The other F-Word

I have a potty mouth. Anyone who knows me can attest to that. I swear like a sailor in my daily conversations. Fuck is pretty well-used in my vocabulary. It's kind of like smoking - it's a dirty habit, but I can't help myself and I firmly believe that letting a handful of four-letter words fly from time to time actually keeps me sane so BITE ME.

But, as any parent will tell you, there's a handful of words you just cannot say around the wee ones (and by handful, I really mean truckload). I try really hard to watch my mouth around F because I don't need him dropping F-bombs and other four-letter words around the preschool class he attends. Except, at the top of my list of "bad" words isn't a four-letter word at all. I call it the other F word and it is a three-letter word. 

It's fat and this year, I want to work to erase it from my vocabulary.

Fat itself isn't a bad word, but we've made it a bad word. It's a word I use to berate myself. It's a word I use when I'm displeased with myself, and in the words of a very handsome hockey coach I know, "that's absurd". I am not fat, and if I was it wouldn't make me "bad". But I let it become a bad word, and I watched it rub off on F a few times last year. It's held me back from doing things I want to do. It feeds my self-doubt, but only because I let it. 

I'm not much of one for New Year's Resolutions. I think I used to be but by mid-February, I usually had let go of whatever it was I had decided I'd be doing that year. And that's OK. A year is a long time, which is why I'd be absolutely full of shit to say that I'm going to stop using the word "fat" for a whole year. That's not my goal. My goal is to stop telling myself I'm fat. 

For one month. Starting today. 

And in 30 days, I'll tell you how it went, and maybe (just maybe), if I've got another goal lined up for February. 

Happy New Year friends! 

Breaking Bad (Habits)

I have a confession to make: I take absolutely terrible care of my skin. 

Or, at least, I have been taking terrible care of my skin. I'm trying really hard to better myself, but there are some habits that are just so hard to break. With summer now far behind me (according to the temperatures, anyway), the days of lounging in the sun and sweating in the humid air have been replaced with dark mornings and cold, dry winds. My skin started to feel the difference before I had really clued in, and with my new, heavy moisturizer comes the turning of a new leaf. It's time to take better care of my skin. In just over two weeks since completely overhauling the way I treat my skin, I see a huge difference.

First up on my list of things to do was quit tanning. Quit. Gone. Bye-bye. After years of chasing a golden glow, I've decided that the only glow I'm getting has to come from a bottle. My pale, freckle-covered skin was beginning to show my bad habit a little too much, with clusters of freckles that looked like dark spots and a few more laugh lines than I wanted cropping up. Defense is the best offence here, people, and I don't want the skin of a 40-year-old before I hit 30. I quit tanning 3 weeks ago. I'm now looking pale and loving it.

Yes, I consider this "tanned".

Next, I had to stop going to sleep with makeup on. This was going to be harder. Although my initial thought was to rush out and grab some make-up removing wipes, I had not one, not two but three full-sized bottles of Neutragena face cleansers that needed some attention, so I've been using those instead. In practice, my new night-time regime takes all of 5 minutes. Twice a week I use a gentle scrub to remove all the dead skin. Stay tuned for a review on my Neutragena Pore-Minimizing products - they're ahhh-mazing.

Pale is the new tan.

Then after reading oodles of reviews and speaking directly to a dermatologist, I decided to start using a Retinol cream, beginning with twice a week, in conjunction with a heavy nighttime moisturizer and eye cream. I'm not quite ready to move on to a third time per week, but I've noticed my skin has become much brighter and smoother already. I'll be reviewing my Neostrata Anti-Wrinkle Night Complex soon!

One of my worst skin-care habits is picking at blemishes. I can't. stop. touching. them. AHH! As soon as a pimple begins, I'm on it with tweezers or fingers. One of the bonuses of tanning was that my acne completely disappeared, but I picked up a Tanda Zap and I'm having really great results so far. I'm sorry to say you'll have to wait for that review, too!

Between now and December, I'll be reviewing a beauty product a week! I'll also take some additional photos to show you the progress in my skin, from the blemishes to the fading of my tan and "dark spots". I don't know what kind of damage my skin has already suffered, but I know that I'm going to be more aware and more conscientious in the future... and will look 30 forever. 

... Or something like that.