Oopsie!
G'day all!
I just realised it is days and days, probably a week since I posted anything! My bad!
I was going to post from the phone on Friday arvo but umm apparently Blogger had an unscheduled outage and I could write all I liked but posting would be difficult. And of course then I forgot.
So we spent the weekend in Melbourne. DH had a medical appt and we have heaps to do on the house. BiL and his betrothed are living there, looking after the cats and generally enjoying the extra space and not living with the parents/in sins.
(FiL admiring his birthday cake, made by sister in sin and BiL)
We left the place In March with a crap kitchen floor, bare wood in the loo and plastered but unpainted walls in the kitchen.
When we left, it had primed walls in the kitchen, tile underlay in the kitchen, masonite in half the loo and a couple of rolls of vinyl to lay on the floor. It took a surprising amount of time just to get that done (partly because apparently my guidance was needed but I was out and about in the car gathering supplies). And half the kitchen cupboards were in the lounge.
Anyway, it is now looking much more usable, even without us having laid the vinyl. (the kitchen vinyl is fake woodboards, very amusing given we have lovely floorboards underneath, just not enough time to sand them and tung oil them.) I am sure my sister in sin will be pleased when the kitchen cupboards are back in, along with the bench.
Nutmeg was delighted to see me on Saturday, so was Cheshire, and on Sunday? Humph! The Nut was less excited. Humph! You went away! But Cheshire has turned into a big sook after getting totally mauled when he got out a couple of nights. He now likes to stay inside and sleep on the bed or the couch, which was Nutmeg's role. She now goes out!
(Unblocked Brambles hat, just big enough to go on my head.)
I have finished a quilt and a hmm, not quite sure what to call the hat. It is supposed to be a beret but it is a slightly sloppy beanie on my head. It might get a bit larger if I block it. I have managed to get a large dinner plate into it. I have cut out a 50's inspired dress for a party on Saturday night - I have to get a hat, pantyhose (stockings are too hard to deal with) and shoes yet, unless I decide to wear some decidedly un-fifties shoes that I already have. I bought cotton gloves yesterday and have to jazz them up. No lady went out without her gloves on! Oh yeah, I am also contemplating getting a brunette wig, just a cheap party one.
Which brings me to something I realised the other day.
When I look in the mirror, I don't see me. I see some stranger with various of my features. Where did I go? What happened to my hair? What happened to my skin? Where did my eyebrows go? Those can't be my eyelashes, they are half the length they used to be!
Now I know very well what happened but I'm feeling a bit unappreciative of the toll the cancer and its treatment took on me. I used to look younger than my years. Apparently I am vain enough to not like looking every one of my 44 years and then some. I want my magnificent eyebrows and eyelashes back. I am sick of having to use eyebrow pencil and mascara. Of course I am grateful to have any eyebrows to thicken up with a pencil and eyelashes to put mascara on - when I did the look good, feel better course last year I had about three eyelashes to put mascara on, my eyebrows were clearly pencilled on and I looked ridiculous quite frankly.
My straw blonde hair is a thing of the past. It is now a dark ash blonde, still blonde when the light hits it. At least it did grow back. It still has some kink to it, even after I've had the first two or three inches cut off. I sorta miss having long hair. I certainly miss having a fringe, though I am told that the short hair suits me well. I am just tired of looking like a boy! (Well, no boy has the next things I'm going to whine about.)
And then there are the wrinkles. Egads, where did those come from? I must've lost some padding in the nine months without hormones. I've even gone so far as to look at anti-wrinkle creams but nearly every one of them contains parabens/hydroxybenzoates (if you think that your skin cream doesn't have parabens in it but it does have hydroxybenzoates in it, they are the same thing under a different name, like paracetamol/acetaminophen) and fragrance. And I can't smell them to see if I can tolerate them. The parabens I avoid because apparently they are found in high concentrations in breast cancers. Lord knows why.
Of course having whined about my lack of eyebrows and short eyelashes, other hair has merrily sprouted that I could well do without. I think they come with the wrinkles. *sigh*
But when I look down in the mornings, there I am. Ridiculous fluffy boot-slippers in pastel colours and my fave pajama pants, or gamer pants as SiS calls them, the ones I made last year. It is getting pretty chilly in Sydney in the mornings now (though this week is GLORIOUSLY sunny :-).
In some good news, after about two months of wearing a sleeve on my lymphoedematous (made that word up) arm, when I saw the lymphoedema massage specialist on Monday, it was pretty much normal. That is good!
I have my nine month check up next Tuesday, so I'll be back in Melbourne again for two or three days. I had blood drawn on the weekend in preparation. Assuming all goes well, I'll drive little Helmet back up here. Poor little thing will be loaded to the gills with stuff. I have NO idea where I'll put it all. I guess I'll be finding a hardware store this weekend and buying primer so that we can seal the mildew in the unfinished insides of the cupboards. The cupboards are quite large but oh yuck, they smell mildewy. They are hard to clean because they are unsealed particle board, lots of cracks and crevices. I figure if I seal the particle board, it will be easier to keep them clean. (Found a hardware store today and bought horribly expensive primer, hopefully fairly low VOC stuff so I don't die of paint fumes with my head stuck to the wet primer inside the closet.)
(As I write, DH is reading back through some of my old blog posts. "Jeez, I'm a mongrel!" he says to me. "You're a husband. It is your job description," I reply.)
So I had best get cracking on my new dress. I have to sew it all together. Am thinking I will give the overlocker a whirl. After all I spent half an hour rethreading it last night just to stop DH from cranking after one of the looper threads broke. I'll have to draw through white thread but I reckon I am up to the job.
anon!
I just realised it is days and days, probably a week since I posted anything! My bad!
I was going to post from the phone on Friday arvo but umm apparently Blogger had an unscheduled outage and I could write all I liked but posting would be difficult. And of course then I forgot.
So we spent the weekend in Melbourne. DH had a medical appt and we have heaps to do on the house. BiL and his betrothed are living there, looking after the cats and generally enjoying the extra space and not living with the parents/in sins.
(FiL admiring his birthday cake, made by sister in sin and BiL)
We left the place In March with a crap kitchen floor, bare wood in the loo and plastered but unpainted walls in the kitchen.
When we left, it had primed walls in the kitchen, tile underlay in the kitchen, masonite in half the loo and a couple of rolls of vinyl to lay on the floor. It took a surprising amount of time just to get that done (partly because apparently my guidance was needed but I was out and about in the car gathering supplies). And half the kitchen cupboards were in the lounge.
Anyway, it is now looking much more usable, even without us having laid the vinyl. (the kitchen vinyl is fake woodboards, very amusing given we have lovely floorboards underneath, just not enough time to sand them and tung oil them.) I am sure my sister in sin will be pleased when the kitchen cupboards are back in, along with the bench.
Nutmeg was delighted to see me on Saturday, so was Cheshire, and on Sunday? Humph! The Nut was less excited. Humph! You went away! But Cheshire has turned into a big sook after getting totally mauled when he got out a couple of nights. He now likes to stay inside and sleep on the bed or the couch, which was Nutmeg's role. She now goes out!
(Unblocked Brambles hat, just big enough to go on my head.)
I have finished a quilt and a hmm, not quite sure what to call the hat. It is supposed to be a beret but it is a slightly sloppy beanie on my head. It might get a bit larger if I block it. I have managed to get a large dinner plate into it. I have cut out a 50's inspired dress for a party on Saturday night - I have to get a hat, pantyhose (stockings are too hard to deal with) and shoes yet, unless I decide to wear some decidedly un-fifties shoes that I already have. I bought cotton gloves yesterday and have to jazz them up. No lady went out without her gloves on! Oh yeah, I am also contemplating getting a brunette wig, just a cheap party one.
Which brings me to something I realised the other day.
When I look in the mirror, I don't see me. I see some stranger with various of my features. Where did I go? What happened to my hair? What happened to my skin? Where did my eyebrows go? Those can't be my eyelashes, they are half the length they used to be!
Now I know very well what happened but I'm feeling a bit unappreciative of the toll the cancer and its treatment took on me. I used to look younger than my years. Apparently I am vain enough to not like looking every one of my 44 years and then some. I want my magnificent eyebrows and eyelashes back. I am sick of having to use eyebrow pencil and mascara. Of course I am grateful to have any eyebrows to thicken up with a pencil and eyelashes to put mascara on - when I did the look good, feel better course last year I had about three eyelashes to put mascara on, my eyebrows were clearly pencilled on and I looked ridiculous quite frankly.
My straw blonde hair is a thing of the past. It is now a dark ash blonde, still blonde when the light hits it. At least it did grow back. It still has some kink to it, even after I've had the first two or three inches cut off. I sorta miss having long hair. I certainly miss having a fringe, though I am told that the short hair suits me well. I am just tired of looking like a boy! (Well, no boy has the next things I'm going to whine about.)
And then there are the wrinkles. Egads, where did those come from? I must've lost some padding in the nine months without hormones. I've even gone so far as to look at anti-wrinkle creams but nearly every one of them contains parabens/hydroxybenzoates (if you think that your skin cream doesn't have parabens in it but it does have hydroxybenzoates in it, they are the same thing under a different name, like paracetamol/acetaminophen) and fragrance. And I can't smell them to see if I can tolerate them. The parabens I avoid because apparently they are found in high concentrations in breast cancers. Lord knows why.
Of course having whined about my lack of eyebrows and short eyelashes, other hair has merrily sprouted that I could well do without. I think they come with the wrinkles. *sigh*
But when I look down in the mornings, there I am. Ridiculous fluffy boot-slippers in pastel colours and my fave pajama pants, or gamer pants as SiS calls them, the ones I made last year. It is getting pretty chilly in Sydney in the mornings now (though this week is GLORIOUSLY sunny :-).
In some good news, after about two months of wearing a sleeve on my lymphoedematous (made that word up) arm, when I saw the lymphoedema massage specialist on Monday, it was pretty much normal. That is good!
I have my nine month check up next Tuesday, so I'll be back in Melbourne again for two or three days. I had blood drawn on the weekend in preparation. Assuming all goes well, I'll drive little Helmet back up here. Poor little thing will be loaded to the gills with stuff. I have NO idea where I'll put it all. I guess I'll be finding a hardware store this weekend and buying primer so that we can seal the mildew in the unfinished insides of the cupboards. The cupboards are quite large but oh yuck, they smell mildewy. They are hard to clean because they are unsealed particle board, lots of cracks and crevices. I figure if I seal the particle board, it will be easier to keep them clean. (Found a hardware store today and bought horribly expensive primer, hopefully fairly low VOC stuff so I don't die of paint fumes with my head stuck to the wet primer inside the closet.)
(As I write, DH is reading back through some of my old blog posts. "Jeez, I'm a mongrel!" he says to me. "You're a husband. It is your job description," I reply.)
So I had best get cracking on my new dress. I have to sew it all together. Am thinking I will give the overlocker a whirl. After all I spent half an hour rethreading it last night just to stop DH from cranking after one of the looper threads broke. I'll have to draw through white thread but I reckon I am up to the job.
anon!
Sweetie, I did not have cancer and I, at 43, am also seeing wrinkles and hairs migrating from my eyebrows to less appealing places on my face. I'm sure the cancer has had its effect, but trust me, we are all looking at strangers in the mirror.
ReplyDeleteFor me, letting my hair go gray has been both liberating and terrifying. Who's the hag? Oh, that's me!
Fantastic hat, by the way.