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How much does this baby like his bouncy chair?
This much!
My pal Caryn wrote today, looking for a post I wrote a while back about my struggle with the question of daily sunscreen use. What’s worse, I wondered (and still do): the chemicals seeping into our skin, day after day after day? Or the dangers of sun exposure? Ever since our move to San Diego in the fall of 2006, these questions have plagued me. My kids wear hats some of the time, and I know keeping covered is the best course of action, but still: it’s short-sleeve weather here almost all year round. And hats aren’t always preferable. I can’t stand wearing a hat, myself. But we’re all fair-skinned (one of us even has albinism!) and one of us is a cancer survivor, and, and, and…I always come back to: OK, sunscreen: which one?
In the comments of that old post, a couple of people linked to the EWG Skin Deep website which ranks sunscreens based on sun protection and lack of nasty chemicals. The rankings have been updated for 2009, and there is some helpful information on the site about the difference between UVA and UVB rays (most sunscreens only protect against UVB, the rays which cause sunburn, but UVA rays are the ones that can cause skin cancer) and the hazards of certain chemicals found in many sunscreens, including oxybenzone (which I was was dismayed to see is an ingredient in the the product I’ve been using this past year, a Philosophy brand sunscreen I spent too much money on).
(Hefty price tags are the one thing most of these products seem to have in common, no matter how they’re ranked. Sigh.)
Also ranked are daily moisturizers containing SPF. This was of even more interest to me than the sunscreen evaluation, since the result of that previous round of questioning had led me to switch the kids to UV Natural, a sunscreen I read about in the Chinaberry catalog. It has a rating of 1 (0 is best, 10 is worst) from EWG. We have also used Burt’s Bee’s Chemical Free Sunscreen, which only scores a 4 in the ranking, but the only con listed is fragrance. (Another chemical? Not likely with that brand, right?)
So for the kids, I felt like I’d found some decent options. (California Baby and Badger are also ranked very high in the 2009 list, and I happened to pick up a tube of California Baby Sunscreen Lotion No Fragrance at Target today. We haven’t tried it yet to see if it leaves a residue like some of them do. (Caryn mentioned that the Neutrogena brand she tried on her little guy leaves a white zinc-y residue.)
But I’m still looking for the perfect daily SPF-containing moisturizer. I have dry skin and really need a good moisturizer. (I still lament the loss of the brilliant Carrot Moisture Cream that The Body Shop used to sell.) It seems silly to use moisturizer and sunscreen: two face creams? Who has time for that? I share Alton Brown’s distaste for the unitasker.
Around the time of that first sunscreen post, I’d been briefly interested in the SPF-containing mineral foundations that everyone was talking about—Bare Minerals and that ilk. I hadn’t worn makeup in nearly 20 years at that point, but the Bare Minerals hype made it sound pretty appealing. Glowing skin and SPF? And minerals—so good for you, right? But then I read all about how Bare Minerals contain bismuth, which seemed alarming, and my hasty explorations of the various bismuth-free mineral foundations left me muddled and overwhelmed. Too expensive, too much work, too many little brushes to clutter up the bathroom.
It’s worth noting that the powder foundations like Bare Minerals are strongly advised against by the Skin Deep folks because not only do you wind up absorbing chemicals through your skin, you inhale the tiny particles as well. This blindingly obvious fact which had not previously occurred to me made me laugh and laugh. Oh the endless ways there are to ingest toxins nowadays!
Anyway, back I went to a face cream (another Body Shop cream but, sadly, nowhere near as lovely as the old carrot cream) and a separate sunscreen—the Philosophy one I splurged on because it didn’t smell like sunscreen at all. That tube has lasted me a year, and just last week I bit the bullet and reordered—and now I see it gets a lousy 5 in the EWG ranking because of oxybenzone. I haven’t opened the tube yet; I think I’ll return it.
But what to use instead? Why do these things have to be so crazy expensive? A jar or tube of any of the brands listed in the top ten on EWG’s “Best Moisturizers with Sunscreen” list will run you upwards of $30. That’s nuts, isn’t it?
And then there’s the whole question of nanoparticles, which—well, here. In brief, EWG recommends against nanoparticle-containing cosmetics such as eye shadow, but—to the surprise of its researchers—found in favor of sunscreens containing nanoparticles of zinc and/or titanium, on the grounds that whatever health risks may be associated with nanotechnology, they are less serious than the risks posed by UVA exposure.
Listen to me talking like some kind of beauty blogger. Ha, far from it: I’m just a fair-skinned, freckled 40-year-old who lives in a sunny climate. So: have any of you tried any of the products on this list? Or does the idea of shelling out that kind of dough make you howl with laughter?
Originally posted in April, 2005, when Jane was nine, Rose was six, and Beanie was four.
I was cleaning the bathroom this morning when Jane came in to ask me how to pronounce the word “usurp.” She had seen it in print a number of times but wasn’t sure how to say it. I told her, and then Rose wanted to know what it meant. So I gave some examples, including: “Or let’s say you’re sitting on my lap and I send you to get a tissue, and while you’re up, one of your sisters climbs in your place.”
Rose started to giggle. “A usurper!”
Jane wandered back out with her book. Then Beanie came in and perched beside Rose on the edge of the tub while I wiped down the sink. Bean’s hair was wild; it hadn’t been brushed yet. I sent her to get her hairbrush and when she returned, I sat down on the tub’s rim to tackle her curls.
“Hey!” Bean cried indignantly. “You took my spot!”
Rose cackled. “You usurped, Mommy! You’re a usurper!”
“What’s that?” asked Beanie. Rose explained.
Bean pondered. “I think,” she said, “that when a mommy surps, it’s okay.”
“U-surp,” Rose corrected.
Beanie was puzzled. “No I didn’t. Mommy surped.”
“No, U-surp!” Rose insisted.
“I surp? But I didn’t! Mommy did!”
By this point I was choking with laughter. Beanie took my paroxysms for some kind of dismay.
“It’s okay, mommy, I don’t mind when you surp me.”
“U-surp!” proclaimed Rose.
Beanie stared at her in disgust. “That’s what I SAID.” She humphed out of the room before Rose could get in the last word. I sat there howling. Sorry, Abbott and Costello. Your place in my heart has been surped.
Laurajean asked for some more book recommendations.
I’m going to list some favorite reads off the top of my head, with or without notes as I have the time. I may come back and add to the list later. And please all of you feel free to chime in with your own recommendations!
I’m thinking of books that aren’t already on all the lists of classics and don’t-misses. These are don’t-misses, in my opinion, but I never seem to see them on the lists.
Novels I’ve read recently and especially enjoyed (and posted about—check the lefthand sidebar for links):
The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett
The Sherwood Ring by Elizabeth Marie Pope
The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey
The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
Older favorites:
• Expecting Adam by Martha Beck. True account of a Harvard academic’s discovery that the baby she carries has Down’s Syndrome. A deeply moving narrative about the strange, inexplicable, often difficult events of her pregnancy—all the more moving because this is not a woman for whom the decision to bear her child regardless of his condition was a given. She seems almost surprised to discover that she and her husband cannot bring themselves to consider aborting the child, although nearly everyone she knows—doctors, professors, family—are urging them to do just that.
• The Blue Castle by L. M. Montgomery. One of Montgomery’s only books written for an adult audience. Not her best novel by far, but I find it curiously enchanting and reread it about once a year. The story of a timid, browbeaten 28-year-old woman who, for reasons best discovered as you read, throws caution to the wind and defies convention and family opinion by moving out of her mother’s house to nurse a disgraced and dying friend—the daughter of the town drunk. If you’ve read many of Montgomery’s short stories, you know that she is mighty fond of Giant Coincidence as a means of moving a plot forward, and this trait is laid on at its thickest in this novel. But somehow—it works and makes for a heartily satisfying read.
• I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith. I’ve only read the first 30 pages! But I’m loving it, and everywhere I turn this book pops up on someone’s list of Favorite Books Ever. I don’t know how I missed it—it only came across my radar a couple of years ago in Noel Perrin’s A Child’s Delight—but it went into my TBR pile immediately. I made the mistake, however, of buying it—which means library books and review copies keep usurping its place at the top of the pile. That’s not at all fair of me, though, because I also bought The Actor and the Housewife, didn’t I, and I read that one right away. Maybe it was because Scott pinched it from me, which spurred me to pinch it back.
• If you haven’t read the grown-up Betsy-Tacy books, then for heaven’s sake put them on the list—Betsy and the Great World and Betsy’s Wedding. And—no, more than and—especially!—especially the related but not-Betsy-Tacy book, Emily of Deep Valley. I’ve written about that one before, a long while back. Hmm, maybe I need to do some more writing about Betsy et al. Anyway, here’s what I had to say about Emily—
Emily is the kind of character we don’t often see in these days of “you have to do what’s right for you.” What seems “right” for Emily, devoted scholar, is a college education like the rest of her high-school chums. But she lives with a very elderly grandfather, and somehow, somehow, she can’t bring herself to leave him alone. That, her conscience whispers, wouldn’t be right.
Sometimes, you see, “right for you” isn’t the same as just plain Right.
Doing the real right thing, Emily finds, is often the hardest thing. She also finds out that the Right Thing can be like a doorway, and when you step through it, you find beauty on the other side, beauty in places you never knew existed.
• Oh! I know what not to miss. I Am One of You Forever by Fred Chappell, and its several sequels. Oh my goodness, these too warrant their own post or series of posts. Fred Chappell is one of the primary influences on my writing—and reading—life. I had the great privilege of studying under him in grad school—he was actually the reason I chose that particular MFA writing program; I turned down a full scholarship at another MFA program for a no-scholarship deal at UNC-Greensboro in order to learn from Fred. Next to saying yes to Scott, it was the best decision I ever made. Okay, so I Am One of You Forever: enchanting. Prose written like poetry written like tall tale. No, wait, this really does need to be its own post. So never mind, or stay tuned, or do mind and go read the book and then we can talk, or something. A feeble sentence of plot summary: boy growing up in the mountains of North Carolina enjoys visits from a series of eccentric relatives. One of those books that’s make-you-cry funny and then turns around and outright makes you cry. And the language, oh my Lord, just gorgeous. Sentences like fat ripe plums you want to sink your teeth into, and the juice runs down your chin.
That’s five (plus the four from the sidebar). I could keep at this all night, but there’s a baby who needs me. Enough for now? Shall we keep this going? Sharing our favorite books for getting lost in?
I know not many of you have had a chance to read it yet, but I’ve had a couple of requests for discussion of this book, so I’ll go ahead and open a post for it now. Chime in when you can!
You can read the first chapter at author Shannon Hale’s website.
WARNING: There will very likely be spoilers in the comments below, since it’s difficult to discuss any book without discussing its plot. That’s why I’d rather do most of my book-talking in the comments rather than in a post. These open threads are an attempt at a compromise between my oh-I-just-read-this-and-am-dying-to-talk-about-it urges and my deep abhorrence of plot spoilers. Read on at your own risk.
This is not an ordinary week. My big kids are off adventuring with their grandparents and cousin. The little ones and I are keeping busy at home—really at home because Scott’s car engine blew out on his way home Monday. He’s got the minivan for the week.
We’ve got this.
Sometimes I really think the backyard is the nicest place to be.