In Which I get New Agey

Ok, you guys, so it's been a big couple of days.  I got purple hair extensions, and librarian-chic glasses.  Combined with my nose piercing, I look punk-geek.  It's my new thing.  Now I just need the wardrobe to keep up with it.  It's hard to look punk-geek with clothes from Old Navy.   But I'm still wearing the same old stuff because I'm at another weight plateau.  It's ok, though.  I'm gonna bust through it, and do back-to-school clothes shopping, even though I'm not going back to school.  

punkgeek w/purple hair

However, I am still keeping up my Italian, in case you've been wondering.  I've even joined livemocha to find other Italian people to be friends with, so they can practice English, and I can practice Italian.  I tried posting on craigslist in Rome and Florence, but the only people who seemed to use it much were Americans looking for places to stay, so I wasn't counting on getting many responses.  We're planning a trip to the UK this fall, and I really want to go to Italy while I'm over there, just to order a cappuccino in Italian.  

AND I went to BlogHer in San Diego on Saturday.  It was a lesson in expectations.  I HAD been expecting to hang out with other punkgeek girly bloggers like me.  Instead, it was full of 3500 Mommy Bloggers.  Just what Heather needed.  A day with freaking Mommy Bloggers.  Yuck.  I had to leave the final keynote, with Ricki Fucking Lake waxing poetic about her new project, a documentary on natural childbirth.  And all the mommies looking enraptured.  Oh yes, do tell us more about a water birth, Ms Lake!  Please, do another talk show, and become the Oprah of water births!  

(I might feel differently about this whole thing once I actually manage to carry a child to term...but for now, puke)   

That being said, I did learn some stuff, and got some ideas and inspiration.  Stay tuned for the product of my inspiration, which I'll be talking about in the next few weeks, as I get it up and running.  Oooh.  Excitement.  I can tell everyone is waiting with baited breath!

(oh, and the funniest part was in the exhibits area.  There were a lot of household brands wanting to attract the mommy bloggers with free samples that they would review on their mommy blogs.  And lots of baby products, there for the same reason.  I did score two tubes of mascara from CVS, some high-heel foot insoles from Dr. Scholls, a bunch of toothpaste from Arm and Hammer, and a tempur-pedic lumbar pillow.  But the best, and I mean best, was a sex-toy company.  If you checked into their booth on 4square, they gave you a free vibrator - a $75 value.  The highlight was seeing this gay guy engaging in conversation with the sales reps about the available shapes, which weren't to his liking.  It was, beyond a doubt, the most surreal moment I've had in a long time.  Standing in a soulless convention center watching a guy dissect sex-toy design flaws while surrounded by thousands of women wearing their babies in little snuggly things on their shoulders discussing lactation.  It almost made my head explode.)

But the big thing for the week is Oil Pulling.  Yep, you read that right.  Oil Pulling.  It sounds more new-agey than it actually is.  My friend Sandor started doing it back in November, swears by it, and has me doing it now, too.  Essentially, you take some oil - not the kind you put in your car, but almost any other kind - and you swish it around in your mouth for 20 minutes a day.  This is supposed to cure diseases and make you feel awesome.  Some people say it's because there's a vein under your tongue that is a fast highway for all the toxins to get sucked up.  But I read this book, which essentially says that the reason it works isn't because of any weird thing having to do with veins or anything like that.  It's because swooshing oil around in your mouth for 20 minutes a day gets your mouth insanely clean, and since your mouth tends to be a massive breeding ground for bacteria, if you get it insanely clean, it frees up your immune system to work on other things in your body, like, say, arthritis.  

So I got some vegetable oil and stuck a tablespoon of it in my mouth, and went to work swooshing (it's called "pulling" because you're pulling the oil through your teeth, though the new-agey contingent calls it that because it's pulling the toxins from your body).  Then, after 20 minutes, I spat it out in the trash and rinsed my mouth out really well.  And I have to say, a week into it, something is happening.  The first thing I notice is how clean my mouth is.  My teeth are whiter, and yesterday I almost left the house without brushing them in the morning because my mouth felt so clean.  

I've only been doing it a week, and nothing miraculous has happened to me yet (well, I do notice that my skin seems to be getting better - the bags under my eyes aren't as dark, for example, and I haven't been sleeping any more) except I feel like I have a crazy clean mouth.  Sandor has done it since November, and didn't get sick all winter, even living in dirty London, so I don't know.  There might be something to it.  Ask me in a month - it seems like 30 days is about what it takes for people to really be fully detoxed.  Anyway, it's a funny way to spend the morning...