Out like a light

So I have been known to go through rounds of baby fever where my brain says, "sleeping in is the best," but my ovaries are like, "but lookit da widdle fat cheekies and chubchub legs!!" I'm 26, its biological and it's not my fault. Usually I just wait until my brain is functioning louder than my egg sacs and continue on with my spawn-free life. It doesn't take long. 

A friend of mine asked Lovie and I to watch their kids tonight. C is a 2.5 year old über boy, and A is a precious chunka 5-month-old bebby girl. Honestly, I thought this would be a "dear lord, I hope my uterus shrivels before I ever make one of these nights." Not because I dislike children. I just feel like two at this age spread would be difficult. C has a lot of energy and really enjoys crashing his trucks; usually into your gut. And A is a baby. Poop, eat, cry. 

It was incredibly stressful. A is normally very calm, hardly makes a peep. She wouldn't. Stop. Crying. The down from the gut, to the top of the lungs, actual flowing tears crying. Jon got her to sleep then as soon as she went down into her bassinet she popped awake and freaked out. It went on long enough that C started saying, "will that noise stop? It's really scary!" Poor thing. That's in addition to C being a little ball of boy energy already, so he's running around crashing his ambulance into our legs and stuff. He's not a bad boy, he's just two and a half. (Moms, how do you do this x100 every day?!!!!) 

Eventually A got out a bunch of huge burps and passed out. So I sat in the rocker with her for about an hour. Despite the shrieking from before, and her brother being a little bundle of lightning, I was kind of in heaven. Watching her perfect little peaceful sleeping face and the occasional gasps of air, it was so peaceful that my ovaries were like, "SEE?! You want thiiiiiis!" 

And I finally get around to putting her in the bassinet without her waking up, and her brother is coming up the stairs and says, "I'm sleepy. Can I go to bed now?" Like... what? 

Long story short: I still have baby fever and I really, really need to wait until my brain starts being louder than my reproductive organs again. 

Ava Anderson Non Toxic

I am so excited! For a long time now, my coworker has been talking about Ava Anderson products this, Ava Anderson products that, and I ignored her. She invited me to a handful of the parties she hosted and gave me catalogs that I never looked at. Then a good friend of mine invited me to an Ava party, and I said sure. After all, even if I didn't buy anything at least I was hanging out with people I know and like. I decided to buy a small handful of products, and on Tuesday they arrived. By Wednesday morning I was 

Obsessed. Yes. If you think I'm kidding, look at it this way: I'm already so in love with it that less than a week after attending my first Ava Hour, I am an independent Ava Anderson Non Toxic consultant!

Okay, yes, it's like a Pampered Chef or Silpada or Lia Sophia party. But it's better. Why? I've already talked in this blog about trying to go without shampoo, and why I stopped using products with parabens in them. Ava Anderson is a 6-year-old company founded by a 14-year-old in 2009. She did research on the toxins in body products in America and wanted something better. When she couldn't find it, she made it. Love it. 

Not only does she have body products, but she's got a kids line, hair, men's, sun, home, pets, auto.... It's amazing. Most products are multi-use too. Like the pet shampoo is actually great for people too. The diaper rash cream is fantastic to spot treat acne. 

One of the mission statements off of the Ava website is, "we don't tell you this to sell product. It's to educate people to take control of their health." I might be paraphrasing. Long story short, I will be booking parties as soon as I host my AvaLaunch parties in the next few weeks. But I am so excited to be getting involved with a product line that I can be excited about and believe in! 

Creative outlet!

Really, this was supposed to be my creative outlet. I enjoy writing. At least most of the time. But lately my fingers have been itching for something a little more... I don't know what the word is. So I went and bought a fantastic coloring book for adults from Michael's. I love it. But that makes my hand exhausted, coloring in all the teeny tiny pieces for several hours at a time. So I started using watercolors! 

And sharpies. Back in August I bought a cheesey $2 watercolor palette on a whim while I was making a grocery store run. It was nothing special but I have really been wanting to use it. So I asked my boss if I could take some leftover matting material and got to work!

I know I'm not super talented, but it's been pretty fun. It's cool working with a completely new medium. Other than making a giant mess with them as a child, I've never worked with watercolors. I've been trying to find a medium that I'm halfway decent with. I feel like for a start I'm not doing too badly!

I've clearly got some work to do with the sharpie too, but I like the dimension it adds to the delicate colors. And they're all for sale! I have them on my etsy (xheatherlacex.etsy.com) so hopefully someone will like one of them enough to buy it. 

This lobster, my husband pointed out, isn't exactly anatomically correct, but hey, I need to start somewhere. It's not like I was sitting at the grocery store drawing one from a model! 

This ladybug isn't anatomically correct either. Their top hats are usually much bigger. Not so comically small.

So if any of these are interesting to you, check out my etsy! Check back now and again too, because I plan on doing more.

Just some whining and rambling.

So I've been missing for a while. I worked a booth at RI Comic Con over the previous weekend, so I worked 12 days straight, with three at Comic Con being an enormously exhausting waste of time. So I'm not sure if it was being overworked or if it was having such an awful time at Comic Con, but I had the worst week last week. Debated calling out of work every single morning. Didn't get out of bed until 10 minutes before I was supposed to leave on Thursday. Had some small personal drama that was likely amplified in my mind by my exhaustion. It was just long and awful. 

I do think that I may have snapped out of it though. I think a good indicator of whether I'm having a good week or a bad week is whether or not I've managed to prep my food for the next day. Is that weird? All last week I had zero mental fortitude and couldn't bother making food or packing a lunch. I'm not sure that I prepped the coffee pot either. It's Sunday, which is usually the hardest food prep day because it involves planning my food and (ugh) grocery shopping. I hate grocery shopping. In fact, I kind of hate that we need to eat to be healthy. I wish I could photosynthesize. But I did it nonetheless. 

I always make sure that I have a hard boiled egg to eat sometime mid-morning. I try to make sure I've got fruit for any snacking needs. I love sweet things and for me, a pile of clementines will do the job just as well as a Hershey bar. Though if Hershey bars are present, they should be heavily guarded. I am a chocolate fiend. So I've got three clementines. I've also got pummelo wedges. Price Rite has enormous pummelos so I eat a quarter a day. Or maybe I'll eat another quarter when I get home. It depends how I feel. And this week I finally got around to using my avocado before it went bad and made quinoa with avocado, halved tiny tomatoes, black beans, and Cain's White Balsamic & Honey Vinaigrette. 

Sometimes I put diced red onion but I didn't feel like it today. But the dressing is very important! 

I've tried substitutes but nothing has quite had the right zing yet. Also if you feel like the quinoa isn't up to par for you, you can add shredded chicken or shrimp and it's also pretty bomb that way, too.

So my lunch bag all packed up is 1 egg, 3 clementines, a quarter of a pummelo wedged up, and my quinoa junk. I think I have a thing for citrus. (If you're wondering, a pummelo is like a really delicately flavored grapefruit. It's a lot less tart, no sugaring needed!) 

Anyway, I mostly felt like, since I've only had the blog a couple of weeks, I couldn't start neglecting is already. So here it is; I had a horrible week last week, but the one ahead is already looking better. I know this because I actually prepped and packed my lunch. I guess it's the small things in life.

#SkyPirateLunchSack

The search is back on.

Contrary to popular (read: my sister's) belief, I'm not some hippie, all-natural, granola person. If you are, that's fine. I prefer natural solutions, hence why I tried (and failed) to make my own deodorant, why I use coconut oil for everything, and refuse to buy pre-marinated meat at the grocery store. But I don't define myself by those parameters. I still eat chips that come out of a bag, enjoy Hershey bars, and really hate vegan ice cream.

The point is, I try to be aware of what I put in and on my body. I randomly developed a walnut allergy in my early 20s but I still have trouble remembering to search for tree nuts in ingredient lists. However, I never forget to check my skincare ingredients; until now, and I'm really annoyed about it. Why?

Methyl and propylparaben. Really? Come on. And I had to go online to find the ingredients because they weren't listed on the bottle. They were possibly on the box that I immediately threw in the recycle bin, but I don't remember.

Now, I'm not an esthetician nor a dermatologist. I'm just a nerd that has sat through a couple of skincare seminars. I don't know what all of those things are but I DO know that there are three types of parabens and two of them are in my lotion. 

I'm attending an Ava Anderson party next week, so hopefully I'll learn something new about skincare/body products and find something for keeping my face properly hydrated. 

I had so much more to say on this subject, but honestly, I've been prepping for RI Comic Con so I'm exhausted and braindead. Thinking about parabens makes me feel like I've been squishing cancer on my face and that makes me sad. 

This is what lotion full of parabens might as well be. Yuck. Next product, please!

 

Dry Sponge

Every beauty magazine ever will always tell you that the key to beautiful skin starts with moisturizer.

Obviously. 

It's a rare bit of advice that I have actually been following for a long time. Because of my work I have incredibly dry hands, as well. Dry to the point of being painful every time I wash my hands. So my go to was Aveeno, like it is for many people. 

It is also impossible to find a humorous picture of Aveeno. I tried for like, three minutes.

Aveeno was my go-to, all-purpose skin savior. I might as well have bathed in it. I have a bottle in my bathroom, bedroom, car, purse, and at work. Hands, body, face. Yeah. My face. 

Then one day I was doing research on coconut oil (which I use to remove my makeup at the end of the day) and some blog or another said how great it is, but be careful because it's not noncomedogenic. Words we all know, but suddenly it occurred to me that I wasn't entirely sure of their definition. 

Coconut oil is comedogenic. Usually when things are NONcomedogenic it says so right in the bottle. Aveeno is dermatologist recommended, it has to be noncomedogenic, right? RIGHT?!

No. In fact, it is comedogenic. Pore clogging, blackhead causing, skin suffocator. On. My. Face. 

No wonder the pores on my nose look so revolting all the time! Auuugh! But I was terrified. That meant that I would have to 1) pay for a separate lotion specifically for just my face.  I'm a cheapskate. I'm sorry. I like to pretend that it's frugality but secretly I know better; and 2) would have to try new products until I found one that worked for me.

My skin is the definition of an English rose. Pale porcelain with naturally pink cheeks. It's so sensitive that the least deviation from stasis sends my face into a tailspin. Red, dry, scaley patches, or cystic zits, or crazy overproduction of oil. It's very annoying to search for products that work on my skin. Once, a pal of mine gave me an expensive MAC facial cream that was heavenly, until my entire forehead scaled and peeled off. 

I've tried a handful of things ranging from "Oh god, why would someone put this on their face?!" to "This is so expensive, why would anyone pay that much for this?!" I think I've finally found a nice middle ground. Guess where I got it? If you said anything other than Target, then you haven't learned a thing about me since I've restarted blogging all of a week ago.

So the winner is: 

I can't believe the answer has been so simple all along. I've been using it about a week and a half by now. My pores looked infinitely better within two days. My nose isn't nearly as oily as I've been accustomed to. The dry spots on my face I think are still acclimating, but they're not flaking, not red, not itchy. It's amazing! I know adding a facial moisturizer isn't really that much of a change in my beauty routine, but I still didn't want to. I am so happy I did though. My face is happier. All because I had the sudden realization that the word "noncomedogenic" actually has a definition.

Not everything works for everyone.

Seriously, I should make that my tag line. I feel like it's something people forget too often and try to push what they think on other people too forcefully. Even if they mean well, it's rude and annoying. Voice your opinion if it's appropriate, then shut your face until further information is solicited. Can you tell I'm not exactly a people-person? I do have a little pal that makes it somewhat easier to deal with other humans. 

His name is Zoloft! Yaaay!

Now, as far as I can tell I've been dealing with anxiety since I was very young (my earliest anxiety-related memories start when I was five-ish,) and began displaying signs of depression shortly after entering high school. I had my first panic attack at 15 while I was at work and my mom took my to the emergency room. I've had a prescription for Atavan since then to take as needed. I'm currently 26, and have been taking Zoloft for 9 months. 

Why am I telling you this? Goodness gracious, don't feel sorry for me or act like I'm undergoing this massive personal battle that I'm fighting bravely. To me, it's just my life. Everyone has their trials and this is mine, and it's currently under control. But I like to talk about it for the awareness factor. 

It's going to be 2016 in a hot minute and mental illness still holds such a huge stigma. Somehow, many people still see taking antidepressants as relying on a crutch or somehow think it makes them "not themselves." I felt that way for a long time. But would you hear a diabetic talking about their insulin and think they were just being a baby? To me a diabetic taking insulin, or (insert whatever ailment and treatment you desire here) is just common sense. People with depression and anxiety most often have some type of chemical imbalance going on inside their brains and they need a little help to fix it. 

Zoloft has literally changed my life. My husband always says, "It's like you fight getting glasses when your vision is going, but when you let go and finally go and get a pair, you can't believe you waited so long to see so clearly." It's very much the same for me. Every day was a struggle to function. That mountain of dishes in the sink was enough to reduce me to tears on a regular basis. These days I feel new. I feel capable and functional. My dishes are always done. No mountain in the sink, no tears. My laundry is always done! I never need "a day" to do laundry, because it's always just one load. One here, one there. Sometimes it all sits on my floor of my bedroom for two weeks but that's because I'm still a little lazy and at least it's clean! 

I still get off days. We all do. Where the familiar "why bother getting out of bed" feeling creeps back and threatens to derail me for the day. But it's easier to power through, knowing it won't last forever. 

It was a project though. Like I said, not everything works for everyone and I know because it took some experimenting to find what worked for me. I started at the prompting of my husband, whom I had to convince to try to live better through chemistry several months prior. Jon used Celexa (citalopram) and it was a perfect fit. When I tried the lowest dose of the same drug, it sent me to a weird, dark place where I could listen to the two halves of my brain argue the pros and cons of doing some terrible thing like driving off of a bridge. Fortunately I came through that part unscathed. After a particularly difficult night and some poor choices I called my doctor to see if I needed to wean off of it or if I could just stop. Fortunately I managed to stay safe during that process and once I was clear of its effects, we tried again. Several members of my family have used Zoloft at some point or another and evidently, because our genetic and chemical makeup is similar it was more likely to work for me as it did for them. 

The first two months were okay. I felt slightly better, but not new. I spoke to my doctor again and he suggested that we go up a dose and see how that went. That was 6 months ago, and I finally feel human. Most days at least. 

The keys are 1) you need to be ready to make a change. If you aren't ready, then nothing will help. 2) Trust the people that are around you and that care about you. If your own spouse (who is normally very gentle with their words) says you're insufferable, it's possible that you're not holding up as well as you think. 3) Trust yourself. If you have doubts that it's working, refer to key number two, and ask yourself if you feel like anything has changed, like your ability to handle stress or your tolerance for annoying people. 

Remember: not everything works for everyone, but something out there will work for you. In the meantime, keep your head up and talk about me when you go to your next therapy session. ;)

National hotline for prevention of suicide: 1-800-273-TALK 

A million uses for coconut oil

As though you haven't seen every list compiled on the subject already. But let's face it, I love the stuff. I feel like everyone does. I have three jars of it in my house, one in the bathroom for beauty use, one in the kitchen for consumption, and another in the kitchen for making lip balm. (Another post for another day, that.)

Obviously, I've been less than loyal to the makers of coconut oil, but really I was trying to find the right one! I think the Nutiva (available at Target!) is the one as its cold pressed, unrefined, AND in a glass jar. It's slightly more expensive than both the Spectrum and the Nature's Promise, but it has what I'm looking for. 

As I've already said, I use one to make lip balm. I'm still trying to perfect my recipe but it's incredibly nourishing! I've been working on a gin & tonic flavor and a morning coffee flavor. But I'm getting ahead of myself! Another post for another day! But what else do I use coconut oil for? I used to use it to spot treat the occasional zit (notice I say used to... Hmmmm). I use it to remove my eye makeup at the end of the day, even waterproof mascara. I swear, that stuff is magic. 

Additionally, I had my ears pierced with a second hole this past June. I'm a notoriously slow healer, and the saline cleaner was very much irritating my skin. I figured they were healed so I stopped cleaning them with the saline. Poor choice. My lobes got puffy and gross and I could squeeze them like zits. It was not my finest moment. So I started rubbing them with coconut oil every morning, et voilà! They're perfect. The infections went away, my skin is no longer irritated by salt water, and I have silky soft earlobes. Very sensual. (Joking.) It does get annoying having to rub your phone clean after you use it when you use coconut oil on your ears, but it's worth it for the health of my piercings. Plus I'm more of a texter. I am a millenial after all. But if your piercings are infected, go see an APP (Association of Professional Piercers) member before doing it. Otherwise you could risk having to take your piercing out. But this is a tangent. 

I also use coconut oil in my cooking, like normal people. Fry an egg? Don't use cooking spray. Coconut oil. Making pancakes? Coconut oil. Baking just about anything? Coconut oil. Delicious and not the worst alternative in the world. However, currently my favorite use for coconut oil: oil pulling. You can also use sesame or other type of neutral oil, but I like coconut. I've not been doing it for very long, maybe a month or slightly longer. My skin is clear and glowing, my teeth are super clean, my dark circles have all but disappeared. 

(A couple minutes post-shower, with moisturizer only. No makeup, no filters. But pretty good lighting...)

I had read up on it quite some time ago and it seemed interesting but only as a passing fancy. Time went on and the information available became more in depth. I learned why you do it for 20 minutes, why it's more beneficial first thing in the morning, all the potential benefits that can come from squishing oil around your mouth for a while every day. People report balancing of hormonal fluctuations. I'm not positive of that one myself, but I've never been stellar at monitoring my hormones to begin with. 

I'll also admit, the first time I did I said "I can do this, I can be awesome at anything." I put a tablespoon of oil in my mouth, kind of chewed it until it was completely melted, and immediately wanted out. Five minutes was all I could manage. But once I knew what I was actually getting myself into by experience, I was fine after that. With a little less oil doing the twenty minutes was a breeze. I take care of the cats, make my lunch, prep my breakfast, spit in the trash, rinse, brush my teeth, move on with my day.  It's another thing that definitely isn't for everyone, especially not those with caps or amalgam fillings, but for me, just the difference in my skin and teeth is worth it!

Poo or no poo?

I guess that's one way to put the question. If you've spent much time or beauty blogs or Pinterest you've heard of the no-poo movement. 

So, yeah. Not using shampoo is a thing. I did it for a year! But here's my problem: I tried every option, and they only worked for so long. Baking soda? Healthy scalp, fried hair. Epsom salts? Great, until you realize how disgusting the build-up is. Rye flour, amazing hair but nasty scalp. Honestly, I only tried it because all my friends were. ("Would you jump off a cliff just because your friends are?!" Yes, I would. I have photographic evidence that it did happen. 

Fifteen feet into freezing cold water. No biggie.) But in any case, once you get through the two week-ish adjustment period of quitting shampoo, it actually is kind of great. I went from being a shampoo every day type person to not using it at all. I loved it. And then my hair started feeling grubby again. So I would switch methods, or mix and match methods, or make up a new one altogether. But it always came back around to feeling like I wasn't cleansing my hair. Side note, I also have seborrheic dermatitis, so my scalp was a nightmare on and off through this process. 

Eventually I decided (again) that I had had enough. I decided to try to find some kind of scalp-friendly calendula ointment. For those who do not know, calendula is glorious for the scalp. It's often used to treat cradle cap on babies. Evidently cradle cap is the same as seborrheic dermatitis. Who knew? Anyway, my preliminary Google and Amazon searches did not turn up my magical and inexpensive solution. Then I went to Target (of course) while searching calendula on my phone. It offered up this:

A lavender-aloe multipurpose shampoo/soap/bubble bath?! Aww yiss. It smells phenomenal, has calendula, is not exorbitantly expensive, and is a fairly natural product for what it is. 

It's the greatest body cleaning product in the universe. I'll tell you, if you're used to very sudsy chemical-y shampoo, you will not feel like your hair is clean when you shampoo with this. But I'll tell you why: shampoo doesn't need suds. It only has suds because people think it needs it. They're created by detergents in shampoo that strip out all the important stuff from your hair. Hair has natural oil that protects it. When you strip that away, your head tries to overcompensate by giving you greasy head, then you need to shampoo the next day again. See how that pattern works? This soap doesn't strip your hair. It's awesome. But this is the opinion of a person that plunged into it after not using shampoo for a year. My hair looks and feels clean, but isn't stripped, and doesn't get greasy so fast! I wash usually every 5 or so days (with rinses every day). If you start using it from standard detergent shampoo, you'll probably go through an adjustment period similar to the no-poo adjustment. It was easy to adjust because I was out of the country when I did it. People in the Caribbean did not care that my hair looked so dirty. It was full of sand anyway.

Ultimately, I guess I have two points I'm trying to get across. One is that cleansing your hair with shampoo alternatives is great, but it won't necessarily work for everyone. But you'll never know unless you try. And you have to really try, because doing it for two days and giving up is lame. The second is that this is a product that I love. It's called Everyone Soap and it's available at Target and on Amazon. I haven't tried the other scents but the lavender-aloe rocks. If you're looking for something to gently care for your hair and scalp without giving up shampoo entirely, it's a fantastic choice. At the very least it could be a starting point to an exploration of what works for your head chemistry. I highly recommend it!

Meet the Little Red Hawk

Hello, everyone! Welcome to me, the Little Red Hawk.

I figured I'd say hello, tell you a little bit about me, what this blog is (hopefully) going to be and whatever. 

My name is Heather. I have a husband, Jonathan (aka Jon, Jawn, or Lovie); 

 2 cats, Krieger and Marceline;

and two chickens, Toast and Butters. They're not really pets to me so  I don't have current pictures of them. They're buff orpingtons and they provide my breakfast every day. I work a regular job every day framing artwork. It's a pretty good time. I consider myself moderately health-conscious, fairly bookish, and very unphotogenic. I'm an amalgam of all my experiences and choices made into one person. I don't know, I think I'm pretty okay. 

So what's the blog about? Oh, let's be pretentious for a minute and call it a lifestyle blog. I'll be talking about things I do in my life to improve myself, products that I like using, foods I like to eat. I'll tell you, this blog is brand new, so obviously I'm not sponsored. Any product that I plug is something I'm familiar with and believe in enough to want to share it with you. Even if at some unfathomable point this did become popular enough to be sponsored, I would still only plug something I believe in. You can hold me to that. 😉

So we'll see where this goes. Hopefully it'll be a fun cathartic exercise for me to start writing again. I'll be writing real blog posts post haste and you'll see what I'm really all about. Until next time!