Zealandia

Pretty isn't it?

An unexpected pixie convert

My hair grew back in patches to start with, the boy shaving it back until I had pretty much 100% head cover.   Then I wouldn't let him shave it any more except to tidy it up around the edges (as you do with a lawn).

It's now about Annie Lennox length and - quite unexpectedly - the look seems to suit me!

I have always thought that I could not carry off a pixie cut, because when I looked at photos of women who looked great in super short hair I saw coltish girl-women with high cheekbones and large round eyes. 

I am have none of those features, yet ever since I had my "reveal" (i.e. going out in public without a wig or hat) I have had nothing but compliments (and that's taking into consideration the fact that my workmates are incredibly supportive people who wouldn't laugh out loud if I turned up looking ridiculous).

So this whole experience - despite the distress, self-consciousness, expense and physical discomfort - has thrown up an silver lining. It's resulted in me discovering a look that is both wind-defying and funky, and which goes really well with my sixties-inspired outfits and my Docs.

Squelching while the forest sings

It was my birthday yesterday, so the boy and TLM came on a nature walk with me. I wanted to go to this particular reserve because we don't go there very often (because it's on the other side of town and because you have to pay to enter). And because it was my birthday neither of them complained about it.

Of course they enjoyed it at least as much as I did. The muddy track was no match for our tramping boots; it was still, warm and sunny; and we could hear wildlife in surround sound.

I wished we could have stayed longer, maybe done a few additional tracks or even just stood around a bit more to match up the birds with their songs. But the boy has a tendency to rush through places and it would have been unrealistic to expect him not to this time around.

Still, it was a great 60 minutes.

It was calm but the sea was noisy

I took some leave this week, the second week of the school holidays. The boy, who had been underemployed forever, got a contract, then had the contract extended, then ran out of work again. So this is kind of a family staycation.

Which means that the boy can spend all week playing computer games instead of looking for work, and TLM (who turned 12 in August) is strongly asserting her right to spend her holidays on the couch with at least one wi-fi enabled device in her hands.

I spend some effort trying to get at least one of them out of the house sometimes, but it is easier if I just take myself for a whine-free walk and see where I end up.

My knees have been giving me gyp lately - I fear it's arthritis (nooooooh!It means I'm getting old!) but I am compelled to keep walking. Maybe its keeping the joints from getting worse. I hope so.

I walked to the beach, perhaps about an hour's walk, probably less if I hurry. It was surprisingly calm there - most often it's gusty enough to give you a good sandblasting (over-exfoliation ).

The surfers and boogie boarders were enjoying the surf; a naked toddler got her feet wet then ran away from the freezing water; and a little black terrier let me pat him on the back. Summer's a-comin'.

A wig is like a push-up bra

I know I look better when I'm wearing one that when I'm not...
but when I've been wearing one all day I just can't wait to take it off.

A brand new is always way too tight...
but once it's stretched out from wear it's almost comfortable.

If I was single and seeing someone new, I probably wouldn't want to take it off in front of him.

I'm always tugging at it surreptitiously throughout the day.

When I'm wearing one I kinda feel like I'm cheating...
so sometimes I go without just to show I don't care

Being there with hair - a wiggy milestone

I bought a wig. This wig. Except I didn't pick the blonde one (of course) - mine's a dark brown with red bits in it.

This is the view from the left 

This is the back view

I wore it for a few hours on the Sunday, then I didn't get to wear it again for several weeks because there were "fit issues". It was too tight.

It turns out that my head is bigger than average, and the consultant didn't realise that when I was trying on her on-hand supply of wigs. She stretched it out for me but it took a while and then it got stuck in the post...

I wore it to work on Friday, but by the time I got back from lunch I was ready to yank it off and replace with a nice comfy hat. All of my workmates were really complimentary about my look, so that was good.

Today I managed to wear it for the full day, right up until I got home. (As expected, the boys in my workplace showed their support by just saying "nice hair" and leaving it at that).

Yes is a bit uncomfy to wear a wig, even after the stretching - if it's loose enough to feel comfortable I reckon it's too loose to stay in place on your head. It was also slightly itchy at times, but surprisingly I stopped noticing after a while. And I am pretty intolerant of tightness, hence my resentment of bras.

For this reason I plan to only wear it a couple of times per week. (It'll be a bit like heels - they make me look taller but aren't comfortable to wear all the time.)

The great wool purge of 2017 - or my body heat in synthetics

I have been slowing packing away all of my woollen clothing. It's a bit sad, but hopefully I'll be able to sell a few items on TradeMe and gift some others to The Little Madam.

The purge has left my wardrobe almost bare (thanks goodness I'll still be well clothed for summer), leaving me with a pretty minimal winter wardrobe:

• two skirts (one of which I just bought yesterday)
• one dress
• no cardigans
• a really nice shirt I got at the Tempest closing down sale
• one coat (warm enough when it's 12 degrees Celsius but useless in the rain)
• one raincoat that has a thin poly fleece lining
• one cotton scarf
• the few cotton/acrylic hats I managed to finish in the last week
• no arm warmers/handwarmers/wristwarmers
• only cotton socks
• 1 polypropylene top

I knew I would need to find another warm layer to supplement my remaining coat (viscose, polyester etc) and raincoat, to survive this weekend's bone-chilling temps. I was resigned to having to buy...sigh...a puffer jacket.

Gawd I hate puffer jackets. Maybe it's slightly unreasonable, since they are at least warm, light and sensitive skin-friendly. I managed to find one at the Kathmandu sale, one thats only thinly padded with down and shaped so that I look like a healthy adult female rather than a cushion on legs. In a pale aqua. It does the job I guess.

A wool-less winter is hell for a knitter

Now, right in the middle of winter and in our second bone-chilling storm in two weeks, I find out for sure that I am allergic to wool.

"But I always wear a cotton layer underneath!" I protested. My dermatologist assured me that this wouldn't make any difference.

This is devastating to me, not just because it's hard to keep warm when limited to cotton (because I hate poly fleece and hardly have any garments in this fibre), but because I now have to put all my lovely hand knit woollens away - possibly forever.

Not only can I no longer wear the boxy fair isle jumper that took two years to complete (and many others), but my wonderful Untouched World possum merino jacket that was a present from the boy, must also be packed away.

And my knitting. Almost of of my knitting projects have to be packed away indefinitely and I am now furiously knitting cotton hats to replace the merino ones that previously covered my naked head.

Ah well. I guess no-one ever died of being banned from wool.

Nardole and me

When I'm wearing my cropped duffel coat I look an awful lot like Nardole from Dr Who -

Our coats are even the very same colour! But mine has a hood on it. Also I don't wear glasses (except when I'm driving).

Seriously!

Gone today, hair tomorrow?

While waiting for a medical certificate that has the right information on it, I went down to my local wig shop to try some one.

It's not really a wig shop in the way that, say a cheese shop is full of many cheeses.They only have perhaps 6-8 wigs on display (and order in if you want something different and are prepared to commit yourself to buying it). Only one display wig was approximately the right length and only one (a different one) was approximately the right colour.

First I tried on the short one - it was a short bob in what I would call black. I looked in the mirror. Way, way too dark. Way, way too much hair.

Then I tried on the medium length one, a sort of shoulder-length shaggy do a with long fringe, but at least it was a nice dark chocolate colour with red bits in it (the colour my hair used to be maybe twenty years ago). Way, way too much hair.

The consultant used some sort of spray on one side and brushed that side down so it would look more flat (which is how my hair usually is, when I have any). Then it just looked overly thick and flat.

So I was a bit disappointed. Despite my earlier excitement at the prospect of luscious, wavy hair like I used to wish I had, when it came down to it I realised I just wanted to have hair as flat and straight and boring as my hair used to be (with slightly more volume). Because anything else just screams "WIG!".

So what do you think about this one?

Getting' wiggy with it

Here in New Zealand, if you are suffering from temporary or permanent hair loss you can get a government grant that goes towards the cost of wigs or other head covers. So I left a message for my dermatologist about getting a medical certificate and started looking online at wigs.

After seeing what's available I was feeling pretty damn positive! I could go wavy! Curly! Blonde even! Like this one.

However the grant won't be enough to pay for more than one wig, so I will have to pick something a little more believable that I can wear when it's just not socially acceptable to be wearing a knitted cap (like, weddings, dinners at nice restaurants, work events...). Like this one.

But even if I have to go the less spicy route to wiggy-ness, I will still have the benefit of volume. Volume! Without mousse, back combing or blowdrying!

My copious Google-research tells me that wigs aren't necessarily hot or itchy to wear, and some you can even wear swimming. I know it's not as good as having one's own thick head of natural hair, but it feels like a great consolation prize.

In the meantime, I'm finding a lot of the regrowth is coming up grey. I suppose it had to happen some time, but I was quite enjoying being the only 50-something in my workplace with almost no grey.

The other thing is how to deal with the need for a light hat for indoors but a warm hat for outdoors. I could duck into the ladies' loos every time I need to go in or out in order to swap hats. Or I could pop a second hat on when I go outside then very, very carefully remove that layer when I go back inside. I'm still working on this one.

Head full of holes

It's a pity I bruise so easily - I've had a bunch of blood tests in the search for what's behind the deforestation on my head (and my eyebrows. and my eyelashes), and each needle prick has left behind a large bruise. I worry that if I don't cover up my arm sufficiently people will think the boy has been bashing me about.

As if this wasn't enough, this afternoon I had to return to the dermatologist to get some biopsies done. I didn't know for sure, but expected that he would gouge out some skin from my scalp.

I was quite right - this is exactly what he did. About five times. It wasn't intolerably painful, but as he stitched me up I realised my heart was pounding. Not with fear, I think. But definitely pounding.

Then it all started ache four hours later....

On the plus side, my stash of indoor-appropriate hats is building up nicely.

This one might be a bit too casual for the office but it'll keep my neck warm

Life's not all bad as a baldie (only slightly)

The cons:

1. If it's raining, I have to figure out how to wear my hood up without it dislodging my head cover. (Umbrellas are no good in my windy city).

2. I look really silly without something covering my head.

3. It's really not a sexy look (it might be if I were a model and shaved all of the remaining hair off).

4. When I told my extended family about it, they all wanted to see my naked head. The hell they will.

5. I wasted $30 on a big elephant-print sarong, which I turned into two long headscarves before giving up on the idea of wearing headscarves.

The pros:

1. I get to wear hats a lot, which is nice because I have a lot of hats (most of which I knitted myself).

2. I will save money on haircuts, which is handy because I would need to have no haircuts for the next 2 years and 6 months in order to save up the amount of money I will have to spend to see a dermatologist privately about my hair loss.

I think it's rather ironic that it's highly likely my hair is falling out due to financial stress - and finding out how much it costs to see the dermatologist is adding not exactly making that stress go away.

3. There's not much chance of my leaving home without my hat, and then being too cold when I leave the office for my lunch break.

4. I worked out how to sew my own exercise hat from an old t-shirt. That'll be handy if my head is still not presentable by summer.

5. The Boy is still lovely to me, which make me love him more.

6. The Little Madam is still lovely to me, which makes me love her more.

a Kildare jumper for The Little Madam

I've previously knit and unravelled two garments for myself from this yarn (two extra large - as in 400g - balls of blackberry Stylecraft Special), neither of which I wore much.

This latest recycling of the yarn is going to get a lot more wear -

Here it is in its inert state...

Here it is being posed awkwardly...

...and here it is in action, so to speak...

Here's the Ravelry link.

On the continual fall-out of my hair

It's been a week since I went to the doctor about my kamikaze hair. He prescribed me some stuff to tame my scalp and invited me to see him again in ten days if my hair is still misbehaving.

Well, it is.

The floors of my house are a real mess, as they are covered in black strands - as is my pillow. When I look in the mirror I'm reminded of a guy I once went tramping (hiking) with when I was at university. His head was mostly bald at the top but long-haired at the sides and back, like an egg wearing a fringe.

My progress in learning to tie a head scarf is very slow (if it is happening at all). Mostly I can rely on the pirate-style do staying on, but any other way soon fails and is replaced by one of my ever-reliable knitted hats. There are some really inspiring YouTube videos showing you how to tie a head scarf stylishly - but watching them is the only easy part.

At times like these I'm thankful that I'm still working from home. It means I don't have to spend more than a couple of hours in any one day in public, with my head inexpertly covered.

Did you know there are many websites that sell headwear aimed at women going the full-Sinead due to alopecia and chemotherapy?

Stubbly like a kiwifruit

To save money, I only go to the hairdressers when my hair so long I just can't stand it any more.

If I had known two Saturdays ago that my hair was going to fall out, I might have opted to save my $42.

It started happening a week ago this morning - handfuls just fell off my head while I was in the shower. I run a hand through what's left of my stylishly bobbed locks and it comes away full of limp strands. I get out of bed in the morning and the sheets are covered in wavy black lines. The floor looks like that of a busy hairdresser's.

I'm comforted by the stubble that has appeared in the place of the escaped hairs, so it is growing back. But it's surely going to take months.

I really don't know why this is happening to me. Is it because  the day before, I had done my first dance class in probably two decades? And then took TLM and her friend for a hill walk later in the same day? Is it because my body is sugar-starved? (Not likely, despite my efforts to be sugar-free during the week). Or the result of two years of worrying incessantly about money? (But at long last the boy has got a contract and soon money will be flowing in - for a couple of months at least.)

My off-centre part is more like a broad, dried out riverbed.

When I dare to gaze in the mirror I am reminded of the wispy-haired bird-girl in TLM's book,"Eep".

Thankful that it's almost hat weather, I have spent Easter weekend with a knitted cloche practically glued to my head whenever it wasn't just the three of us. I like how it looks and all, but it isn't actually quite that cold enough to be wearing it indoors with the heater on.

Tomorrow I will try wearing a silk headscarf, gypsy-style. I will probably look ridiculous, but at least I can avoid sporting a comb-over.

Death traps

We have had it with the flies in this house - they buzz around my head, try to eat our food and die in inconvenient places.

I think it's worse than it's ever been. The only plus side is at least they aren't mosquitos or some other bite-y bug.

I am not at all in favour of fly sprays. They squirt chemicals all over the place and, anecdotally, don't actually work.

I did some googling research  and read that if you hang a plastic bag half-full of water plus a few coins in the doorway, the flies won't come into the house.

However the boy did not seem think this was good enough - probably because all the flies seem to be in the house already.

So he went out to and bought some fly paper (above) and a fly-catcher (like a dream catcher but icky-ier) (below).

 

Welcome to your demise, flies!!

My fourth month of working from home

The "pros" of working from home:

• I'm home when The Little Madam gets back from school
• If the weather is beautiful I can easily nip out for 5-10 mins of sunshine without having to take up smoking as an excuse

The "cons" of working from home:

• I have to consciously make an effort to get exercise, whereas before walking from work to home was effortlessly built in.
• It's hard being part of a team if you only see them for a couple of hours once per week.
• If I need to get anything in town I have to make a special trip.
• If I happen to have all of the internal helpline calls directed to a phone that is in my possession, I can't easily take the day off if I have a cold.

I have a cold, perfectly timed for Autumn. My workmates have all had it - which is surprising as we are all working from our homes and should be less likely to infect each other. 

The boy had it all of last week. "That ache-iness and the headaches - that's just the beginning", he says helpfully. But just because it knocked him for a six all week doesn't necessarily mean it will do the same for me. 

For one, I make an effort to keep up my fitness. For two, I eat lots of fruit and vegetables. For three, I'm not a man. So fingers crossed, I have had the worst of it after two days.

The need for victim blaming

• A woman was attacked while walking home from the pub? She shouldn't have been out walking in the dark.
• Someone took all the produce and didn't put money into the honesty box? It's madness to leave your stuff out where anyone can steal it.
• Young person can't get a job? They are probably lazy and entitled.

These are all examples of victim blaming. It's very politically incorrect to do so, but we've all heard (maybe even said) something like the above, often.

I think it's to do with believing in the cause and effect, and the need to have control. For example, if I work hard at my job I will get a promotion and a pay rise; if I take care of my looks, keep the house clean and cook my husband great meals he won't leave me for someone else. If I eat healthily I won't get sick.

But we all know these are not guaranteed. Good things happen to bad people. Financially responsible people can become homeless. Non smokers can get lung cancer.

I've been re-reading The Idiot Brain, by Welsh neuroscientist Dean Burnett. Quite apart from the fact that this guy writes like the Bill Bryson of medical writing (i.e. highly readable, funny and really enlightening), he provides a neuroscientist's view of why we as society victim-blame.

One factor in why we do this is is because we tend to find it difficult to empathise (obviously it varies from person to person), due to the fact that our brains are egocentric. He describes an experiment in which one person has to touch something nice while a second person has to touch something disgusting. The person touching something nice finds it difficult to sympathise with the other. However if both people have to touch something gross then it's easy for them to sympathise with each other.

The other factor is what he calls the "just world" hypothesis. The brain assumes that the world is fair, good behaviour is rewarded and bad behaviour is punished. If a bad thing happens to someone then they must have done something to deserve it. Because if they didn't, then that means it could happen to us, who are most definitely behaving well. Our brain is uncomfortable with the possibility that bad things could happen to us even if we don't deserve it. So it chooses to have us believe that it must have been deserved.

So there you have it - our brains make it hard for us to empathise with someone less fortunate than us and in fact makes us blame the unfortunate for whatever has happened to them.

(That doesn't mean we should just let it happen though.)

Time to target the muffin top

For years I've been eating like I still go to the gym every day, when of course I stopped going not long before TLM was born 11 years ago.

Ice cream, cakes, biscuits (cookies), chippies - damn my sweet tooth and taste for greasies.

Just like it says in just about every bit of literature you'll find about middle age spread, the extra weight has crept up on me and it only hit me a couple of weeks ago that I really have to do something about my "clothes shrinkage".

My bum lift jeans can no longer lift my bum, because they are too tight around the waist. My NYDJ jeans  will still zip up, but it's easy to see that they are having to work a lot harder than only a year ago. And the pretty maxi skirt that fit me just right last summer will no longer button up at the back.

Yep, it is time to do something about it.

A couple hours of Google searching ("lose spare tyre") and three fitness-over-40 type books later, I have settled on a plan of attack:

• I already make sure I go for a walk every day - from here on every other day my walk will be interval-training style. Every time I hit an upward slope I'm going to go up that as fast as I can, then slow down for the flat and downward bits. Interval training is supposed to be good for targeting belly fat.
• Will try to do stretches and mobility exercises...
• I'm going to cut right down on the sweeties and greasies. None at all during the week, but letting myself have a treat or two during the weekend so I don't go postal. This is the bit that I expect will make the most difference.
• I'm keeping a food journal so if I do fall off the wagon, it's all there on paper so I don't forget it.
• I'll only have one between-meal snack mid-morning and another mid-afternoon (rather than whenever I'm bored or slightly hungry)

This only started on Tuesday so it's early days yet. I know that last time I tried to go sugar-free I only lasted a week. But that time, I was motivated only by the desire to be healthier. Fear of falling down the roly-poly black hole is a much stronger motivation for me at the moment. (Okay I also don't want to get Type 2 diabetes.)

Wish me luck!