Month: August 2010

I stopped! and had a good hard look at myself.

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So, I’ve been MIA a few days. This is because my computer exploded. As in, literally. I was working away and it went SNAP! and blew a fuse in my office. This happened to you? I’m sure it has. But how did you handle it?

My computer is now dead. Apple (bless them) are replacing it and are currently trying to retrieve data…including my book. Personal update: I’m staying calm. And using the opportunity to have a good hard look at myself.

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Truth be known, the ordeal has tested me. I’ve been in a state of panic and frustrated beyond what I thought I could endure  – unable to do ANY work during an insanely busy time for me. I’m about to start filming a new show, my book deadline’s getting closer, I have exams…and the rest.

But the intensity has honed my thinking. It’s forced me to look for the lessons.

When you ask, honestly and with enough open, raw desperation, “Why has this happened?”, you get your answer.

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sunday life: why i love ugly walking shoes

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This week I wear ugly walking shoes

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Recently I was given a pair of those chubby, stack-soled “fit” sneakers*. You know, the kind that look a cross between that very special footwear you can only buy at a chemist and those foam stilts Baby Spice used to wear with legwarmers back in 1993.

* I was given Reebok EasyTone’s. But MBT‘s are very popular. So are Skecher’s Shape-Ups. This is not an endorsement…but so many of you have asked for the details!

Such shoes come with claims: they are said to lift your bum, increase your heart rate, zap cellulite, solve your existential angst, sort your tax return and nab you a new partner. That last one, of course, is made up. These shoes are so ugly, they’re known universally to deflect potential suitors as soon as they see you coming (in life-improving, calf-elongating strides).
Lifted bum or no lifted bum.

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What fry pans should we be using?

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* This post has been updated. See below.

Following the toxic audit on my apartment that I wrote about on Sunday, two rather big things. I have to move out of my apartment. And I’ve tossed my frying pans.

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I’m moving because my bedroom is on top of the fuse room for the entire block. I’ve always thought this was a bonus – my room is nice and warm in winter. Nicole the building biologist asked if I have immune problems because the crazy, magnetic field action in my room would be wreaking havoc, she’d imagine. Boy do I ever – I have auto-immune disease, and it’s taking an eternity to heal. “How long have you been living here?” A little over three years…  “How long you had auto-immune disease?” Three years. Ahhhh….

I’m not a dramatic over-reactor. But I can’t ignore this.

But to the pans. Non-stick pans are coated in Teflon, which is what makes them slippery. Oh, how I’ve loved Teflon in the past! The way it cooks eggs. And nuts. No mess. No oil.  Problem is that a chemical that’s released when you heat up Teflon is leaching into everyone’s blood stream and is making us sick – cancer, birth defects, HORMONE DISRUPTION and high cholesterol (ironically, given non-stick saves on cooking oils) are the oft-cited effects.

Studies are going back and forth. For a full discussion, read Slow Death by Rubber Duck. They go through the arguments and come out categorically telling everyone to get rid of non-stick pans.

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my brand of sad…what’s yours?

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I get sad often. Have done since I was a kid. It can just creep up and over me, take me by the throat and dangle there. Then, once embedded, it will drag up big, raw feeling from deep within. In gushes.  I’m powerless once it’s upon me. I cry. A McDonald’s commercial can see me cry for an hour.

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My Mum said I was born with over-active tear ducts. My ex used to call me (fondly), a “sad sack of shit”. He’d watch the cloak of sadness inch up and shake his head. Here we go.

I got sad this weekend, which is why I’m writing this today. Sad for the lonely people. Sad for the pain the human experience can endure. I was watching the news and my sadness had me 100% attuned to people’s faces. The loneliness was palpable.

Sad is different to depressed. Depression is an old woolly cardigan I wear, too. But sad, unlike the fug of depression,

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Sunday life: how to detox your house (and trust me, you need to)

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This week I detox my apartment

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It may not be evident from where you sit, but I’m currently experiencing slow death by tinned lima beans. I’ve been eating a stack lately, in seemingly benign ways – tossed through stews, in soups. It was always bound to catch up with me. And if it doesn’t, my Capricornian habit of efficiently freezing said meals in plastic containers ready for convenient reheating on busy weeknights most certainly will.

On Friday I invited “building biologist” Nicole Bijlsma into my apartment to do a toxic report on my two-bedder flat. She took a three-hour look at the way I live using a bunch of beeping devices. The report card came back: veritable marinade of toxins.  Everything from the pot plant in my bedroom (a fungal breeding ground) to my lip balm habit is overloading my system. Our bodies are great detoxers, says Nicole, but the sheer quantity of pollutants we collide with today has pushed us to our limits. When we tip, an increasingly familiar host of “unexplainable” disorders – cancer, ADHD, fertility issues, auto-immune disease – kick in.

Oh. Dear.

But tell me, what’s more oh-deary for you: the feeling that, once again, you can’t do anything right these days (I mean, tinned lima beans…?!). Or the fact your gut has kind of known things aren’t right for a while?  And you’ve erroneously ignored it?

This week I trawled through the conflicting, highly charged debates as to whether “science can prove” pollutants kill folk.

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