Pathetic Attempts at Stress Reduction

Sadly, I didn't attend London Fashion Week this time. And I also gave New York & Milan a miss as well . I just couldn't spare the time. You see, I was far too busy with my v own Fashion Week, what with my daily airing of outfits freshly thrifted from Bednobs & Broomsticks over the Summer Holidays as well as staging my yearly fashion event - the annual Market stall of all our fashion castoffs at the Rozelle Markets with my great friends, AJ & The Ex School Nurse.
But more on that shortly.

Bath time Fun.
Each day I scamper out of bed & into the bath which lately, in a desperate bid to detox or de-stress or de-something, I've been shoving handfuls of Epsom salts & baking soda & lavender oil into. I got the idea from a post I read on Facebook.
I can't say that I feel any different except the bath has a nastier than usual ring of grime around it. But maybe it's better for the bath to have the ring of grime rather than me.

Pathetic Attempts at Stress Reduction
In case you were wondering , I do do other things to detox/destress/desomething.
1. I listen to meditation beats every day from an app on my phone. You can't really imagine The Dalai Lama doing that, can you?

2. I box once a week. It's not really proper boxing or anything - I'm not wearing satin shorts or a mouthguard that keeps slipping out of my mouth. And I'm not in a boxing ring & there's no audience, except for the multitudes of dogs that hang around in the park where I'm doing it.
But it feels good. Jay, my personal trainer, looks at me & says, "Go on, hit me!" And then I imagine all the people who I'd like to hit in one big conga line that spans the entire park.
OMG, how could I have said that? I must be stressed...as if I'd have a conga line of people I'd like to bash senseless? If I was the Dalai Lama, the conga line would be full of people I wanted to hug. But I'm not the Dalai Lama.

3. Instead of coming home after a hard day & pouring myself a stiff scotch , I lie down for twenty minutes & listen to calming music. My current favourite is Snatum Kaur, an American Sikh with a breathtaking voice who sings Indian devotional songs with catchy titles like Song of the Heart. Or is it, The Universe? I can't remember. I even sometimes listen to Enya which I don't think many people would admit to. But it seems that I've unknowingly swallowed a truth serum & I'm suddenly telling you everything.

4. Practising Effective Sleep Hygiene. Don't you just love that term? For one wonderful moment, I thought that I may have made it up. But I just checked with Dr Google, (or should it be Pope Google? ) & realised that I didn't.
In case you were wondering, It just means going to bed at the same time every nite without fluffing around on social networking sites or watching an entire season of Breaking Bad in one go. Or doing some frantic last minute belly dancing.

God, I can't go on any more with this tedious list, I'm boring myself to death. But that's one of the things about being sixty. You can't go on acting like Auntie Mame forever, otherwise you end up looking like,quelle horreur, Brigitte Bardot. And I'm not quite ready for that yet.
Talking of bedtime, I must hop in & drift off while I listen to a few bars of soothing Snatum. Great music, but Snatum sounds like a name you'd give a pet rat. Or perhaps a hamster.
I'll have to post again tomorrow with a report of the stall.
In the meantime, I'll leave you with a snap of me at the end of a v long day. I'mmwearing a Costume National checked shirt & the usual sweat pantaloons.

A Castle of Cliches

It's 9:27pm & dangerously close to my Official Bedtime. So I must make haste.
I've been back at school for a week & surprise yawn surprise yawn, it feels like I've never been away.
Don't you hate it when you hear yourself roll out some tired old cliche? Actually it's not tired so much as Totally Exhausted.
I'd love to spend the rest of the blog entry listing all the tired old cliches that I routinely wheel out, much like the list of Jobs that I'd Rather Not Do that I mentioned last time, but I won't.
Instead, I'll walk you through my Outfits for last week.

First cab off the rank (another cliche that's so exhausted it must be on its last legs . Quelle horreur - I'm building one cliche on top of another. I'll soon have a Castle of Cliches ) is a black & White Charlie Brown frock which sadly is Synthetic. In the past I happily wore the most prickly of synthetics with gay abandon. It never worried me that I was burning up like a charcoal chicken inside a Sea of Polyester.
But now it does. Maybe because I managed to score some silken garments from Bednobs, my favourite charity shoppe, & finally at age sixty, I discovered the Luxury of Silk.
Don't you just love the word Luxury? It's got to be one of the Best Words of All along with Home & Bacon & Poodle & of course Love.

A Short List of Luxury:
1. Silk garments
2. 1200 thread count cotton sheets. I now own two pairs in light blue. I adore them but since they were washed they've become v creased & I'm certainly not going to bother ironing them. How can you iron king sized sheets anyway ? An impossible feat.
They still feel luxurious though.
3. Having a coffee mug that says, "actually I'm a rocket surgeon"
4. Having a classroom that is air conditioned. I know that sounds ridiculous in this day & age, I mean, who outside people who hold up Stop-Go signs at roadworks doesn't have air con at work?
I never did. Until now. So it feel like luxury.
5. Having a pedicure. I love the sheer luxury of sitting back in a vibrating chair & having my feet pampered & coiffed. I did this yesterday, a perfect Sunday afternoon activity that is guaranteed to eliminate any End of Weekend Ennui. . I totally loved the experience even though two young women next to me talked at the tops of their hyena-like voices about the break up of Miranda Kerr's marriage to Orlando Bloom & the rumours of James Packer's involvement in the breakup. And then of course there was the endless tut-tutting about Shane Warne's sexting to his ex-wife which sent Liz Hurley scuttling back to her old squeeze Hugh Grant. By the time they wheeled out the new allegations against Woody Allen, I had my ear buds firmly in place & I was listening to ACDC full throttle on my iPhone. Highway to Hell never sounded so good.

Must now hop into bed with creased but luxurious sheets.