Oil Cleansing Day 4

I'm not the type to just sort of do things.  In fact if I don't completely invest myself its very unlikely I'll succeed at whatever I'm trying to do.  I can't decide to cut back on sugar, or only exercise a few times a week, or wake up earlier sometimes.  It just doesn't work for me.  I have to stop eating sugar because I only have will power if I never start.  If I don't have a set time every day to exercise I find reasons not too until I stop altogether.  If I allow myself to hit snooze I might as well have never set the alarm.  It gets to the point of not being able to do things I'd normally be able to do if someone else is involved because I'm not in complete control of it.  I should be able to do those things, but its very difficult for me for some reason.  I'm either all in or all out and if I get stuck in between I just sort of get lost and don't know what to do.  

The reason I mention it is because, only a few days in, I'm having a hard time just doing this a few times a week.  I want to jump all the way in and possibly add other things, like more supplements and other oils or treatments that could help.  I want to do anything and everything I can find all at once.  I hate taking it slow.  It went well the first night so why not just do it the next night and maybe rub it into my skin a little longer or maybe even leave it on all night.  I guess this would have made me a bad scientist if I had actually gone that route as planned.  I need to stick to my plan though, and give it some time before I decide to do it more or even add other things.  Two nights of washing my face with oil is not enough to tell if its helpful or harmful.  Adding too many things to the experiment will make it impossible to know which things work.   I did start taking a vitamin A supplement for something else and it could have an affect, but I don't think it will be drastic enough to mess with the results.  

Last night I washed my face with oil again.  I didn't add anything else to it (though that didn't keep me from thinking about what I had that I could add)  I might have spent more time rubbing it in this time, but I'm not sure.  I think I might have to start timing it so I don't go overboard.  When I started wiping it off, it seemed a little too clean and I don't know if it got all my makeup off, but like I said before, mineral makeup so its possible that it could have just worn off more than normal during the day for whatever reason.  I tried to leave the hot towel on my face longer hoping it would dissolve more of the oil and leave less on my skin.  It did, but there was definitely still a residue that didn't seem to want to come off.  I must have gotten more off my neck though because it actually felt a little dry and I had to put a little jojoba oil back on it.  This could also be because my neck the most inflamed part of my skin right now and it might just be extra dry. 

This morning my face was more oily than normal but less oily than the first time, so I either succeeded in getting more of the oil off, or my skin is starting to regulate oil production better (like its suppose too).  Right now, it definitely feels a little oily but, I don't think its more than normal in an afternoon.  My cheeks seem to be the oiliest, and my forehead the least (strangely since bangs usually mean more oil).  The skin that isn't inflamed looks healthier than when I started.  I was breaking out pretty bad so I don't know how much of what's healed is from the new treatment or just the natural healing that would have happened anyway.  However, for the sake of recording it, the white heads have definitely decreased though I still have quite a few on my chin and neck.  Black heads don't really seem to be affected by the oil, or if they are I'm just not noticing.  I mostly only have them on my nose and its not horrible so I guess it might just be hard to tell.  Any inflammation that was there before isn't any worse but doesn't seem any better either...this could be a good thing though, because typically things get way worse before they get better so I would be ok with it just stopping the breakout and letting it heal.  I don't think there's anything new, but its hard to say...

So there you have it.  I'm not going to make any judgements on whether its working or not yet because I've only done it twice.  I think the fact that I'm writing it down in a blog will make it easier for me to stick to my plan, but we'll see. 

Oil Cleansing Experiment-Day 1

I'd like to say this experiment was an act of bravery...but in reality its an act of frustration and desperation.  I've had acne since 7th grade.  Before that, I remember being really proud of my skin because somehow even though I never washed it, it remained smooth and clear, much to my older sisters irritation.  It was just waiting for my hormones to kick in and then all hell broke loose.  Well, I guess thats being a little dramatic, it really didn't start off as being all that bad.  In fact I think my mother was more worried about it than I was.  I doubt I would have thought much of it besides being slightly worried it would turn into something worse like my brother had, and that might be why my mom almost immediately had my start taking tetracycline and Retin-A.  They didn't work.  The Retin-A came and went through the years but the tetracycline was given up on completely after awhile.  After those things I tried just about every promising product that came along.  Proactive was expensive and useless but there are so many people that it works for I've given it more than one try.  I went on a special diet to no avail.  I went to a dermatologist that gave us a discount if I agreed to do a before and after picture for their advertisements.  This one seemed to help to begin with, and there were a few progress pictures taken but eventually, like everything else I've tried, it stopped working and the final after picture was never taken.  There's been so many different cleansing programs that I've tried I can't even remember them all, but after everything was tried and failed, and it only seemed to get worse and completely ignore any treatment, I finally went to a doctor that agreed to let me go on Accutane.  This is pretty strong stuff, and I knew it, but by that time I was in high school and my appearance did matter to me and I was finally to the desperation that has never really gone away.  Every time I went in for a check up I had to have a pregnancy test and got lectured about what would happen if I got pregnant and was shown horrible pictures.  Every time I picked up my prescription I had to wait for the pharmacist to have time to come out and give me the same lecture because they are required too.  I had to sign a waiver saying I wouldn't get pregnant and if I did I wouldn't hold them liable (though I was told it was unlikely any baby would survive).  I wasn't worried about that because I knew it wouldn't happen but looking back now it seems like it should have scared me a little more to be taking something that strong.  However, it worked, and I was thrilled.  The only side affects I seemed to have was really bad bloody noses and dry skin and mouth.  My skin cleared up for the most part though of course I still had scars.  By the time I was out graduating high school I could quit taking it.  So, I was a little worried it would come back.  I knew it would stay in my system for a long time and slowly the levels would go down until it was eventually gone, but it would take awhile.  Here's what happened.  As it went out of my system the acne slowly started coming back.  Not as bad as before, so I wasn't too upset about it, but definitely there.  Long story short and probably thousands of dollars later, here I am with adult acne that, while different than the pre-Accutane acne, is almost as bad if not worse at times.  I actually think its hormone related and will probably never go away unless I want to spent a lot of money on tests and hormone therapy (another conversation altogether), but it doesn't really stop me from trying.  The thing is, there are so many people out there making money off of people like me.  Desperate, tired of trying things, will put pretty much anything on their face no matter what the cost.  And the cost is high, monetarily, and in the damage it does to the skin.  Not to mention the emotional cost when it fails and you realize you just fell for yet another scam.  I guess here I should say there are good products out there and companies that really did get started to help people like me.  Unfortunately those products are incredibly expensive and some can't even be purchased unless you go to a dermatologist or specialty store, and unless I start playing and then win the lottery I can't use those products on a regular basis.  

The things that seem to work the best for me is exfoliation, and regular washing.  I have tried washing less thinking maybe that was part of the problem but I just ended up with worse breakouts that took longer to heal.  We recently got an Ulta in our area so I started trying out some of the nicer products they had.  I'm probably their favorite customer now...but I stopped liking my trips there and now I wish they'd never shown up and have resolved to only buy makeup and hair products there from now on.  So I decided if my skin is going to refuse to get better why waste all this money on it.  I started looking at home made skin cleansers.  I found a few promising recipe's but the one that intrigued me the most was the oil cleansing method.  Most of them mix Castor oil with another oil and somehow that is suppose to dissolve the oil on your face, break down plugs in your pores, and give you healthy self-healing skin.  At first, of course, I thought it sounded a little ridiculous since I've spent a lot of money keeping oil off of my face, but after reading a few articles and blogs it started to sound like it was at least worth a try.  After looking a little longer I found some people who had had some bad experiences with it.  This wasn't just failure.  This was really bad deep cystic acne breaking out all over their skin.  I can't even explain to you unless you've had it how horrible that particular form of acne is to have.  I have a few minor areas with it and would do just about anything to get rid of it.  They last for what seems like forever and they can be very painful, especially if their is a lot of them.  So it started to worry me a little.  I have it bad enough, I certainly don't need it to get any worse.  However, with some encouragement from my health conscious sister, I decided I would give it a try (carefully).  My plan is to only do it two nights a week as more of a treatment than a nightly washing routine.  I'll alternate it with a natural face wash that I found that claims not to disrupt the acid mantle of the skin.  After awhile if all goes well I might try increasing how often I do it, but this is where I'm going to start.  I can't help but hope it will be the one thing that will clear up my skin, but I'd be happy with it keeping the breakouts to a minimum and making the actual quality of my skin look more healthy.    

Last night I tried it for the first time.  I mixed equal parts castor oil and jojoba oil with a drop of tea tree oil and a few drops of rose hip oil.  It smelled ok, the rose hip oil smells, well, I'm sure you know what it smells like, not wonderful, but not bad either.  I rubbed it into my skin for a few minutes then as directed put a hot wash cloth on my skin to dissolve the oil and wipe it off.  This took a few tries.  More than I expected.  I had the water pretty hot and left it on for what seemed like a pretty long time, but in the end it didn't really feel like I had gotten it all the way off.  I decided i'd leave it since I didn't think it was a good idea to start scrubbing on my face with the washcloth.  It did remove all my makeup but since I only use mineral powder with a little cover up in the worst spots I don't know if thats really saying much.  This morning I used the natural wash that I bought to alternate with and that took off the residual oil and what had built up on my face over night (which is generally a lot and last night was no exception).  I noticed that the white head breakout that had been happening on my neck seemed better by maybe 70%.  So that made me happy since it sort of looked like a rash it was so bad.  It didn't really seem to help blackheads which is sort of what I was expecting from reading other peoples experiences.  So like I said I'm going to keep it to more of a treatment than a constant thing and hopefully that will keep anything awful from happening.  I'll use the natural cleanser for a few nights and then do the oil again and see how it goes.  The other things I'm using are an exfoliation brush (but only with the cleanser not the oil) and a blue light (which seems to keep the inflammation down and tighten my pores a little).  I will also be trying to make my own charcoal masks again (I've done it before and liked it but sort of stopped because of the mess it makes).  Today my skin seems a little oiler than normal.  I don't know if thats my imagination because I'm expecting it or if its really cleared out pores releasing built up oil like is suppose to happen.    So here I am back to this not being brave.  Taking Accutane was an act of desperation and so is this.  A healthier risk to be sure but still desperation, and if it fails I'll be right back to where I end up after everything I try.  Hopefully, at least, not worse off...

Fireplace

Suddenly he's discovered the fireplace and is very interested to know where it leads.  And i'll apparently be looking for something a little heavier to keep him out...maybe since the sun's finally out he realized christmas time must be over and he didn't get any of the things he asked for so he's looking for santa, who must have gotten stuck because he was overloaded with toys for him.  He was, after all, a very good cat last year.

Podclub sort of...Animals

Well me and my phone had an argument about wether or not it should download this week's podcast pick Hen house, and well, after trying a few times it disappeared completely and I gave up.  So I decided to just dedicate this blog to animals and maybe somewhat to animal cruelty which is what the podcast was suppose to be about (I think).

When I first got married I would ride along with my cattle hauling husband just to be with him.  It wasn't too bad unless I needed a restroom in the middle of the night when nothing is open and parking spots for truck and trailer are few and far between.  When we went to the packing plants (or slaughterhouses if you don't know what that is) I knew what happened there and had heard the stories but did my best to not think about it.  I stayed in the truck and distracted myself.  One night we had to wait for a truck to unload in front of us.  It had a side load trailer on and for the sake of not having to describe it to you I'll just say they are really old and hard on the cows and should be illegal.  I guess you could say what's the difference if they're just going to die as soon as they get in the plant, but I sat there and watched the cows (who are already weak and old and thats why they're there) stagger off barely able to stand because of the long ride in that particular kind of trailer.  I started crying and asked why they were acting like that and was told it was the trailer and that they shouldn't even be using it.  I watched them finally make it out of the chute and slowly, painfully get herded towards the plant doors.  I don't know what those animals felt.  Maybe relief for a moment as they felt solid ground, but the moment they started towards the doors you could tell they knew what was inside and became immediately terrified.  Maybe they smelled the death awaiting them, maybe they didn't know and since I was already upset I imagined they must be.  I don't really know why this particular group of cows affected me so much.  I've watched other groups walk that walk before and since then and while I do think its sad its never caused me to refuse to return to that particular plant ever again or actually any plant for awhile.  It didn't make me stop eating meat, but it did give me a lot more respect for how it's gotten.  I'm not going to go into the eating meat debate here but I will say that even though sometimes I feel like people get a little too crazy with animal rights, I'm glad they're there fighting for them.  They have no voice and a lot of times are forgotten because they're old and weak and not worth anything anymore so they're about to be shipped off to the packing house, but they still deserve the dignity and respect that all life deserves.

All right so there's my animal cruelty story.  The other thing that happened when I got married was that my sister in law gave me this perfect little grey and white kitten.  It was my first animal outside of the ones we had when I was little and the not one of those ever bonded with me like this kitten did.  His name was Rusty and he was feisty and independent and just so full of life and curiosity.  I didn't even consider keeping him inside.  Of course he was welcome inside, but he came and went as he pleased.  I didn't live in a safe area really.  The little boy across from us thought shooting things with his BB gun was cool (which made me want to shoot him with said gun) and the freeway was pretty close.  He disappeared for days at a time and I would worry about him, but I felt like limiting his life so that I could have him a little bit longer would be wrong.  Some cats are obviously happy as inside cats and he was obviously not.  He always came home though.  For ten years he taught me things about loyalty and love and friendship.  He was there for me when no one else was, became uncharacteristically snugly when I was alone and needed it the most.  Every year at halloween, 4th of july, and new years I'd rush home from wherever I was to lock him up in whatever house we were living in because I would worry that some partying teenagers would catch him and torture him for fun because I'd heard of it happening.  Every time he disappeared for too long I'd spend some time outside calling him and he'd eventually hear me and come running and I can't tell you the happiness of seeing that grey shape coming towards me declaring that he'd escaped danger once again.  Other cats came and went and of course I loved and mourned them too but every time I'd feel relief that it wasn't Rusty that didn't survive the dogs or the cars.  I liked to imagine him having grand adventures, getting more skilled in his various cat tricks every time.  The morning he disappeared for the last time I woke up to dogs outside our window.  He had a habit of leading them to where we were in the house if he thought he couldn't get away because he knew we'd come out and chase them off.  I leapt from the bed and ran out the door, blind, in my pajamas, and crazy haired yelling at the dog, who of course immediately realized he was dealing with a crazy person and left.  At that point I realized our landlord was also outside yelling and since I could see his general grey shape safe and sound on the deck I went back inside.  That was the last time I saw him.  I called and watched for him for months, laid in bed unable to sleep because all I could think about was how I didn't check to see if he was hurt.  He'd been okay so many other times I'd taken it for granted.  I would like to pretend that he went on one last grand adventure and is still out there roaming.  I still catch myself watching for him sometimes even though it's been almost a year and I know he probably didn't make it past that last day.  Looking back, even though it was painful for me and still is, I'm glad I let him live as he wanted.  He lived a long time and I'm also glad he went out doing what he loved exploring and being the neighborhoods top cat as opposed to getting old and sick and dying slowly.  I worry that eventually that will happen to Caspian because he's definitely the happy indoors kind of cat.  Right now though he is full of life and generally runs this house and its occupants with the flicks of his tail.

Well it looks like this blog is turning into sort of a downer so sorry for that.  I guess what I want to say is that having these special animals in my life has shown me how unique they all are.  I wouldn't trade away any my time with them to escape the pain of losing them.  They aren't interchangeable, disposable, or useless.  They are beautiful and each one is unique and can bring something into our lives that wasn't there before if we let them.  There are people out there that are okay with hurting them because they don't understand that.  To them they are just commodities, or pointless because they don't bring them any personal gain.  I can't imagine what brings them to that point other than greed and maybe sometimes just conditioning and how they were brought up.  Maybe somehow they just stop seeing the beauty in life, and thus they stop caring about it.  That is on its own incredibly sad and makes me think maybe we should be pitying them too.  I'm just glad there are people out there watching for it, so that as sad as these people are they can (hopefully) be kept away from the animals they should never have been around.

Bees and Body Language

Stuff You Should Know; How Bees Work

I have mixed feelings about bees.  Kind of like how I feel about birds I guess.  I think their beautiful and interesting but I don't really want them anywhere near me.  Maybe comparing them to how I feel about birds is unfair actually, because birds cause genuine terror when they get too close to me and bees cause more of a mild concern.  I can only remember being stung once, though I think its happened a few more times than that.  I was playing outside, in the mud if i remember correctly, when a bee decided I was getting too close and stung me in the arm.  I think I was more surprised than hurt really but thats when I learned my first facts about bees.  That it only stung me because it thought I was a threat, and that it probably died afterwards.  Which of course gave me this extremely romanticized image of some brave little bee throwing itself tragically into the way of danger to save its family, only it was even more sad because that danger was only me and I had no interest in finding his hive or stealing his honey.  This view never really changed much I guess.  I grew up hating creepy crawlies that showed up uninvited in the house or just grossed me out in general because of how they looked or behaved.  With bees though I always had this mental image of them being a little more mysterious and special.  I knew they made honey (though if you had told me it was basically their vomit at that point I would have been less than thrilled), wax, these beautiful little homes where they lived together under some sort of monarchy, and unlike other bugs that creep around and hide in dark places they seemed to love sunshine and flowers and family so much they would die for it without a second thought.  I knew enough to stay away from them because I didn't want to get stung or cause one to die, but I didn't exactly develop any sort major fear about them.  That is until I discovered wasps and they seemed like the villains of the bee world, taking on their general form but turning into some sort of monster.  I know that seems silly because even wasps have a beauty about them, but I think once I learned they could sting as much as they wanted without dying they became like any other bug I would run away from rather than kill or swat away.  Even now if a wasp is around I go back inside, but if its just a normal bee I might just try to stay out of its way unless it seems particularly interested in me.  

This podcast seemed like a good review of things I already knew about bees, there is so much to say about them I can see why they just quickly mentioned some things but I kept wishing they would just focus on a few interesting things maybe not so well known.  I also found it a little distracting that they kept presenting information in a way that made it seem like they weren't quite sure of it or that it was sort of just their impression but they didn't actually research it.  Maybe it was just my own perception of how they talked, or maybe they did it on purpose to make it seem like more of a discussion than a lecture.  I did enjoy listening to it though so i'll probably give some of the other ones a chance before I decide I need to hear facts from people who seem a little more sure about them.  

My favorite thing about bees is their dance.  They come back from foraging and tell others how to find food by dancing in a figure eight pattern that varies with distance and quality.  I love that they have their own little language and that its a dancing language.  Hearing about it on the podcast reminded me of a short article I read in a book about how its possible that bees see the sixth dimension where things like quarks live.  A mathematician (Barbara Shipman) who just happened to grow up around bees noticed that their dance followed the lines of a sixth dimensional object called a flag manifold.  I won't try to explain it because thats about as much as I understood.  I don't think its been proven and since this was a book about monsters, myths, and legends I doubt it's all that accepted by other scientists, but I loved the idea of it and as mysterious and unique as bees are it wouldn't surprise me.

Paw prints

I woke up to find my yard sectioned off into perfect squares by dog prints...not sure what their planning but hopefully this isn't the beginning of some doggy archeological dig for long lost bones.

Podclub-Alive Enough

This week in podclub; On Being-Alive Enough

Our first computer was incredibly slow but I couldn't wait to play with it.  My dad spent weeks, poring over a huge catalog that seemed to me like it was in another language, deciding on the best one then carefully set it up.  Somewhere in the torrent of questions I threw at him he looked at me sternly and informed me that it was NOT a toy.  I nodded and promised I would treat it with the care and respect it deserved while I wondered if it had any games and tried to calculate how long (as the youngest) I'd have to wait before I got a turn.  By the time it had arrived I had learned what I was suppose to do by watching everyone else doing things on it, so right away with a little help (via a lot of begging to my brother) I could do the basic things, like draw in the paint program or play the games and how to get online.  I was pretty excited about it.  A long cord stretched across the kitchen from the phone line cutting off anyone who wanted to come in, I sat there patiently waiting for the modem to dial, the noise not even bothering me because at the time it was part of the charm.  Finally, there it was, the internet.  I looked at the screen and the screen looked at me and at that very moment I realized I had no idea what I could possibly want to look at.  I sat there a little disappointed, thinking maybe this new thing wasn't quite as fun as I imagined it should be.  In the end I did a search on U2 because it was the last thing I'd seen my brother look at.  I don't think I'd ever even heard any of their songs at that age, so at that point I was just hoping for something to save me from the fast approaching boredom.  The search took ages.  I think I finally clicked on one of the pages and then gave up before it had fully loaded.  I closed it down and went back to playing that game where you try to keep the mouse from the cheese by moving blocks.  If you had told me then that I'd be using this thing called the internet on a daily basis, I would have rolled my eyes and told you it was very unlikely and gone back to reading my book.  After that it took me awhile to give the internet another chance.  Probably not until high school when I had a reason to go looking for things.  Of course once it got a little faster I joined the rest of the world in getting addicted to it.  Now I don't think twice about having tons of information right at my fingertips anytime I might want it.  

Then came the cellphone.  I do not like phones.  I never have.  When people started carrying them around, I didn't really think it would last.  I couldn't imagine wanting to be constantly available when every time I reached a message machine instead of a real person it was like a gift.  Who would want to be tethered to a phone all day?  And then the smart phones showed up, and while I had found the advantages to having a cellphone for emergencies and reaching parents who might have forgotten all about you, I could not believe anyone thought having one big enough to fit an entire keyboard  on it was a good idea.  To be fair those things were monsters and I still can't imagine carrying one around as a phone.  If someone had shown me an iphone and then told me to go online and search for something I would have readily admitted I was wrong.  I took me quite a while to get a smart phone.  Up until then my cell phone was just a thing to make the occasional phone call (because texting wasn't in my plan) and it stayed in my bag all day with the ringer turned down.  Smart phones changed all that (minus the horrible blackberry that I never used as a smart phone because it wasn't smart.  It was slow and retarded.  Just pointless to even try to use).  Once I got one that worked something changed.  The phone came out of my bag and sat next to me (ringer still down because I still don't really use it for phone calls unless I have too).  I carry it from room to room looking at it every so often only to forget what I wanted to look at or just out of habit.  I have mini panic attacks that I've left it somewhere and more than once this has happened while I'm talking to someone on it.  Part of this is because its expensive and not easily replaced, but also because it has so much stuff on it.  Music, notes, contacts, apps, so many things that I don't want to lose or try to redo on a new phone (because I'm too lazy to constantly back it up)  The other thing that changed was that since everyone else was getting them or had them and they made communication faster and easier, it became even more essential to some people (including me sometimes I'll admit it)  that everyone should be constantly available and answer their call, text or email.  I'm not crazy about this.  When I'm with someone and their attached to their phones in such a way that it interrupts the time that I'm actually spending with them it makes me feel less important and immediately I become less invested in that moment.  I might even pick up my own phone to distract myself from the person that has far more important things to do than spend time with me.  This doesn't mean I'm not guilty of doing it to other people.  I know I do, but I really do try not to.  What's funny is when their more worried about the call or text your missing than you are.  When my phone rings and I ignore it, I've had my husband go pick it up and hand it to me because its stressing him out that I might miss something.  

I guess it just depends on the person.  I'm okay with the amount of time I spend with electronics and I feel like I could live without them and sometimes I do ignore things like texts and emails because I just don't feel like being plugged in and I'll deal with it later.  This could have something to do with the very limited amount of time I was allowed to watch TV when I was little so I learned how to turn it off and go do something else.  I do think if i wasn't looking at things on the internet it would just be swapped out with a book because before computers thats the thing I stayed up all night looking at and it might actually be worse because I have a harder time putting them down than I do my phone or computer. 

I admit my phone has become something of a safety net for social situations I don't feel like dealing with.  Don't know what to do with my eyes or want to draw attention or conversation?  There's an app for that.  When it's something I care about though I do want to put down the phone and enjoy it and sometimes just the habit of looking at it draws me in to the point where I'm doing two things at once for no reason, so its definitely still something I need to work on.  Like they say in the podcast it is not a mature internet and we're all still learning how to incorporate it into our lives.  I think in the end it will even out.  This next generation especially because it won't be quite such a novelty to them.  Just by growing up in  a time with computers and the internet changes the way they think about things.  I kind of feel like my generation was the one that got so excited that they got a little drunk and maybe crashed their parents car into a telephone pole or two before learning their lesson...