Thank You for Your Consideration

Considerate: [kuhn-sid-er-it]-adjective

showing kindly awareness or regard for another's feelings, circumstances, etc.:

 I cannot change people, but as a woman I reserve the right to try. I can't help myself. However, I'm not naive. I know that attempting to be a strong influence or even using forceful persuasion (threats) will not cause another person to behave as though other people matter. To some, no on else matters.

I was raised in the South and I thank God for it. Manners are sacred and southerners are experts at politely handling .... Aside from common courtesies like polite speech, holding doors, and decent table manners, I think manners extend beyond what we were taught in cotillion.....

...and they extend beyond common courtesy and into the very fabric of our friendships. I try very hard to be considerate. I think it is especially important with those whom we are most comfortable. Over the past year I've learned a great deal about friendship and I think at the top of the list would be consideration and respect, which aren't exactly mutually exclusive. As much as I want to, I'm not going to gripe and complain about how certain friends and acquaintances have infuriated me with their inconsideration.

[Because I'm REALLY over the flakiness and I'm not tolerating it anymore.]


Instead, I'm going to turn this into a sort of self-improvement learning experience.. because like it or not, we've all been a flake at one time or another, and I refuse to be the chick people expect to show up late or not at all.

• I pledge to never back out of plans, no matter how much I'd rather bail. 
• I pledge to not be late when meeting with friends, and to call with a damn good excuse if I am.
• I pledge to return calls and answer texts & emails in a timely manner.
• I pledge to be completely honest with my friends, even if the truth is unpleasant and I dread sharing it.
• I pledge to have empathy for friends dealing with life's curveballs and be forgiving if they aren't considerate toward me.
• I pledge to be completely honest and NEVER agree to plans I have no intention of keeping. 
• I pledge to NEVER back out of certain plans because some more appealing ones come along.

I think we can all agree the absolute worst is when a friend ditches us for their new squeeze. It's so annoying! Can't they see how dumb easy they seem when they are too available? Someone slap me if I ever so much as consider putting bros before hoes.

 

Rethink "Retard"

I grew up in the era of Clueless. It was perfectly normal in middle school to call people losers and morons and say stupid things like "as if" and "totally" in a sarcastic tone... all with mixed intentions. We were too cool to like such a silly movie, but we sure did let it influence us. Another word we tossed around without a second thought was "retard." Mostly we overused/misused it and called things retarded instead of people, which is obnoxious but we thought relatively harmless.

As an adult I never ever use that word, but occasionally I hear other people use it and it really bothers me. I know they don't mean to be insulting or disrespectful, but that doesn't make it acceptable. Yesterday I was in line at the drugstore and I heard a sales associate teasing her friend and calling her a retard and I almost dropped my purse. There was a little boy and his mother in line behind me. The little boy had Downs Syndrome.. I couldn't see his mother's reaction, but my heart ached for her. The boy was only about 3 so he was too busy playing to recognize that a major PC blunder was unfolding around him.

There are certain words in the English language that I absolutely despise. These words are "on the fence words" that aren't always offensive to everyone even though they should be. Certain groups use them freely but they make me sooooo uncomfortable. One example is my friend Dean who always jokingly calls something "gay" if he thinks it's silly. Dean is gay and doesn't see anything wrong with the way he uses the word, but I can't stand it. I just want there to be offensive words and non-offensive words, so we can all agree not to use them!

So I'm not suggesting that you should eliminate every word that could possibly offend someone from your vocabulary, I'm just suggesting maybe we ought to stop a moment and think before we speak... before someone ends up putting their foot in their mouth.

My youngest brother has muscular dystrophy and had a great deal of developmental challenges due to his health and early life, so I take it pretty personally when people call each other retards.

Project Paraben Free

There is a ton of controversy swirling around parabens which are basically preservatives [antifungal / bactericidal agents]. The big corporations say they are perfectly harmless and there is insufficient evidence to suggest otherwise. The tree hugging granola crunchers say they are a terrible poison that should not be legal. There are many who think that the government agencies in charge of keeping our food, medicine, and cosmetics safe are in fact turning a blind eye to mass poisoning thanks to the big companies habitually lining the pockets of those in charge. I do love a good conspiracy theory, but Blumtastic is not a place where I'll be blogging politics.

So what is a cosmetic loving consumer to do? I'm not the kind of person who reads a headline or hears a news story and believes every word. I stand by the work published in peer reviewed journals written by people who have dedicated their lives to finding answers. That said, how many of us subscribe to a scientific journal? How about a medical journal? And how many of us catch snippets from a 24 hour news channel or browse news web sites? Marketers know it's confusing and journalists know sensational scary news sells. 

I could spend all afternoon citing analysis reports from The Archives of Toxicology and the American Journal of Medicine, but I'm saving all my research paper energy for actual graded assignments. If you're curious, look it up for yourself... what you find will astound you. Basically there is still a great deal to learn concerning parabens, but we do know that they affect reproductive health, growth and development of both babies and adults, and mimic estrogen. Some people even suffer from paraben allergies.

To me, the fact that there is a correlation between breast cancer and parabens is enough for me to eliminate these unnecessary chemicals from my life. Tiny amounts of parabens have been found in tumors, and as I said before, parabens have been known to mimic estrogen. Scientists have not figured out the physiological link that explains the what and why, but I suppose I'm just not in the mood to cross my fingers and wait for them to tell me it's all a big coincidence.

Everything from toothpaste to spray tan to shampoo and lipstick contain parabens. Start reading your labels... you will be shocked. As part of my 101 in 1001, I am ditching parabens altogether, which unfortunately isn't easy. I've spent hours reading labels and I'm sad to report that the local drugstore and corner market don't have much in the way of paraben-free anything.

I do think it's interesting that many companies seem to want to jump on the pink ribbon bandwagon and throw money at "the cause." They offer everything from pink ribbon nail polish to free pink ribbon tote bags with purchase. Revlon even sponsors a Breast Cancer Awareness Run/Walk and advertises such nonsense as "shower for the cure" gel and "kiss for the cure" lipstick... first of all, an undisclosed portion of proceeds goes to breast cancer research. Uhhh I'd like to know just how much! Avon calls their little marketing project a "Breast Cancer Awareness Crusade." Yet both Revlon and Avon openly use parabens and other chemicals that are linked to cancer.... as do the majority of cosmetic companies.

I came across the book Toxic Beauty by Dr. Samuel Epstein (thank you Amazon, for knowing what I'd like to read) and I ordered it on the spot. I'll keep you all posted on every tid bit of beauty health I learn from this book just as soon as I get my hands on it.

For now, though, I will share with you the few paraben-free brands I've found and love. I'm having a hard time finding decent haircare products...

If you're not choosy about what you're feeding your body (and that most certainly includes feeding your skin), then I hope you consider reading some labels sometime soon. If you're a natural product-loving granola cruncher like me, then for goodness sake recommend products! I'm still actively phasing out all the crappy paraben products, so let me know what to replace them with!

Sun Worship

Tan skin is gorgeous skin. Or so we are taught to believe. In our culture, millions of dollars are spent cooking skin under special light bulbs to get that coveted glow. They even sell you tanning accelerators, which I'm sure are completely free of anything toxic. Especially the ones that burn like the dickens (the label says "tingle," but in no way is the urge to rip your skin off a reaction to tingling). It's all kind of bizarre, really. Especially because in many parts of the world millions of dollars are spent on skin lightening creams.

To me, there is beauty both in the palest porcelain skin and beauty in the deepest darkest skin tones across the world, and it drives me nuts that people don't acknowledge this. Take a good hard look at person who has had too much sun. There is nothing attractive about it. The next time someone teases you about the shade of your skin, say "thank you!"

It's about accepting what you are and rocking it with confidence. Those perfectly tanned chicks who slather on the baby oil at the beach and hit up the tanning salons on their lunch breaks in January? They'll be the ones with liver spots and hag faces. Don't be stupid... don't be one of those girls. If you're lucky, shriveled and ugly is all you'll be. Tan addicts run a huge risk of contracting skin cancer, and no glow is worth having chunks of skin removed, chemotherapy, even death.

Several people have commented that after my Caribbean cruise I "don't look very tan." I calmly explain that I have no intention of looking like a heap of leather and that I'm a fan of hats and sun protection. Sheesh. Besides, they're just crabby that their orange fake n bake isn't fooling anyone.

Anyway, please take a moment to consider the consequences of frying your skin out of some twisted form of vanity, laziness, or ignorance. Your loved ones and your future self will be grateful.

WILW 5.4.11

Wow.. Wednesday already? Wait, it's May? Sheesh! OK obviously I need to get organized. I thought winter was going to last forever and now here it is almost 90 degrees. Anyhoo today I can't stop thinking about the dear creatures that make my heart strings go haywire at the drop of a hat. I'm talking about the wild and woolly animal kingdom, from the cute and cuddly to the creepy crawlies. I think there's much to be learned from our animal friends.

I'm loving silly/ sappy/ cheesy animal pictures, like these. No matter how lousy my day is going, these cutesy photos get me every time. I can't sit through a romantic movie to save my life, but I can't get enough of the mushy animal pictures. Go figure.

I'm loving my furry family, whom I missed dearly last week.

I'm loving the animal behaviorist and author Ralph Helfer. He wrote Modoc and Zamba, two of the best books about animals I've ever read.

I'm loving these PETA ads. Don't worry, I'm not going to throw red paint on you if I see you eating a burger or try to shove my cruelty-free beliefs down your throat, but I'd be lying if I said I didn't appreciate PETA's wacky ads. They are all about attention-getting tactics in the hopes that you will educate yourself about things like the fur trade, factory farms, and animal abuse. Once you have the facts, it's up to you to decide what's right. It's all about awareness!

Happy Wednesday!