My medical gatorade finally came in! Which means I am, hopefully, in the process of kicking my eternally chapped lips to the curb. I'm calling it gatorade, but it actually has nothing to do with the actual brand. It's just a hydration aid, and the only one I know is gatorade. Anyway, it tastes very strongly of lemon/citrus and looks like this:
The actual contents are a lot healthier than standard gatorade as well. Gatorade tends to only contain sodium chloride, and while that salt is important to hydration, this does two better by including magnesium and potassium salts. Normal gatorade is also very very high in sugar (seriously, check the label, it's revolting) and contains artificial colors (bad for sensitive people). This does not. It's sweetened with stevia leaf, and has no colorants I recognize. The recommended serving is two teaspoons, which has, in total, ten calories.
I have already learned a few things. First, no matter how thirsty I seem to be, I clearly cannot simply guzzle 16 ounces of water in a half hour and expect my body to process it properly. I hadn't really realized that until I tried it with this stuff, and went running to the bathroom just the same as I do with regular water. The annoyingly inefficient solution is the sip all drinks forever. It results in the same amount of liquid intake (if I'm mindful) but far fewer trips to the toilet. My compromise right now is using a straw with my regular water glass, and making the lemon-salt-stuff in a 32 ounce plastic water bottle. I can take the water bottle out with me when I go places, which makes it much easier to simply sip it on occasion. My hope is that I'll build a habit of drinking more water overall this way.
The last thing is that I will probably need to keep buying this stuff, as it is helping. It's not a magical solution by any stretch of the imagination, and my lips are still a mite wonky, but after only five days of use, my lips (and hopefully the rest of me) seem much more hydrated. I'm hoping the results are cumulative and in a few weeks, I won't have lip annoyances any more, save if I don't drink the stuff.
In other news, I've been being in close proximity with a baby about once a week recently. I have a friend that works near me, and she used to visit once a week for a lunch break. She just had her first kid recently, and is now home taking care of him. Makes it kind of hard for her to drive the half an hour or so to visit me! So I'm visiting her. Her life has radically changed, which doesn't really surprise me given what I've read about parenthood.
I, on the other hand, still have absolutely no idea what to do with babies. If someone hands me a baby, I'll do my best approximation of "support the baby and its head" and then freeze until someone takes it away. They're so tiny and breakable, and I'm so clumsy, I don't feel comfortable at all. But it's interesting to talk with her and help support her through this time in her life. It sounds like she's planning on having at least one more, so it'll get easier for her in some ways. Either way, she'll always need friends. Even odd, awkward, prone-to-freezing friends.
The last newsworthy moment for this week is hair-related. I've had long hair for most of two decades, and I've occasionally considered cutting it a lot shorter, and dying it. I've never added color to my hair before (it has red and blonde natural highlights in it, which look nice in the sunlight), and I've never really thought I needed it. And that's still true, I just think it'd be fun to have my hair match my favorite color.
So last Friday I went off to an appointment at a school for cosmetology, armed with a recommendation for a particular student and a very vague idea of what I wanted. The student (Instagram link to her work) took extra care to explain to me my various options for shorter hair, care times and routines, etc. After awhile, we opted to do a longish pixie cut. The dying process, sadly, did not go smoothly, so you'll have to wait 'til next Legwork entry to have pictures. I have, at present, relatively short hair that is much lighter than it should be. I managed to skim out of church before I ran into anyone I recognized, but I will definitely be seeing some folks that will notice the difference later this week... so we'll see how this goes.
Part of the reason I wore my hair long and relatively unstyled for such a long period of time was that I already feel like I stick out in a crowd. Accentuating that tendency seemed foolish to me for quite a while. Since getting married and keeping this blog up for a few years, I feel a little more stable on that front. And really, two decades of almost the same hairstyle is maybe a bit much. I still don't love fashion or care much about trends... But I have to admit, 5 minutes of fussing in a mirror is different, but much much shorter than 10 annoyed minutes trying to get a comb and then a brush through my hair. It has also severely reduced my showering time, which is good for me and the planet at the same time. Yay.
I'll try to have a picture for you next week with the blue. : )
 | ||
| The proper name is adorable, but really doesn't fly off the tongue easily. |
I have already learned a few things. First, no matter how thirsty I seem to be, I clearly cannot simply guzzle 16 ounces of water in a half hour and expect my body to process it properly. I hadn't really realized that until I tried it with this stuff, and went running to the bathroom just the same as I do with regular water. The annoyingly inefficient solution is the sip all drinks forever. It results in the same amount of liquid intake (if I'm mindful) but far fewer trips to the toilet. My compromise right now is using a straw with my regular water glass, and making the lemon-salt-stuff in a 32 ounce plastic water bottle. I can take the water bottle out with me when I go places, which makes it much easier to simply sip it on occasion. My hope is that I'll build a habit of drinking more water overall this way.
The last thing is that I will probably need to keep buying this stuff, as it is helping. It's not a magical solution by any stretch of the imagination, and my lips are still a mite wonky, but after only five days of use, my lips (and hopefully the rest of me) seem much more hydrated. I'm hoping the results are cumulative and in a few weeks, I won't have lip annoyances any more, save if I don't drink the stuff.
In other news, I've been being in close proximity with a baby about once a week recently. I have a friend that works near me, and she used to visit once a week for a lunch break. She just had her first kid recently, and is now home taking care of him. Makes it kind of hard for her to drive the half an hour or so to visit me! So I'm visiting her. Her life has radically changed, which doesn't really surprise me given what I've read about parenthood.
I, on the other hand, still have absolutely no idea what to do with babies. If someone hands me a baby, I'll do my best approximation of "support the baby and its head" and then freeze until someone takes it away. They're so tiny and breakable, and I'm so clumsy, I don't feel comfortable at all. But it's interesting to talk with her and help support her through this time in her life. It sounds like she's planning on having at least one more, so it'll get easier for her in some ways. Either way, she'll always need friends. Even odd, awkward, prone-to-freezing friends.
The last newsworthy moment for this week is hair-related. I've had long hair for most of two decades, and I've occasionally considered cutting it a lot shorter, and dying it. I've never added color to my hair before (it has red and blonde natural highlights in it, which look nice in the sunlight), and I've never really thought I needed it. And that's still true, I just think it'd be fun to have my hair match my favorite color.
So last Friday I went off to an appointment at a school for cosmetology, armed with a recommendation for a particular student and a very vague idea of what I wanted. The student (Instagram link to her work) took extra care to explain to me my various options for shorter hair, care times and routines, etc. After awhile, we opted to do a longish pixie cut. The dying process, sadly, did not go smoothly, so you'll have to wait 'til next Legwork entry to have pictures. I have, at present, relatively short hair that is much lighter than it should be. I managed to skim out of church before I ran into anyone I recognized, but I will definitely be seeing some folks that will notice the difference later this week... so we'll see how this goes.
Part of the reason I wore my hair long and relatively unstyled for such a long period of time was that I already feel like I stick out in a crowd. Accentuating that tendency seemed foolish to me for quite a while. Since getting married and keeping this blog up for a few years, I feel a little more stable on that front. And really, two decades of almost the same hairstyle is maybe a bit much. I still don't love fashion or care much about trends... But I have to admit, 5 minutes of fussing in a mirror is different, but much much shorter than 10 annoyed minutes trying to get a comb and then a brush through my hair. It has also severely reduced my showering time, which is good for me and the planet at the same time. Yay.
I'll try to have a picture for you next week with the blue. : )
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