How vain are you?

I love you, ladies.  You are MY kind of people!!!

On to vain topics...

My favourite time of year is here, AUTUMN!!!!  I love everything about it.  Sweater weather.  Plump, ripe apples.  The scent of cinnamon.  Tweed skirts.  Leather jackets.  The colours: moss-green; burnt pumpkin; mustard; eggplant-purple.  And the new make-up *drool*  The scarlet lip, the smoky eye.  My fingernails are doing better, so I'm going to go out and get one of those deep red-black nail laquers and a sheer lipstick to match.  And this weekend - joy! - I'm digging my hacking clothes out and going for a trail ride!!

I'm almost ready to try to gel nails.  Mine have really improved over this summer with regular use of almond oil.

"...I went into town and had a fabulous facial, Pumpkin Enzyme Peel, Infused with aromatherapy oils in steam, Micro Lift, Almond oil massage, Vitamin C serum with Super Hydrating Rubber Mask..."

Oh, Ariom, that sounds marvelous!!! 

Leah_S... taking care of your feet/hands is so important during treatment.  I didn't have Xeloda, but the neuropathy from other chemo drugs made my feet/hands peel and be more injury-prone than usual.  I didn't want to risk doing the mani/pedi's myself, so having a professional do it is a good idea.

Okay... I'll let you in on a secret.  My baby brother's nickname for me is "Spaz".  He says that I'm the only person he knows that can aim for the door, but run into the wall.  I don't do this infrequently either; about once-a-day is pretty normal for me.  I, also, am known to fall upstairs, trip over my own feet, and nearly poke out my eye with a tomato stake (gave myself a whopper of a shiner that time).  My upper arms and thighs are, always, bruised from dinging the corners of book cases, file cabinets, desks and tables.  And when I was learning to roller blade recently, a spill left me with an eggplant-coloured bruise the size of a pie pumpkin on my right butt cheek.

So, this past weekend, when I was out riding the trail on my bicycle, yours truly took a spill.  It wasn't really a bad spill and, yes, I was wearing a helmut, but it was classic "Spaz"; I cut a corner too fine when approaching an old wooden bridge and my right pedal caught a massive boulder.  It was amazing how quickly I went from 25kph to full stop, but how long it took to hit the ground.  Now, thankfully, I didn't skid on the gravel trail, so no need to pick stones out my skin (which I've had done before, by-the-by); but I did hit the ground quite hard and with a hellava smack.  Got up, dusted myself off, checked the bike, all good.  No blood, no broken skin, no scratches on the bike, everything looked okay and - bonus! - no spectators to my ignoble- and humiliating splat.  So I climbed back on and finished the ride; 30km in total.  It was great.

Now, two days later, may I say, "ow".  My inner right thigh from the hip joint to the knee is one long, navy-blue bruise, my left elbow is the colour of eggplant, and my left shoulder (the one that was injured two summers ago when I was hit by a car while riding my bike) is crackling- and crunching like a bowl of Rice Crispies.  Nothing's broken (I know that because I have had broken bones before; that kind of pain is quite distinctive), but, again, may I say "ow".  My mother wants to take my bike away, my husband just shakes his head, and I've forbidden both to tell my brother 'cause I'll never hear the end of it.  For those of you who have one, you know how irritating baby brothers can be.  For those of you that don't, then you need to know that they never out-grow it.  They're as irritating at 50, as they are at 10.

So, yes.  I am a "Spaz".  I own it.  I embrace it.  I wear it proudly.  'Cause when you're black-and-blue (literally), there just ain't any other way to do it except look people in the eye and say scornfully, "... so?"