black like me.... no more
Please note painted nails, first time in years. To quote Joe Biden: "This is a big f***ing deal". His eloquence knows no bounds. Having painted nails is one of the perks of my new non-manual labor lifestyle. I found this turtle on beach while picking up plastic trash. He is my new pet. I make trails with him in the sand. I guess something good can come of anything.

So how about a Good News for Women page today? We don't get enough for sure. First off –Rwanda. Women comprise 56 percent of the Rwandan parliament. A majority, folks. Now that's what I call representative government at its best. Makes us look rather shabby, doesn't it? "Us" as in U.S. One of the male members there insisted women were better at making "peace". Probably because he knew that not too far away the police force of Liberia was arming fed up women to the teeth and training them to "combat" sexual violence in a real way. Like Carlotta sez: If more women knew how to use a gun, more men would be better behaved.

And this good news provides counterweight to what I read yesterday about Al Kayda's latest innovation (at least according to the Brits): the terrorist org seems to be perfecting the art of equipping women bombers with virtually undetectable explosive breast implants. Yes, you heard right. The secret word for tonight is.... Anyway, that's what I would call really bad news. Makes you wanna slap those girls upside their heads. What are they thinkin? Apparently not much. Maybe send those Rwandan women down there to straighten them out!

So, hmmm .. .. reading the ingredients on my Chanel face cream, big bucks, this stuff. Guarantees me those lines will just disappear for a mere hundred and twenty an ounce or something. They put this goo in heavy weighted jars so you feel like you're actually getting something for your money. It has never been satisfactorily explained to me just why all this reconfigured detritus of crude oil refining is so damned expensive.. quoi? I mean, it's stuff they just pitched into landfills before they figured out they could reconfigure it without any government oversight and and charge a fortune for it. Wish there was somewhere I could look this up online and see if any of these things are gonna kill me sooner than I want to depart this world.

And WAALAA! (I love Kaye Gibbons) No sooner did I think it than T sez: Guess what, ma and proceeds to inform me that her 8th grade pal from St. Ignatius, Becky Prusinowski, is a journalist for PAPER, a NY mag, and she says there is such a place where one can consult on the health benefits or hazards of various cosmetics, shampoos, pretty much anything that lathers or claims to make you better looking, smelling, whatever, baby (unforgivably hazardous ratings on most of the commercial ones, J and J baby bath always seemed too good to be true) and household products, etc. Your everyday stuff, well, just check it out. The site was set up by none other than the beloved Environmental Working Group (www.ewg.org) , which is an amazing resource for info about nearly anything you can consume that may pose a threat to your health. The website within the EWG is called Skin Deep, and it's the EWG's cosmetics safety database.

Just head on over there with your mouse (click on links I've provided) and be prepared to blow your mind. Choose a category from the drop down menu and go to town. Be sure if the product you're searching doesn't come up with a result that you downpage a bit and choose the fine print option "Dont see what you were looking for? Include old formulations." Betcha you'll find it there. Now I'm not averse to multisyllabic ingredients. I'm something of a multisyllabic gal myself. But are all these ingredients really necessary to achieve the desired result? I think not! And most of these petro-derived ingredients are temporary fixes, they don't really help heal the skin or nourish it longterm. And I was surprised to find that in many products the most toxic, and I mean toxic, ingredient was fragrance! That's the thing that makes us feel good about using the product when we smell how clean and innocent it is!

You know, girls (and any guys lingering on the edges out there), the Europeans are way ahead of us on this one. Not something the newscasters are anxious to tell you.

Take a little time with this site and you will be amazed (and send them five bucks if you can). They are doing a valiant job of trying to keep up with monitoring ingredients spewed forth from a petrochemical industry that is growing faster than the USDEP or the FDA wants to talk about and is worth billions a year of your dollars. Some products are less harmful than you might think, and others that bill themselves in nouveau langue au naturelle are megatoxic. Here's an almost infallible giveaway: If it says "natural" it probably is anything but. And the new nano technologies, meaning they can make the particles of whatever is in that jar more easily absorbed by your skin, can be your worst enemy. Yup, just jet propel that poison right into my wrinkles, guys!

Still frustrated by the amount of time it takes to find out what this stuff is in your moisturizer or body wash? (And by the way, body washes are a big negative for the most part. Avoid them all is my advice. Get a good bar of moisturizing, I use the olive oil, or whatever variety, Kiss My Face soap for "personal hygiene" areas and use a good washcloth sans soap on the rest, unless you're full of mud or something. Use your head for Pete's sake.) So don't be ignorant. GO to this amazing site and scroll down about 2/3 of the way on the left side to Toxins info. Click on that and enjoy all the hard work done for you by Kathleen in Illinois who sells some pretty nice, safe, hand crafted (truly) face and body products on her site as well.

Take a minute to educate yourself, especially for the benefit of anyone you may know with bambinos. Do you even KNOW the difference between non-toxic and toxin- free?I bet not! Neither did I, and I'm one of those informed types. What the hell is hydrolyzed anyway? Do I want that in me? Am I bioaccumulating this crap? Well, duh. But it's never to late. And all this stuff comes to us from the hated petrochemical industry, and I am on a one-woman campaign to stop buying everything they try to foist on me and mine. No more plastic liquid detergent bottles, no more water bottles, git that microscopic cheapass plastic crap out of my face cream, off my beach, and outta my life! I'm tossing about 75 bucks worth of Chanel, not to mention other crap I've bought in my more in-vain moments, and hitching up with sites like Kathleen's at Healing-scents, Solay, Sundari (I can vouch for their products, having used them in New Mexico at a spa in 07 with gratifying results), Tara, Jason's, Avalon Organics and the jillions of other genuinely pure products you can find on the cosmetics database. Just search there under dropdowns for skin, then nourishing, then say, moisturizer , and you'll get a long list of good- for- you products. Take the time to get good at using the site. Don't give these creeps any more of your money just so they can poison us with cheap crap.

Here's another site I found today with lots of interesting stuff there about food safety, women's health, etc. Check it out.

And don't worry, I'll recycle all the crap I throw away. But recycling isn't the answer, it's just a temporary fix. Our Penance for Past Purchases.We need to stop buying plastic stuff altogether in all its forms. Put these guys outta business and insist on better from the cosmetics industry. For In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was –– Sustainability.

(I have this on good authority, truly.) Make mindful choices today and the future will take care of itself.

I liked this quote: We'll either cross that bridge when we come to it, or burn it. Either way, we'll deal with it later.