changed his behaviour yet?” I laughed. I doubt it – but I’ll work on him over the summer when I visit with the kids. “He’ll find,” continued Tom, “that it’s not easy.” Hear hear.

The process is like this: you go to the supermarket with your new level of awareness. You start reading labels. You are in a state of disbelief at first: how can EVERYTHING contain all this rubbish that you’ve recently found out is BAD for me?? Eventually you begin to accept that if you’re going to change your behaviour, you’ll have to just plain old buy “organic” stuff to avoid the chemicals.

Then things happen to throw you off that track. Maybe you read that not all “organic” is really so; cheaters jump on the bandwagon along with the true organic folk, and they’re hard to tell apart. Or maybe your cash flow takes a dip and “organic” suddenly seems an expensive luxury – even a sucker-punch – compared to to what everybody around you is doing: grabbing the cheap veg, the standard milk, the 79 cent loaf, the paraben-stuffed shampoo.

But journalists – not just the ones with “Organic” or “Natural” glossies, but The Economist, National Geographic, Time Magazine, or the long-standing Ecologist, keep telling you: farmers are being financially destroyed. Crop biodiversity is being suffocated. Land is being poisoned. Crops are being genetically manipulated beyond what we can control (for example the unexpected (?!) contamination of Round-up Ready seeds into adjacent farmers’ fields). Climate is changing because of our consumption patterns. We are fucking up nature!! “We” keep forgetting we ARE nature: a mammal, with basic survival needs that include FOOD and CLEAN WATER.

So you sigh and go to the grocery store and… buy less. Because it all seems so unnecessary now. You don’t need some extra-smelly shampoo. You don’t need the latest shade of mascara. You don’t even need to colour your hair (finally, even hairdressers are admitting they know how poisonous hair dye is, so now they don’t let it touch your scalp. How helpful. But it still goes down the drain to become your future drinking and bathing water, or at least irrigation for the food you’ll eat. Hello! Stop pretending the chemicals disappear like magic! You have to not use them in the first place.) You realize you’d rather save your pennies for a hybrid car. Your children look gorgeous in 2^nd hand clothes, and when you do buy them a new pair of jeans, you wonder – and maybe even research – the brand to know where it’s manufactured and under what conditions.

Yes, you have become a conscientious consumer. Imperfect, not always convinced or energetic enough to keep your standards super-high, but another drop in the tide of people realising you need less, and what you need shouldn’t harm others – neither your beloved children, nor the stranger halfway across the globe.

Ah, it’ll be a busy summer, changing our consumption behaviour. Get ready, Dad!

Read the full article here: http://www.canada.com/montrealgazette/news/saturdayextra/story.html?id=d450ef65-c3ad-4678-8978-c5ca305ca630