zeptember

I just found out that “3 of 5 brand-name sunscreens either don’t protect skin from sun damage or contain hazardous chemicals — or both”.

The Environmental Working Group, a non-profit organisation, did an investigation of 1,614 products with sunscreen in them, and rated them based on dangerous chemical content. Check out the sunblock section by clicking here.

I don’t know about you, but I go through several sunblock brands each year, trying to find the best one for my skin and allergies during that particular season.

My current sunscreen of choice is Neutrogena Age Shield FACE Sunblock, SPF 70.
I found out that it rates a 4 out of 10 on the dangerous contents scale. It contains 6% Oxybenzone, a known carcinogen and endocrine disrupter. Go me!

Earlier in the season, I tried out Burt’s Bees Chemical-Free Sunscreen, SPF 30, which also rates a 4 out of 10 on the dangerous contents scale. It contains 8.5% of Titanium Dioxide - again, a known carcinogen and endocrine disruptor. And on top of that, my skin broke out every time I used it, which is why I started using Neutrogena.

Before that, I had tried Long’s Drugs ‘Pacific’ brand sunscreen, SPF 45, which made my skin break out and also I swear nearly blinds adults and children when it gets in the eyes. Can’t find that on the EWG’s website. It contains 6% Oxybenzone.

My skin also broke out when using Beyond Coastal’s baby mineral-based sunscreen, SPF 30. It contains 5% Titanium Dioxide. Can’t find that on the EWG’s website.

Same thing with Trader Joe’s Sunscreen - SPF 30 - it only contains 2.5% Oxybenzone but my skin still broke out when I used it. Can’t find that on the EWG’s website.

Not all of the sunscreens I have used contain the same active and inactive ingredients. For example, the mineral-based sunscreen doesn’t have octinoxate, octisalate, or octocrylene active ingredients in it like the others do, so why did my skin break out? Conversely, not all of the sunscreens have the zinc oxide active ingredient in it. So it’s one of the inactive ingredients. Of course, the Trader Joe’s sunscreen doesn’t have the inactive ingredients listed on the container, so now I have to go hunt them down and compare them to all the rest. Fun times with process by elimination!

I’m extra pissy about the sunblock/cancer links since only yesterday I blogged that just having endo increases one’s chances for melanoma.

Since my father, my brother and my cousin all had melanoma (all survived it; brother had to have skin grafts, cousin almost died), I’m always a bit scared to begin with.

Then there’s also the fun fact that just by having endometriosis, one already runs a higher chance of developing ovarian cancer, endocrine cancers, Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma or brain tumour.

* Ovarian cancer - roughly 50% increase
* Endocrine cancer - about 30% increase
* Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma - about 25% increase
* Brain tumour - approximately 20% increase

…to be specific.

So yesterday’s and today’s info leaves me a bit … angsty. I feel like I’m playing a game of Russian roulette, except the whole cylinder is loaded.

…and of course I must write a book about it.

My neighbor went into labor at 4am Sunday. She’s a week overdue already and on Saturday morning I agreed to be on call for her this coming week, since there’s no summer school teaching work for me this week.
She was trying for a home birth without drugs, which to me is absolute insanity.
Sarcasm aside, a home birth seems like that’s just the way it should be done anyway, innit? And the without drugs thing, well that’s just cuz you never know what the meds really do to a newborn, so trying to birth without is also a good idea.
Ain’t no way I’d ever tho.

Though she was in labor, I was not told I should report for babysitting duty on Sunday, so I went ahead with my plans to do the AIDS Walk.
We had a great turnout and did the walk, and had a great time walking with my hubby, with artisticskin, damiondead, princessdammitt, nohwhere_man, Anna Mae, Christine, Melanie and Betsy.

mklmyrs was also there but instead of walking, he manned the team table for us along with Amanda. THANK YOU!

Our team raised $2,425 in online donations alone! The total for this year’s AIDS Walk was over $3M.

On the way home from the AIDS Walk, my neighbor called to tell me she was still in labor. I told her I’d be over as soon as I could to help out with her toddler son.
I had time to change clothes and that’s it. My neighbor’s wife told me I could find their son in the park a couple blocks away with another babysitter, so off I went, after having just walked 6 miles for the AIDS Walk. My feet and legs were in pain but I’d promised I’d be there for my neighbors, and besides, their son is adorable.

We two babysitters hung out in the park with little S for awhile, reading to him, feeding him some late lunch/early dinner, and finally taking him for a walk because he was starting to worry about momma again.
We walked down to the bookstore and hung out in there, reading board books to him for a bit. I finally put in an order for Pirates Don’t Change Diapers, because that book is hilarious and I simply need it for my babysitting tote bag cuz I love the book so much.

Around 6:30 or so, we put S into his stroller instead of having him toddle along, cuz my fellow babysitter needed to leave soon. We got back to the house and the curtains were drawn with the “IN PROGRESS” signs still in the window. My colleague made the remark that since the curtains were drawn, that perhaps there were now complications.
We went in the back entrance to the house, and S’s birth mom received him. We went inside and hung out in the back part of the house and waited for further instruction. Babysitter #1 was given the OK to leave, and I accepted dinner and bedtime duty. We were told that momma #2 was having a hard time dilating despite the regular contractions.

Little S was seriously concerned for momma and wanted to go back in and see her, but his birth momma told him that he mustn’t right now. He wailed but we were able to calm him down after a few minutes, and I even convinced him that dinner would be a great idea. We washed hands and he ate hummus and soft pita bread, had three drink options, and was contented for awhile.

Meanwhile, in the front of the house, it wasn’t a nightmare scenario from what I could hear. Every now and then I’d hear her doing the lamaze breathing, or grunting in pain, but there was no wailing and screaming.

After dinner, we went to the bedroom so I could read to S, but he wanted to see momma #2 and began to cry again. He tried to tell me he was still hungry but as soon as I’d open the bedroom door, he’d say ‘momma’ and point, then start crying again. We went round and round with this for a bit. I’d hold him, rock him, sing to him, read to him, take him to bathroom to brush teeth or back to kitchen again to see if he really was still hungry (he wasn’t).
At this point, the midwife came in and asked if little S would like to help her get something from her car. She handed him her keys, cuz keys are all the rage for toddlers, and off they went. I hung out in the kitchen with another helper friend and we chatted. S came back in with the keys and the midwife was holding an oxygen tank. Uh oh, I thought, this isn’t looking good.
She let S have her keys, and S went around the back of the house “locking” things.
I changed his diaper, got him into his jammies, and we went back to the bedroom, where we played a game he’d just invented with me the day before, whereby he uses the key to lock the stuffed animal kitty’s mouth or my mouth! I made strange noises with my mouth locked shut until he unlocked my mouth and I could talk again. I did the same for the kitty’s voice.This was very funny for him.

Bedtime came and there were more meltdowns, more rocking and holding and rubbing his back. I read him some books and he calmed down. Finally I declared I was tired, so I climbed into bed and told S he should join me. I hoisted him onto the bed and he didn’t lay down at first. I reclined on some pillows and shut my eyes and began to breathe deeply and evenly. He followed me and lay down next to me, but he fidgeted a lot.
Finally he ended up on his tummy, so I rubbed his back until he settled and eventually fell asleep at 8:49pm.

I put him in his crib, tip-toed out of the bedroom, made my way through the house and lightly knocked to enter the front of the house. I was met with the midwife’s assistant and told her to relay that S was down and I would like to grab dinner if it was possible.
At this point birth momma appeared and updated me - momma #2 was having a lot of trouble - the baby passed meconium during labor and they might need to go to the hospital. She told me to go eat dinner but asked if I’d be able to return within the hour. I told her yes.
Within 25 minutes, I got the call that they were definitely going to the hospital, so I finished up my dinner, changed into my pajamas, and went back over.

Momma #2 was burning up and was in a lot of pain, the contractions coming regularly but still not making progress according to the midwife. At this point she’d been going like this for about 17 hours.

I settled in on the couch and off they went to the hospital. It didn’t take long before I fell asleep.
Around 10 or 10:30pm, S woke crying for momma. I went to him and scooped him out of the crib and held him. He clutched his little arms around my neck and sobbed, the poor thing.
Nothing I tried would comfort little S. He didn’t want to lay in his parents’ bed. He didn’t want to go back into the crib and have his back rubbed. He didn’t want me to rock him for very long either standing or sitting.
In the dark, each time I picked him up out of his crib again ( a grand total of two or three times), he felt for my face to see if I was one of his mommas. When it was clear by my facial structure and my voice that I wasn’t, he laid his head on my shoulder, clutched my shoulders and sobbed.

I realised there was no way he was going to just cry himself to sleep with me either sitting nearby or rubbing his back in the crib, so I brought him out and changed his diaper and we went to the living room. S sat on the couch and alternated between crying and waiting for his mommas to come home. I decided this was the best thing for him right then and there, so I told him I’d stay with him but I was tired. I reclined on the other end of the couch, put my legs up on the back of the couch, and “slept” with my eyes slit barely open.

S began to nod. His eyes began to flutter. His head would droop and then he’d snap to. He did this for probably half an hour before he finally allowed himself to lean to the side and rest on the pillows on the other end of the couch. And then he fell asleep.
We slept for 45 minutes or so, on and off, cuz he tossed and turned and he’d cry out in his sleep for momma.
I had to keep bolting up ready to catch him, lest he’d toss himself over the side of the couch.
Finally I was really falling asleep and decided it was safer for little S in his crib. He was contently asleep at the moment and let me carry him to his crib.
I was told I could sleep in the parents’ bed, since the kid’s crib is at the foot of the bed, but it didn’t feel right for me to do so. However, half hour back on the couch dealing with little S crying out in his sleep and I rethought my feelings on the matter - I crawled into the parents’ bed.

I remained in twilight sleep all night, because he cried out in his sleep, “Momma!” and “No!” all night.
I had been told by the babysitter I’d met in the park with S that previous afternoon that S was pretty traumatised once labor started for momma, because he could clearly see the pain in her face, could tell the difference in pitch and cadence of her voice, could sense the urgency of both moms that something was happening, and well it scared the shit out of him. That’s when he began sobbing and crying out ‘Momma! No!’ from that point on.

Again, my heart goes out to the poor little boy.

Around 5am, I got a text message saying the baby had been born just two hours earlier! I was asked to text back when S woke up. I fell back to sleep, and an hour later, at 6am on the dot, S awoke. He was a tad bit fussy and was moving around in his crib, but he didn’t wake sobbing, thankfully.

I forced myself to get up. S started to ask for momma and I cheerfully told him that momma would be coming home soon, and that she was at the hospital and everything went great, and she was going to bring home a new baby sister.
S was unsure about this whole baby sister thing, and gave me a wince! Too cute.

I changed his diaper and set about opening the drapes in the house to let the light in, and then got S settled into his high chair for breakfast. He’s a picky eater so we went through what seemed like everything in the house before he said yes to orange juice, grapes and banana bread.
I found some string cheese and apple sauce to eat, and also drank some orange juice. I taught S how to do ‘cheers’ before drinking, hehe. Even if he can’t say the word, yet.

After breakfast, I gathered up all the dirty dishes in the house so they were all in one location for either myself or someone else to take care of, and then went to the living room with S.

I noticed from the previous night that any time I walked out of the room, little S panicked and ran after me, sometimes just hollering, sometimes slipping up and saying ‘momma!’
This continued into today and is totally normal for a toddler whose parents have not been able to spend any time with him for the past 29 hours.

In the living room, we read books, played with trucks, listened to music. I looked for baby dolls but only found stuffed animals, so I grabbed a nearby towel that momma had on hand the night before, and swaddled Peter Rabbit. I showed S how to hold a new baby and how to rock her and talk to her. I told him this is what his little sister will look like when momma brings her home from the hospital.
S peeked at the swaddled rabbit and petted its face gently, and made a rocking motion with his own arms, then made kissing noises. Then he went and got his stuffed animal cat and carried that around for awhile, before deciding he wanted to get into the car and go look for momma, cuz she was taking too long to come home.

I grabbed the spare house keys and gave them to S, got a sweatshirt on him, and we went out the front door. S went right around the side of the house towards the back yard and headed right for the driveway where the second family car was still parked. He tried every key imaginable in every lock on that car, and some invented locks as well. All the while, I told him momma will be home very soon, but I let him continue with his determination.
Meanwhile, lawn men showed up in their truck a few doors down, and waved and smiled at S. His big dog waited patiently in the backyard for some love, staring intently at little S and wagging her tail every time we came near. People passing by on the sidewalk smiled or waved at S.
But all this was nothing to him - he was determined to get into the car and drive to find his mommas!
After awhile, I convinced S to come back round to the front of the house and unlock the front door. He was reluctant but followed me because after all, I was ahead of him and walking away from him. We got inside the front door and a neighbor saw me hoist S up to lock the front door from the inside, and smiled and waved at him, calling his name. S smiled back and stared all shy-like.

Moments later, we heard his birth momma’s voice from the back of the house - she’d just gotten home and came in through the back door. S seemed like he was in disbelief, wondering if he was hearing things, and not wanting to trust that momma might really be home. But as soon as she appeared in his line of sight, he called out and ran to her.

I told her that she can expect to be followed everywhere for a few days - even to the bathroom, and that leaving him alone for even a few seconds will be traumatising for him. She was completely on board with that and said it was okay and expected. Great relief there - some parents really don’t know these things about toddlers. These parents however are awesome.

I got home around 9:35am and it was impossible to fall asleep, even though I’m dead tired.

I had my first shrink appointment in 2 hours, so I forced myself down to nap for an hour. I slept HARD.
I figured that after my appointment, I’d likely be ready to sleep for days, but here I am at 4:30pm still unable to get back to restful sleep.

I think that of all the babysitting and nannying and preschool teacher work I’ve done - having stayed overnight with barely any sleep and having to get up ready to go full steam ahead the next day with a little one - that is surely the closest experience I’ve had yet to what a real day in the life of a parent is like.

And I’m happy that it’s not my every day life.

HAHAHAHA ohhhh wow this is rich.

I love it when people who have seriously wronged and emotionally fucked me in my distant past find me on facebook and try to “friend” me, with excitement, even.
This is even worse than the grade school girls who used to beat me up - found me and tried to friend me on facebook.

I know two of my New Year’s goals are supposed to be to begin pardoning people who have incurred my wrath in years past and to generally start to practice true forgiveness on a grand scale.
I also have a lot of triggers that I still need to overcome. I am mature enough to know my emotional limits and boundaries in this regard.

My first ever fiancé and several mutual women friends of ours who lived in the same neighborhood and had gone to the same high school together… had a grand ‘ol time hooking up repeatedly behind my back, and of course were so nicey nice and best friendy to my face.
Being young and stupid, I only found out when rumours got back to me and the fiancé broke down in tears when angrily confronted, admitting everything.

This kinda affected my already low self-esteem from that point on. I’d already been cheated on by the man before the above-mentioned prick, and even the guy that followed this prick was a complete letch in front of my face with other women all the time.

So um, hmmmm. No, I don’t think I’m ready to forgive these people.

Thanks to that bitch trying to friend me, cuz now I know where she lives! I’d been trying to keep current tabs on her. I find it especially hilarious that she lists her religious views as “Christian”, just like all the other whores who fucked me over so happily. So typical. These people are not Christian. In fact, I’d wager to say very few people in the world who call themselves Christian actually adhere to any of that religion’s commandments and beatitudes.

I am feeling badly because I refused a ride to an older man with a cane, simply because I’m a woman who was alone. This was in broad daylight but it didn’t matter - if I don’t know the person, especially a male, I’m too paranoid to give them a ride.

He said he lives close by (pointing around the block from me). He said he knows all the neighbors along that block. He told me he is a vet who has liver cancer and just had chemo this morning, and has to go up the road to pick up his car, but everyone’s acting all funny towards him and won’t give him a ride.

I asked if he knew the neighbors on the corner (cuz I do) and he said yeah. I was just about to go over and have them ID the guy as someone they know (to make me feel safer), when a man in a pickup truck rolled up. The guy with the cane said “nevermind, he’s a vet too, he’ll give me a ride.” I asked if he knew the guy and he said no, but the fact that the guy is a fellow Vietnam vet would mean that he’d give a ride.

I watched as he approached the truck and told the driver the same story he’d told me, starting off with, “you were in Vietnam, right?” and the driver said yep. The guy told his car story and the driver told him to hop in. With a “Thanks darlin”, the guy with the cane waved to me and off they went.

I’ve no idea how vets know each other like that. Not every single man in the U.S. between age 50 and 70 served in Vietnam, but I’ve seen it again and again that they seem to all know who they are.

I feel badly cuz it’s a trigger for me when strangers approach me, especially men. Unless the man is elderly and frail, I won’t help them if I’m alone, unless the man has fallen and injured himself.

My first experiences in life, along with social conditioning that men always carry the possibility of overpowering women, set me in this paranoid state of mind.

When I was about six or seven years old, my ma was dating a guy who was always too rough when he played around with my little brother, who was about four or five. My brother got hurt every time and would cry. My ma finally had enough of it and dumped the guy. Soon after, he showed up in the middle of the night, drunk or high, yelling and pounding on the front door. He somehow managed to get our door open - perhaps he still had a key or he picked the lock - but we also had a chain on the door so he could only force the door a little bit. He opened and shut the door several times, trying to force his way in, trying to break the chain. He yelled and cussed the entire time, and eventually pushed a bag of my ma’s clothes and belongings through the gap in the door and left. My ma stood frozen in the hallway the entire time, watching, while I stood next to her screaming, jumping up and down with panic, and crying.

When I was around eight or nine years old, I was outside playing with friends at the end of the block where we lived, when I spotted blood in the street. I was always playing cops and robbers back then, and my favourite shows were Cagney & Lacey, and CHiPs. I immediately went into the street to examine the blood and try to be a detective about what had happened. I saw that there were drops of blood - a long trail of it. Someone lost a lot of blood! My friends and I began following the blood trail. It led from the corner to about 3 houses down. The blood went all the way up the porch to the door. I boldly knocked on the door. A man who may have been in his twenties or thirties answered the door and I asked if he was alright, because we’d found blood leading to his house.
The man - my neighbor in the next block straight up the street from me - told us a story. Very late the night before, a man was driving and came to a stop on the corner, at the stop sign. A man walking in the street approached the driver and asked for a ride. The driver said sure and that’s when the man in the street took out a knife and ordered the driver out of his car. A struggle ensued, and the man in the street cut the driver’s thumb where it meets the palm, nearly severing his thumb. The guy took his car and sped off, leaving him in the street. The driver held his thumb to his shirt and, bleeding profusely, began to go door to door in the middle of the night asking for help until someone let him in. The man - my neighbor - was that person who let him in, and he said he gave the guy a towel to wrap his hand while he called the police. He said he still had the blood-soaked towel in the house. I thanked him for sharing his story with us and we all ran home to tell our parents of course.

Around that same time in my life, maybe give about a year, I was in the house playing Star Wars with my brother and our neighbor when several police cars screamed to our street, squealing to a stop and doors slamming. There was yelling. A gun fired very near to the house. My ma screamed for us to get down on the floor. We all dropped. When we didn’t hear more gunfire, we got back up and ran from my brother’s bedroom to the living room and began to poke our heads through the curtains. There were dozens of police cars out there and more showing up with men piling out of the cars. Officers ran up our next door neighbor’s driveway into their back yard. My ma screamed at us to get back down on the ground. I think we went back to my brother’s bedroom to try to see the action from there, since his bedroom was right next to the neighbor’s driveway. But the action was over.
We found out that a man had robbed a grocery store a few miles away and the police chased him all the way to our neighborhood. He crashed his car into bushes, a tree or a house - I can’t remember - around the block from us, then fled on foot, hopping fences through peoples’ yards. He was in the process of hopping the fence from our neighbor’s yard into ours when the police shot him. We were told he was shot in the shoulder.
The next day, we went into the neighbor’s back yard (they never had their gates drawn) and looked for evidence of the shooting. We found three streaks of blood on the top rail of the metal fence. The fences in all the yards in my neighborhood looked like this:

From early in life I’ve seen and read news stories of people posing as someone in need who then robbed or murdered their victim.

Later in life, I had just broken up with my first sexual partner. I was nineteen years old. He wanted to talk things over so I agreed to meet him. He was living in the basement of his friend’s parents house and was a year older than me. When I got there, I found him in his room cleaning a shotgun. He calmly told me that he was going to kill us both because I aborted his baby and broke up with him. He impregnated me without my consent - I was dumb and didn’t make him wear a condom, and he’d promised he’d pull out in time. I was so naive that I believed that he did pull out in time. He on the other hand fully intended to knock me up because he was afraid I might leave him for another man, and he was confident that once I found out I was pregnant that I would keep it and we’d be married and live happily ever after in a trailer park up the road where he’d scoped out a trailer already. I am dead serious. He admitted all this to me when we were at the clinic. He even joined in with the protesters outside of the clinic and said I was murdering our baby.
So now here we were in the basement and he was telling me he was going to kill us. I tried to talk him down. I tried to reason. Tried to plead. Finally I just bolted up the stairs. But instead of running out of the house, I still cared for him and didn’t want him to kill himself, so I grabbed the phone and dialed 911. As I began talking, he ran up the stairs behind me, pushed my head into the wall and grabbed the phone receiver from me. I screamed and hollered for help and so he began choking me. I got away only because he let me. I ran to my car in gasping tears and sped off. I went straight home to tell my ma all about it but she was already on the phone providing counseling to my boyfriend because he’d called her to say he was about to kill himself. She refused to talk to me as I stood there sobbing hysterically. She refused to come outside and console me after I ran outside and sat on the porch and sobbed. My next door neighbor came over and listened to me and consoled me.
Shortly after that, my now ex-boyfriend began driving past my house and stalking me at college. He’d be standing in the hallway when I came out of class on break. He talked to all three of my best friends that I’d known since high school and successfully turned them against me (for a time. I finally got to tell my side of the story and they got to see for themselves what a psycho he was and we all patched things up a YEAR later).
I never did pursue a restraining order but of course that was stupid of me, too.

I keep tabs on that motherfucker to this day.

So anyway, I learned from early on that boyfriends and strangers, especially men, are always potentially lethal.
That is one of my emotional triggers. I have so many.

But it’s not fair to this man who asked for my help today. He’s my father’s age - likely born between 1940 and 1950.

We used to be kind and helpful to strangers but so many of us have gotten so paranoid. The truly needful and nice ones get shit on because many of us are too paranoid to lend a hand.

I’m sorry, dear neighbor. I know what you look like and will still do a mini background check to make sure you’re good, and then next time I see you I’ll smile and wave and if you need assistance I will help.