Nails of May

Well its long overdue, but here is my weekend nail update showcasing my nail colors for most of May.

The month started out with some support for my San Jose Sharks! Currently in the second round of the playoffs! My bro came up to town and we are going to Game 6 tomorrow night! So excited.

Then I revisited my Euro colors, a little OPI Eurso Euro with Polka Dot Come layered over it.

Then I painted my nails the hit blue of the season with some subtle sparkle.

Then I became obsessed with finding the perfect coral. This is Essie Come Here! It's a great coral, this it it in the sun, and below in the shade. Might be a little red, not quite bright enough.

Then I chopped my nails (they were getting way too long) and I tried to create a cool blue/green Lake Tahoe type nail. I failed, the blue was too strong, you can't see the green flecks at all. Oh well, I have all summer to perfect this. I'll figure it out!

Then I wanted some rainbow prism like nails, here is Zoya Storm. Below is a blurry shot so you can see some of the rainbow sparkle!

And then I borrowed a fantastic neon coral color from my coworker Chris! The bottle looks like its going to be a neon pink, but it is clearly coral as you can tell from above, I think this is my new favorite go-to summer color. I will have to purchase this right away. This is China Glaze Pool Party. Above in the sun, below in the shade - both are spectacularly bright!

Looking ahead at colors I'm lusting after - OPI's new Minne Mouse collection has a color that is called A Definite Moust Have- a bright pink color that is a little more pink than anything I have. Want for get that or something like it.


And the collection I am most looking forward to is Essie's 2013 Summer collection, which should be available June 1! I can't wait. I definitely want Naughty Nautical, Sunday Funday and The More the Merrier. Also considering The Girls are Out. I hope they have a sample of this collection with small bottles, so much more affordable and easier to try! Fingers crossed.

Weekend nail update: Early

Well I'm headed off to LA for the weekend with Marie to go visit Lauren. We are going to do some shopping, see the sights and have tea the Huntington Gardens.

So this is a quick sign off an my weekend nail update early.

My mint nails from last week wore wonderfully with no chips. I changed my nails last night because I knew they would inevitably chip by the weekend.

This is Essie Bikini So Teeny with Essie Come Here Tips. The photo is a little blurry, sorry. I'm in a hurry and totally hopped up on coffee today. I got horrible sleep last night over something I wrote today, but now that the words are out of me, the anger has left as well.

Road tripping weekend here I come!!!

PKU Awareness Month

As I have spoken about before, I have PKU.

What is PKU? It is actually short for phenylketonuria (which to this day I still have to look up the spelling for) and in plain English it means I can't have a diet high in protein. I have had it since I was born and every newborn is tested for it when they get their heel prick (which tests for more than 240 metabolic disorders).

Basically the science behind it is that protein is made of 20 amino acids my body cannot break down the amino acid phenylalanine (phe). What does that mean? If I eat a hamburger will I start seizing on the floor, no. The effects of PKU are a long-term pain in the butt.

Maintaining a strict diet was extremely important when I was growing up and my brain was developing. See, having high phe levels in my blood levels affects my brain functioning. If I was not treated from birth, I'd be severely mentally retarded today. So thank you science, for figuring this out before I was born so I can function normally from day to day.

This graphic courtesy of PKU.com shows it in very simplistic terms.

Wait a second, you need protein to survive right?! Yes, you do. I get my protein the form of 60 pills a day. Pills that contain the other 19 amino acids my diet lacks. You think 60 pills is bad? When I was growing up I had to drink a formula that was so bad I had to drink it in a thermos with a straw through high school because I would gag at the smell of it.

This is what 20 pills looks like, I do this three times a day.

Have they improved the formulas today? Surely they have. But when I was recently going back on diet (more on that in a minute), the red carpet was rolled out to me and I was sent a million different samples. Forumlas in the form of powders you could sprinkle on your food, forumlas that came in fruit flavored shot form (so that you could get it done quickly), forumlas you could shake in a bottle of water (Crystal Light style) and forumlas that looked like cool sports drinks. Did any of them appeal to me? No. Because I had the old science formula growing up, I knew that distinct awful amino acid flavor. I can't describe it but I can tell you that no matter how they try to mask the flavor, my tricky taste buds will find the flavor immediately. I'm sure its easier for children who get to try the new formulas right away.

What does this mean now? Well from about late high school through about the last few years, I was off diet. Eating things I should not have been, being rebellious, enjoying food. Not thinking about what I was eating every ten seconds.

Well as I have just turned 30 and I have begun thinking about having children, there is this wonderful thing called Maternal PKU. Basically I have to go and have the most strict and stringent diet before I even start TRYING to have a child.

So for the past two years I have been cutting bad things out of my diet and getting back on diet. I spent the better part of the beginning of the year figuring out where my blood phe level needed to be through pregnancy and before I want to start trying.

How do I manage the diet? Well everything is based on a point system, very similar to Weight Watchers. When I was growing up I was allowed 22 points a day. A banana is 3 points. A large french fry from McDonalds is 13 points. So all real world food (except sugary candy) pretty much has some sort of points attached to it. You literally have to think about everything you put in your mouth and you have to keep track of what you eat.

Well I found out that the maternal PKU diet is even more restricted, EVEN MORE. So I dove into the world of low-protein food. And basically for the three months before I get pregnant and throughout pregnancy I will be eating low-pro engineered foods with some low-phe veggies and fruits added in. It's not great, but that kid better be worth it!

So why am I sharing all these good bits? Well since it is PKU Awareness month I thought I would write a post explaining my weird freakazoid issues about what I eat. If you've shared a meal with me, you know all this already but if not I hope I've enlightened you a bit.

Why do people need to be aware of PKU? Well for starters it is expensive! Thankfully I live in California and insurance is required to provide 90 percent of the cost of my formula. They are SUPPOSED to pay for my low-pro food too, but I can't seem to make that happen.

Thus people needing to be aware of PKU. The insurance coverages and laws vary from state to state and country to country. In Europe, where health care is more socialized coverage issues are a lot easier to deal with. Here in the United States we have to fight continuously until we get what the law says is our right. Currently people are fighting for having a national PKU provision law in the United States which would help a lot of other states out. Personally for me, it took me close to six months to gain access to my pills via insurance. I had to appeal the insurance three times and they didn't actually pony up for the pills until I told the California Medical Review Board my story about their refusal to pay their share.

Anyway, thanks for making it this far. I hope you leave a little more educated about what PKU is, and what it means for me personally. It is a daily struggle, and I'm not going to lie, every day isn't perfect. But every day is a new day and a new opportunity to get my phe levels where they need to be.

The Big C

So The Big C is back. I've been watching this show since its beginning as I love Laura Linney. This show has an interesting take on death, for seasons it has tried to take a lighter stance on death as we watch Laura Linney portray Cathy, who has been diagnosed with Stage 4 melanoma.

And now it is in its final season. I just watched the first installment of Season 4, which seems like it will have limited 1-hour episodes (the show has historically had 30-minute episodes). I literally was crying almost the entire episode.

This show is so sad. I've grown used to all the characters and been so impressed with the writing and a portrayal of death which is somewhat unusual. But it is time for it to end, and we all know what happens in the end.

Just expecting the death, feeling it coming on just is really upsetting. But I trust the writer and creator of the show. In this piece she wrote in the Wall Street Journal yesterday, she said she wants to "lift the concept of dying from a loss to a win."

She said she doesn't even know if she ends up completing that in the end, but said she wanted Cathy's illness front and center in the final season so people actually begin talking about death being a reality. And that is happening, and it is tearing this viewer apart.

But that is what good art does. Be a TV or a novel, growing attached to the characters and crying when there is loss or crying when there is unexpected happiness, such happiness. Connecting the reader/view to the characters so that we feel what they feel. That is to be admired.

So this is a thank you blog. Thank you Darlene Hunt. Thank you for facing your fear of death and making The Big C. I think you started a lot of conversations about death in many households and I think that might be a healthy thing. Thank you to Laura Linney and the other actors on the Big C who are so talented and really do Darlene's writing justice.

Thank goodness for quality TV.

Santorini

So because I am on deadlines on Monday, my creativity is sucked out of me because I'm busy throwing it all at this Wednesday's edition of the paper.

So each Monday I'm going to try to answer a blog prompt.

Today's question du jour: If someone gave you plane tickets to go anywhere in the world right now, where would you go?

I immediately think of my favorite past vacations when I think about this and my favorite vacations are the ones where I am surrounded by beauty, but can relax under the sun and read to my heart's content.

Now I realize this isn't my husband's favorite type of vacation, but he doesn't fly so I'll assume I'm taking a friend on this adventure.

Should I go somewhere I've been before? I've always wanted to go back to Santorini, Greece and I've only spent a little time in Hawaii, and then only in Kauai, so I have a lot of Hawaii left to see.

But Hawaii seems doable, and if I can fly ANYWHERE, I would want to fly somewhere that looks unlikely. Somewhere extravagant.

And like the freak I am I just checked the weather there to make sure that it is prime beach relaxation weather and it is. Mid to upper 70s for the next ten days.

So yes, Santorini it is. Why Santorini? Well I realize I've been there before but I was only there for one day and honestly, I'd love to spend a week there. The people were so nice. The food was fantastic and I could see myself just loving relaxing there at a beachside hotel run by some local family.

When we got off the cruise ship, my family and I went immediately to a restaurant overlooking the coast to try some local eats before we set off on our day. The locals who owned the restaurant were so nice and gave us all sorts of authentic Greek food to try and gave advice about what to see while on the island. They wanted us to have the authentic Greek experience, not the tourist-y one.

So they told us which beach to head toward, one on the other side of the island. They even helped us figure out which bus to take to get there. Now the bus, that was quite the experience. It was probably about 85 degrees that day on the island and the bus was so crowded and hot that I was standing and holding on to a seat, while another very sweaty Greek man stood next to me – my head literally placed right in his hairy armpit as he held the upper rail to remain steady on the bumpy ride.

But that unpleasantness aside, the journey was totally worth it. We got off the bus where the locals told us to and we were greeted by a nearly empty black sand beach, the likes of which I have never seen before. My parents got some Greek beers and we just sat on the shore taking in the gorgeous view and thanking God for the experience.

Black sand beach

So I'd like to have that experience again and a lot more time to see other parts of the island. Too bad this is just a prompt and not a real life situation where someone is handing me tickets to my dream vacation.

Weekend Nail update!

So in my quest to post more often, I'm planning to have weekend nail updates so you can all see what I've had on my digits all week!

This was an Essie Cascade Cool manicure and it stayed on ALL WEEK. Such great performance. Painted my nails on Sunday night and they didn't chip until Saturday morning. That is a great performance for my manicures. Used the Essie Good to Go top coat, which is quickly becoming a favorite as it doesn't shrink my polish like the Seche Vite does.

I did this one yesterday, inspired my Lauren's mint manicure she posted earlier in the week. It's Essie's Mint Candy Apple with Essie's Set in Stone over my thumb and ring finger.

And last weekend I gave myself a gel manicure on my toes so that I wouldn't have to continue to update my toes. Pedicures are so much harder for me than manicures. Anyway this is a neon orange with sparkle top coat (you'll see the sparkles better in the inside shot below).

P.S. Sorry my feet are a little ugly. They won't be featured often, as I don't really like to give myself pedicures very often. Giving myself a gel manicure on my toes was quite the challenge.

 

And my current favorite brand is definitely Essie. I just saw the swatches of their 2013 Bridal Collection and I can't wait to get my hands on Using my Maiden Name. I may also be lusting after some of Essie 2013 Neon Collection swatched here and here.

How I'm lightening my hair

So last December, when I went to my in-laws for an early Christmas celebration I was greeted with a, "something looks different about you." It wasn't a good different either (to me at least), my hair had grown in very much darker than my other blonde locks and my eyebrows (not waxed or shaped or anything) was making it even more apparent.

Now I realize this is a dumb topic, but I've always been proud of the hue of my hair and how I've never had to dye it and my mother is still a natural blonde an is turning 60 this year – so why ruin a good thing?

Here are some photos from that Christmas, you'll be able to see how dark my roots are growing in. To hear that people were noticing this about me and saying I looked different, really hit me hard.

So I naturally freaked out, and was all worried about my hair and becoming an almost brunette, I was horrified. So when I was visiting my family for Christmas, my mother introduced me to this:

I started using these products: a shampoo and conditioner with extra citrus and chamomile to help speed up natural sun lightening and the spray which you spray in towel dried hair and then add the heat of a blow dryer to activate the lightening. So yeah, the spray does have peroxide in it, so I guess technically it is dying it a bit, but I am not experiencing any damage to my hair and the results are wonderful!

My hair has lightened and I am back to my bubbly blonde self again. The above photo shows how happy I am about artichokes, but it also applies to my hair too.