fitforafemme.com

Scent: In keeping with today’s sartorial theme, I chose Heeley’s Cardinal for review. Look for notes of incense, cistus, grey amber, patchouli and vetiver. It does loom rather ominously both out of the decant and upon first application, and perhaps it’s because I’ve not spent much time in cathedrals thick with incense, but this is definitely less gothic and more…well, it’s sharp and like hearing the soprano-only section of what is obviously a richly tectured choral arrangement. It seems like folks enjoy this layered with other types of fragrances, but I’m having a little bit of difficulty imaging something that deserves to be punished by this. Sorry, Heeley! FAIL!

M simply says this smells “musty.”

Confession: I confess that I would like to share more self-defense tips with you. I am also very pleased to announce that I am taking the 3 hr. mini self-defense session next month. I can’t wait! Keep in mind these are techniques that are taught in the classes, but after my friend took the 3-day course, some of the good-to-know tips she shared that ANYONE can do without much training can be found below. Practice ‘em, cowgirls!

• ELBOW STRIKE: The assailant is behind your right shoulder. Reach forward with your right hand, then step back with your right foot, bringing your elbow up and striking the face or throat. Always keep your striking arm close  to your body, look at your target by turning your head only, as the strike follows through your whole body turns and you end up facing your assailant, ready for the next move. Practice on the left side also.
• EYE STRIKE: Keeping your thumb and fingers tightly together and your elbows in close to your body. The strike is quick and sharp, with the hands coming back immediately.
  
• HEEL PALM: (Stance) Feet shoulder width apart, dominant foot back, toes facing forward, knees bent, hands up, elbows in. Striking hand (dominant) stays in the center of your body and the strike comes straight from there, a quick upward movement to the assailant’s nose, coming back to ready position. Strike using the heel of the hand, fingers pulled back.
• KNEE TO GROIN: A classic. (M often wonders why women don’t knee men in the groin more often. Like, ALWAYS. She’s right. Motherfuckers deserve it, more often than not from what I hear from some of y’all, and God’s honest truth is I’d probably say that more if I were straight, so you can just take your goddamn man-hating dyke stereotypes and shove ‘em right up your ass!) Anyway, on to the knee-to-groin move: Striking leg back, hands up in protective position (elbows in, hands up, palms out). Using the top of the thigh, just a little above the knee to strike the testicles, bring the back leg up sharply and step through the target. You can also do this to the head of the assailant, with even greater stepping-through motion.

Scent: Forgive me, I’ve been so negligent in the fragrance department! I won’t pretend I’ve been

too busy – I have been busy, but also just sort of moving from Winter to Spring wrapped in a cloud of contentment. To tell the truth I was once so opposed to

that word, equating it with

tedium, mediocrity and perhaps worst of all, a sort of falsehood. Perhaps I am lucky in that it now means something else entirely, something epitomizing pleasure, satiety and a dreamy and genuine peace of mind.

Which brings me to today’s new fragrance: Ligea La Sirena from the Italian island of Capri’s Carthusia. This is so well named, “bearing the name of one of the three Mermaids who tried in vain to bewitch Ulysses, Ligea is a feminine, sensual nectar, surprising and full of passion, which combines the warm powdery scent of wild white rose with the fresh, soft aroma of mandarins.” It’s just…enchanting, really lovely. The citrus isn’t at all overwhelming, perfectly balanced with sweetness and the right amount of opoponax, or sweet myrrh – something earthy and almost salty to anchor it all down. I love it. I find it comforting!

Let’s take a closer look at the Carthusia logo, shall we? (It’s not a stretch to say that if I were into whimsical and playful tattoos, I would absolutely get this. It’s cheeky and awesome!)

PS. I’ve missed you all!

PPS. Bullocks! I left out the earrings. Delightful little art deco studs from Silver Crane Sterling – I love their shiny little things.

Hello, kittens! Where have I BEEN!? Well, we got snowed in on our ski weekend, so I’ve been a bit behind on this and that. Completely snowed in, almost two feet of snow that ZERO weather reports anticipated! They had to close the lifts for 3 hrs. on Saturday because there was lightning on the mountain (boo! hiss!), but since we were stuck in Tahoe anyway, we did a half day of skiing on Sunday to make up for it. It was SO AWESOME. It really was! M was so proud of me and such a good teacher! I never fell off a chair lift, not even once, and I mastered all three types of snow you can possibly ski in (according to M) – packed snow, slushy snow and fresh powder snow! We did a whole bunch of practice runs on the bunny slopes and then M & I took an awesome, more advanced trail down on the second day. It was gorgeous. Look!

I’ll start at the beginning for those of you who aren’t sick of this story yet. When we got to the cabin on Friday afternoon after picking up my rental skis, poles and ski boots, we had about 1.5 hrs. of daylight left, so we hiked into the forest in the back of the cabin and found a mostly flat spot for me to try and ski around in. There was a lot of giggling and heavy breathing. Our friends S & S arrived with the petite just as twilight began to fall and we called it a day. We made some pasta, ate while we soaked in all the dreamy religious splendor of the cabin, then headed into the hot tub with M’s fabulous cocktails to relax.

The next morning on a bunny slope with VERY packed snow, M taught me more about skiing. She kept yelling at me to “stop doing that fancy stuff!” because apparently I was just sort of instinctively being a badass before I was ready to actually be a badass. After a few hours it began to snow lightly, M’s ears got too cold, and we headed down the mountain to get her a more suitable hat.

That’s when they closed the gondolas due to lightning and sent everyone down the mountain. That’s also when we decided it was perfect timing for a boozy 3 hr. lunch at Fire & Ice.

When we discovered that the California Base Lodge side of the mountain was still open, we all kind of just grabbed our stuff and made like bats out of hell to get over there. The light snow had turned into a snowstorm, and it was fantastic. The snow got slushy. I’d had a mimosa and a cosmo. M forgot to tell me the rules were different on slushy snow. For the first time that day, I fell on my ass! But it was slushy and actually kind of soothing, to fall. Eventually, I stopped falling, but then it was time to go home. The snow was falling even harder as we stopped to get some things for dinner and headed back to the cabin, sore but happy, and the snowfall was so pretty AND we saw a coyote on the way back.

The grownups recovered in the hot tub and with booze and muscle relaxers. We tried to watch Rachel Getting Married, but it was beyond awful.

The next morning everything was covered in almost 2 feet of snow. We checked weather reports, checked the roads, and decided we were snowed in. There was no way we were leaving on Sunday, as planned. After a few cups of coffee, we all ended up outside shoveling the driveway and getting the snow off the cars, but we couldn’t resist the temptation any longer, so we called Heavenly and got the petite into a half-day class and got ourselves half-day passes and went back out! It was incredible. Much colder, but skiing in fresh powder is something else! M and I did some new green runs, but I got super bored and we decided that I was ready for an “easy” blue run. M warned me that the thing about blue runs is that they’re much narrower, which means controlling turns is, like, essential to not dying by going over a cliff of death, etc.

And she was right.
And they get kind of steep.
Well, like really steep, but not traumatically steep.
A little traumatic.

Anyway, the first part was cake (after the arduous half-ski/half-walk it took to get on the trail) and so beautiful, and it’s where (in the photos) everything is covered up with snow and we’re way up high and you can see the lake in the back. But the last third of that trail was KILLER. We just got to a point all of the sudden where it was steep and narrow and looked like NO ONE had skied through it at all. And I fell a few times – once it almost knocked the wind out of me! – b/c M forgot to tell me that we weren’t linking our turns and just going turn-stop, turn-stop, turn-stop, so our speed wouldn’t get out of control since we had no idea what was around the next corner. Sometimes I just coasted kind of perpendicular to the slope on both skis down. Some other folks just kicked their skis off, gave up and WALKED DOWN. And then there was the German mother with her tiny baby on skis who WHIZZED past us both. I was all, “I hate that dumb baby.” So, yeah, I am somewhere in between the sad people who gave up and the dumb, fast baby: I skied the whole way down!

Anyway (I’m almost done, I swear), we get to the last leg of this crazy trail, right, and it merges into this trail that a couple of black diamond trails end with. IT IS WIDE AND STEEP AS FUCK. (For me. A beginner.) It’s called “World Cup,” for starters. I say to M, “That sounds…Olympic. I am not sure about this” and she says, “You can do it, just follow me.” Equally or just slightly less terrifying is the fact that all these SUPER fancy skiers and snowboarders are fucking RACING DOWN TOWARD YOU at indeterminate speeds. And might, like, behead you if you don’t get out of the way fast enough.

BUT I FUCKING ROCKED THAT SHIT. SO HARD.

It was bumpy (mogul-y?) and I went FAST and it was so awesome. Once we both made it down all the way, our legs were shaking and we were spent and made a beeline for the bar. It was an absolutely perfect and surprising and amazing ski weekend, and I love it so much that M is taking me back up for my birthday soon. I’m so excited. I can’t wait. I dream of it, even, it’s totally insane. We’re gonna get me my own skis and everything.

That was less confession and more novella, but I hope you enjoyed it and the photos, too!

(I’ll add a few extras tomorrow morning! It’s v. late and I must away to bedfordshire!)

Confession: Too many to list. I will start by explaining this outfit. M, H and I all decided that in the battle of all-girl zombie roller derby (too early, high cover charges, no dancing) vs. Cockblock (a party full of moody lesbians and too many foul-smelling straight boys, “New Lesbo” music) vs. Cockfight (a party full of pleasant, chatty homos wearing nice cologne and the promise of 80smashupelectroJOCKSTRAPjams), there was a clear winner.

The dress code called for locker room attire. We did our best. I refused to wear sneakers out dancing. I have boundaries, you know. But I did wear a whistle (which was used mightily throughout the night on racist, sexist, non-PC and other derogatory comments) and a wristband.

Other items of note:

• On the way into the city, we listened to Fleetwood Mac on cassette. CASSETTE! M was PUMPED.
• I left a voicemail for a stranger named “Evan” re: fine whiskeys at the request of a very excited Indian gay
• Everyone we met has worked on one cycle or another of ANTM
• The only person we met that we didn’t like was Kenny G, because he kept dissing “rude immigrant and/or ‘illegals’ lesbians” and the only reason he didn’t get a spiked heel through his balls is b/c his date begged me not to destroy his only chance at sex that night
• Gays we met and loved sided with us against Kenny G, making hilarious saxaphone noises in his direction
• Which forced Kenny G to leave the premises immediately
• We all got awesome t-shirts during the midnight giveaway
• All the gays kept treating me like some very fragile and cute little doll
• One gay had on a real bowtie and pink socks, and another had little elephant socks
• Vegan gays were told to “just give up” on convincing us of their cause; I hissed to H “Don’t tell them I wear fur, god damn it!” because they were v. sweet and nice
• This one’s for Rojo: The DJ played 2 seconds of Ready For The Floor by Hot Chip, and I got so excited, but then he stopped it. H blames this and other things on the iPhone generation aka “The Downfall of Civilization.” (I will remedy this by playing it tomorrow night at LBF Mondays at the Glas Kat!)

Confession: I’d sent in my RSVP for the Lush Grand Opening Party at Bay Street two weeks ago and needed a tub of Dream Cream, so M & I dragged our happily spent bodies from bed and set out on the day. After appx. 30 seconds of crowded Lush store air, M made a beeline outside and stood like Cool Hand Luke against the glass window while I shopped. Remembering the goodie bag that came with a $40 purchase, I snagged a tub of Ultra Bland cleanser and one of their lip pots, which got me the following 100% free (well, you know): Olive Branch solid perfume, an Avobath bomb, a bottle of Smitten hand cream (so delicious) and a Pop In The Bath bubble bar. Plus, they handed out little Lush cookies for nibbles.

And I know it’s SO last summer, but FINALLY a pair of aviators that don’t make me look like Nicole Ritchie. Whee!

And then we bought even MORE Girl Scout cookies, as you can see.

Confession: Putting song lyrics on the faux-Polaroids is my new jam, y’all! This afternoon was such a lovely, crisp, warm afternoon that M and I took a very late Italian lunch. M, still recovering from strep throat (awful), abstained, but we were seated outdoors and I couldn’t resist a glass of prosecco. I was carded when I ordered it, however, and I blame it entirely on the bunny dress. Speaking of dresses, after our lovely lunch I tipsily suggested we wander into a little boutique I like (I forget its name…Crush? That’s it, Crush.), where I found the most adorable Spring dress by BB Dakota, and M scooped it up for me. (I think she likes it when I let her pick out my dresses – I’ve also recently informed her that she can select ALL of my new nail polish colors, as she often picks out shades I’d never try that end up looking gorgeous.) It was a very sweet afternoon.

I felt like this was a good next step in the self-defense arena, because it’s something we go through every single day of our lives and it can be an important first line of defense against assault:

Eye contact with men we don’t know, whether or not they appear to be aggressive, and how to deal with it.

From another Impact Bay Area tip sheet:

In the animal world, dominance is often decided by who holds eye contact the longest. Humans are not so different in this regard. Often women express the concern that if they are being stared at by a stranger, maintaining eye contact may be seen as an “invitation” to approach her.

There are different ways of looking which convey very different messages. Maintaining a calm, steady gaze in an interaction with someone else can send the message not only that you are paying attention, but also that you are not susceptible to to intimidation. You do NOT have to challenge someone to a staring match. You can look in such a way to show that you are aware – but do not want any kind of physical or verbal engagement.

You can look at someone with welcome in your eyes or you can give “a look guaranteed to freeze water.” If someone fails to respond to this clear signal by backing off, you have learned something important about his intentions – more than you would have by simply ignoring him.

The most common forms of self-sabotage in creating the assertive effect you desire is to avert your eyes and/or smile. You might actually want to practice NOT SMILING, since so many of us do it so automatically.

A hint for a big height difference: If someone is taller than you and is causing you to crane your neck backwards, take a step or two back to lessen the angle.

I don’t know about y’all, but I’m guilty of the eye aversion / smiling thing sometimes. Not always, but I’ve also experienced the death-don’t-fuck-with-me glare garner unwelcome feedback like, “Why are you so sad/mad? Cheer up!” “Bitch!” “Bitch, you have a bad attitude!” “Fuck you, then.” “What the fuck are you looking at me like that for?” etc. I usually end up smiling briefly at homeless men and women I don’t stop to give money to for whatever reason (read: guilt), men I’ve arbitrarily deemed harmless (stupid, stupid, stupid – MUST break that habit) and averting my eyes after I’ve given just enough stare of death, have begun to feel creepy myself and don’t want to (ding! ding! ding!) send the wrong message.

Jesus. I need practice!

I think the part that I bolded/underlined is really, really valuable, though. No matter what, if someone you don’t know doesn’t instantly just give up / back off / go away, they probably deserve to be kicked hard in the nuts and not just a glare of death, yo.

*Oops. Short-sleeved knit sweater  by Pop!