Dressed down

Today I will write my plan for achieving my gym-based goals.
I have already set up a spreadsheet with my current stats in, and I’ve reinvigorated my “diet blog”. I’ve done it more for myself than for sharing, somewhere to record my thoughts and hopefully my progress. It also means that I will not clutter up the real blog too much with random gym/thin stuff. It was a chuckle looking back at the old posts, and at how well I was deceiving myself. Funny that. Anyway, the new stats are truer – I got OH to do them for me. If I’m not honest with myself then I can’t achieve those goals.

I had planned to make a dress for the wedding we’re attending in a little over a month. I’d mentioned it at the hen night (Saturday just gone, good fun.) and I was reminded that the bride will not care, she’ll be too busy to notice, and everyone else is looking at the bride anyway. So, since it’s probably not worth the neck-breaking that I’d need to do, I’m not making a dress any more. So I went out and bought one instead. It’s pretty; it’s a bluey purple colour. I’m not entirely sure that it goes with the shawl I’m making, but I think I can carry it. OH thinks I should wear pink tights too, to tie it in. I might do that!
I’m still making the shawl. I’m not really making the shawl for the wedding, you see. I was always planning on making the shawl. the wedding is just a good deadline. I’m afraid it looks a little like brightly coloured yarn-barf at the moment, but lace has a tendency to look a little scraggy until it’s finished and blocked.

Anyway, moving on from weddings…

We’re continuing on our Organic drive in my house. We planned to visit a shop in town which has some nice organic products in (specifically, I’m looking for face wash) but they were closed on Sunday. (other than the dress, the shopping trip was pretty much a failure) so I still need to do that. As it stands I’m using my soap-free-soap at the moment. I can’t remember why it’s soap free, I’ll have to find the leaflet again some time. I cut it in half and put half in my gym bag. Unsurprisingly that half is lasting a lot longer than the half in the bathroom, but they are still both going strong. I’m slowly becoming more aware of what goes in to some of the things that I use. Like palm oil, which is used to make Sodium Lauryl Sulfate (that’s a foaming agent) for your shampoo. Palm oil, when responsibly sourced, isn’t an issue – it’s renewable, it doesn’t need masses of pesticides. You can even get organic palm oil, I think. No, the problem is that it’s very profitable to grow palm oil, and to do so rainforests are being deforested and replaced with palm oil crops. This means that our lovable friend the orangutan is running out of habitat (and it’s not only them, they’re just an example). It also means less trees to “filter” the carbon dioxide out of the air. If you don’t believe that humans are causing global warming then you must still see that wiping out a rare creature like the oranguatn just so that you can have foamy shampoo is a little on the silly side.
Some things we’re avoiding by buying organic are more obvious too. Bleach is one of them. Generally speaking we try to keep bleach off our skin, it’s not very good for you. Why then do companies keep on bleaching things like tampons and sanitary towels? There’s no need really, when you consider what you’re going to do with them, does it matter so much if they’re off white? Really? I find bleach in those products is an irritant, and I’ve been doing my best to avoid it for some time. Organic is a great way to do that!
We know from things like the nicotine patch that you can absorb things through the skin and into the blood stream, so if you’re watching what you eat then why not watch what you rub on your body too?

Anyway, I’ve still got an hour or more before lunch and I’m already wondering whether I can justify a chocolate bar. I can’t, but there you go. I have prunes on my desk, but they’re not doing it for me this morning. Ho hum. I’ll find something else to do.