The link between anxiety and sugar

As someone who suffers from anxiety I felt both disappointed and reassured to learn of Sarah Wilson’s new book First we Make the Beast Beautiful.  

I was reassured because every time someone writes about their own personal battle with anxiety or any other form of mental illness it goes some way to reducing the stigma, it takes away the feeling that you have to bury or hide your true self from the world. While I am not one to follow celebrity lead, it’s reassuring to know someone who so many people look up to, also suffers from an often-debilitating illness. Cold comfort though it may be for that particular celebrity, it’s very comforting to many us of less celestial beings to know we are not alone.

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A beauty treatment that actually works

I am obsessed with changing my face. I’m not blaming the media or advertising, this issue I am laying on my poor self esteem and desire for a non-freckled face and perfect eyebrows.

I‘ve had dismal results at getting the non-freckled face. Laser, the GDP of a small country spent in face creams, hiding from the sun in a manner vampires would approve of and I still have skin that would best be described as “pigmented”.

But eyebrows seem so much more manageable. The problem has always been the maintenance. I was getting them waxed and threaded and dyed and while they often looked quite okay, the periods of looking good were short.

So recently I decided to consult with a “specialist”. Someone that the inimitable Zoe Foster Blake had told me about in a previous life where Zoe and I chatted about beauty products for work.

I called Lien.

Okay we all know I didn’t call her. I don’t call anyone. I emailed her. She emailed back saying I should call her. I withdrew into my doona and fantasised about Zoe’s eyebrows.

Then I took the huge leap of courage and called her. Should have prepped with a valium.

“Send me a photo of your eyebrows” she said

Gasp.

Wait. What? A photo of my eyebrows? Like a selfie just of my eyebrows so she could assess the “damage” I had done to them. Her words not mine.

“I only do consultations where I can help people” she said.

I didn’t even know what that meant and I began to think she was quite mad. I wanted to put down the phone and tell her to stop being pretentious. But I had met her many years ago and I actually really liked her.

So I sent her a photo of my eyebrows and she agreed (Yes! Agreed!) to see me.

We made an appointment for that Friday which I think may have been the hottest day ever so I arrived at the salon literally glowing. Okay Sweating.

I walked into the room which you could have mistaken for the cubicle of a geometry nut. There was a ruler, set square, memories of year 10 maths and Pythagoras’s Theory. And eyebrow gel (okay so a geometry fan who has on point eyebrows).

Now normally when you have your eyebrows done you are treated to a little lie down while they tear hot wax off your face. But not here. Lien got me to sit upright on a chair so my face was at you know, a normal angle.

She made me hold a mirror in front of my face for the whole procedure which is one of the worst things you can do to me. But I was too scared to object, Lien had an authoritative tone and the best eyebrows ever. I wanted her to weave her magic on me.

She showed me the angle (using an actual ruler) that I wanted my eyebrows to be at. She showed me how to even them out so if I added to the top the bottom should match. Think parallel lines people, this is geometry class.

I’m going to be honest, I was not looking my best that day, my makeup had melted off in the heat and I was hot. I don’t cope with heat. But she magic-ed my eyebrows. She made them all gorgeous and frame-y and I could see an actual difference.

Therefore it is not recommended to drive a vehicle or perform any heavy duty tasks.One should tell their doctor prescription viagra prices about the possibilities, and do not give up. The leading order viagra online portal gives purchasers every possibility to place an order of their diverse choices with myntra. Today! cialis 60mg Many women are trying to get pregnant naturally. Headache Chiropractic therapy can low priced viagra be effective against a migraine which is caused by problems with the cervical vertebrae. And she did not use a drop of wax. She did not pluck them out with thread. Using a tweezers, eyebrow pencil and wizardy she just made them look really good. Like hers.

This was going to have to become my new go-to place for eyebrows. I was secretly hoping it wouldn’t involve any more phone calls and quietly calculating how much this was going to add to my budget.

But then she spread the final bit of magic. “I am showing you how to do this so you don’t have to come back” she said.

“What? Ever?” I asked, the incredulity barely escaping my lips. I have never had a beauty type person say not to come back.

“But…but…but how do you make a living if I don’t have to come back every 4 weeks?” I asked as if I had just become her career/financial advisor.

She explained something about her love of teaching and her desire to do more than make money but I was so gobsmacked I barely listened. Also I was staring at my eyebrows.

It’s a few weeks later now. I have awesome eyebrows and a huge crush on Lien.

And now I am developing a new obsession – getting rid of the creases, I mean crevices, in my chest.

What’s been your best beauty trick/secret?

Edit: This is a very bad before and after picture reference because I am a shite photographer and hate selfies and think that maybe the evidence is better in real life. I just took the after shot about a minute ago after some people asked me on Facebook so there is no brow on my gels or any other trickery – just their new natural shape.

before

This is the picture I sent to Lien

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

after

This is my “unmade” eyes taken 4 weeks after I saw Lien

It’s a down down? No, it’s just a downer

I am not a big TV watcher, my attention span doesn’t allow it and nor does my husband. Not that he doesn’t physically allow it but lord, he really likes to watch stuff that has no appeal to me and I couldn’t be bothered arguing with him or taking the remote control off him.

The other issue I have is that TV makes me grumpy, not so much the actual programming but the ads. Clearly a lot of them are aimed at the witless, uninformed chump who is not immune to be spoken down to.

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10 things you must do in order to get a good night’s sleep

For as long as I can remember I’ve had horrible bouts of insomnia. These bouts are nicely interspersed with times of sleeplessness. As you can imagine, I have (exhaustedly) gone through hundreds of tips meant to help get me to sleep and what’s more to sleep through the night.

So far I haven’t had a lot of luck – but I do think I know how to help other people get the sleep they need,  and so I have created this handy list for you to follow

1. Get yourself really tired

2. Make sure you are comfortable

3. Let go of any childhood issues  you have been hanging on to

4. Pretend you have no worries at all

5. Forget every embarrassing encounter you’ve ever had


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6. Don’t think about your poor business decisions or bad career choices

7. Try very hard not to replay old fights in your head

 

8. Don’t think about things like who would attend your funeral

9. Don’t even think back on your day

10. Take a sleeping pill

Easy huh?

The day I decided to burn my diary

I sat up in the middle of the night last night with an urgent desire to go downstairs and rummage in the garage to find an old diary. I didn’t want to look what was inside or be reminded of what I had written, I just wanted to destroy it.

Given that one of my big regrets is burning my teenage diaries in a moody angst fuelled fire (I literally set fire to them), this makes no sense. After all I don’t actively try and create more regrets for myself.

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I can’t call the hairdresser

My absolute hatred of using the phone to make calls is playing havoc with my hair. It’s not that I’m twisting my hair anxiously while I’m trying to pluck up the courage to make a call (I am) and it’s not that the fear has reached the point where it’s falling out but it’s stopping me from having it cut.

I hate talking on the phone but my very worst thing is calling people I don’t know.  To top that off calling people I don’t know to make appointments for myself is so heinous that I don’t actually do it. Or at least I try not to unless it’s essential to my son, my husband or my health. Hairdressers don’t fall into the essential category.

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Non blogging tips, thank you and the best #5minutes video ever made.

Yesterday I received an email from WordPress which read “Our stats helper monkeys have been busy putting together a personalized report detailing how your blog did in 2015!” which was nice. Problem was you had to click to view the full report online and I couldn’t log in to see because none of my passwords attempts worked. I think this could be a subtle way of telling me how the blog did in 2015 because clearly I am a very bad blogger if I cannot even log in to the report.

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Why I could never celebrate Christmas

Regular readers will know that I am Jewish, this means that I don’t celebrate Christmas. No gifts, no trees, no decorations, no big feast (I do that one often enough). And no, as I outlined in the video below, Chanukah is nothing like Christmas. Nothing. The only similarity is that they both start with a Ch. Although some people spell Hannukah with an H.

Every year around this time I watch in awe and wonder as people get ready for the festive season. And with absolutely no disrespect to anyone at all, it reaffirms for me how I could never ever celebrate Christmas. [Read more…]

How not to cater your own party

On Saturday night my husband and I hosted a “party for absolutely no reason at all”.   It wasn’t a birthday or an anniversary, there were no milestones or occasions we just decided to invite our friends round and party. Just because.

The idea was just to get together. Eat, drink, chat, laugh. Just be. I make it sound so simple you probably almost believe me. But if you know me, you know nothing is simple. I’m a neurotic anxious over- planner who had just emerged from under a pile of to do lists.

Luckily my husband knows that I can be slightly anxious about things and so to make the night easier we were going to outsource the catering. This would mean we would have to neither cook nor worrying about cleaning up the whole night – we would literally be free to party. And when I say we I mean me – because Mr Pencil is excellent at partying but crap at cooking and cleaning. [Read more…]

Move over colouring books. This is the new calming tool

Move over colouring in books. Step aside adult play-doh. I am just about to spearhead a brand new form of relaxation, a meditative pastime that will completely absorb you and take your mind right off the real world.

It all started yesterday when I was off to meet my friend Kerri for a quick breakfast. The plan was to have a quick bite and then go back to my place to film a new episode of 5Minutes. I know. Exciting.

On the way down to the coffee `shop I was browsing Facebook when I saw this.

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Yeah. So maybe I won’t be wearing this necklace today. Or ever again. *sobs*

Posted by Kerri Sackville on Thursday, 26 November 2015

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