Hair Removal Woes

Everyone knows that hair removal is a pain. Shaving is tedious, but cost effective(ish), yet you have to do it over and over and over and that is tiresome. It cuts the hairs at an angle making them stronger and sharper and for someone like me, with sensitive skin, any skin that rubs those sharp blades are quickly irritated. 


Waxing is a great alternative, but the salon is expensive and time consuming. Waxing at home is, in my experience, on a continuum between hilarious and painful. I have tried the wax that needs to be microwaved and that has never worked. I just last night tried the Veet strips and today I have less hair, but also less skin and wax that I cannot get off...not all of it is in a very convenient place to even try to remove. Yeah, that's unpleasant. 


In my experience of having a professional do the waxing for me, I have developed some very strong opinions. In Athens (Georgia, not Greece) I went to this wonderful spa (Urban Sanctuary) that used products that were as close to natural as possible. The wax they used was hard wax, meaning that you pull the wax itself off, no strips needed. It was all natural, it didn't stick to your skin and it didn't leave any residue behind. I would recommend picking a spa that uses this wax, or buying this wax yourself if you want to do it at home. 


The spa I go to here in China uses hot wax with strips and generally irritates my skin. I have never in my life had an ingrown hair until I started going to this spa and now I can literally count 5+ at any given time. These ingrown hairs were the reason I got the Veet strips, thinking that at least if I did it myself I would have no one to blame but yours truly and it would cost me less. As it turns out, I do not have the stones to rip strips from my own skin...I am too much of a wuss. So I had hubs help me. In the process, I had maybe 2 layers of skin ripped off, 75% of the 100% of the hair I was trying to remove actually removed AND hubs accidentally got my hair (from my head) stuck on one of the wax strips...goodbye to 20-30 strands that had to be CUT OUT. I was pissed slightly upset. 

Not as effective as the regular but less painful

Hurts like hell and ripped off my skin

 So, now I will now continue on my journey to finding a better solution to this problem. Lazer hair removal would be great if....

1. I were in a country where I trusted someone to do it 
2. I had the kind of expendable income necessary to pay for it

I have neither the trust nor the expendable income so that will have to wait a few years.


What will I try next? Hard wax? Epilator? Sugaring? Does anyone have an experience with doing either of these at home? Please share...I need all the help I can get. 

Customer Service

Subway in China is quite an experience. Not THE subway, although that is an experience in and of itself, but in this case I mean Subway the restaurant. Yesterday while standing in line waiting for my sandwich this is the thought that was running through my head...


While I stand in line watching the girl who is the first person in the assembly line that is Subway I am struck by her hatred of her job. It is evident to anyone that watches her make a sandwich. She Hates it. Why should her disdain for her job be taken out on my sandwich though? She shreds the bread, attacking it with the knife, tossing it down on the counter and throwing on the meat, followed by the cheese. It's almost like she is intentionally making them uneven so only every other bite will have both tastes. She does all of this, again, with a clear hatred for the menial task. 


She does this regardless of whether you are sweet as can be or curt with her. Some people are just content being surly. Motivated enough to ruin your sandwich but not to change her circumstances. 


Other than my lunch experience, this week was busy. Last week was busy and this coming week will be busy. My boss is back in town, we are slammed with work and we are expecting to get 2-3x the amount of work we have now coming in over the next few quarters. Certain people in my team are under preforming and have been for quite a while and nothing has been done. That is all changing now and over the next month people's weaknesses will need to disappear...if they don't, next month, people will be fired. It's tough but it needs to happen. So sorry for the hardly ever blogging over the past month but work has ratcheted up and I have had to spend the weekends trying to relax, work out, shop for the next weeks groceries and work on school. Soon I will find my balance and blogging will come back in!


Rejoice! Winter is almost over!

 <---------------Goodbye 




Hello --->

Check it out!

http://kckilpatrick.hubpages.com/hub/Beijing-Expat-Apartments

Wrote this article...I want feedback! Please read it and let me know what you think. 
Happy Tuesday!

R.I.P Whitney Houston

I listened to Whitney Houston what seems like every day when I was little. My mom always had that CD in her car and I knew every word to every song. It is such a shame that she had to die when the first thing everyone thinks is drug overdose. I wish someone could have helped her get clean and she could have helped herself. She was an amazing performer.

Green Smoothie Recipe

With Lent fast approaching, hubs and I have been discussing what to give up and what to take up. We have both decided to give up alcohol and to give up eating meat for dinner. I have been wanting to move us towards a more vegetarian way of eating for a while and this is the perfect time to try it out. For the last two weeks I have been actually cooking meals for us and now that I'm practically an expert (that's a joke) I want to shake things up again. For other cooking challenged wives out there, here are the recipes I have tried and where I found them:


More Than Toast blog 

• Easy Creamy Chicken Wonderful
• Healthy Crispy Chicken Fajitas Wonderful even though I hate cornflakes

All Recipes: Green Pea Pesto Recipe (Didn't love this one but with some tweaking it would work)

Plus another recipe that was flour covered chicken pan fried and then left to simmer in balsamic dressing. It was WONDERFUL!

Anyway, I digress. I wanted to have a healthy shake today after I worked out for the first time in almost a month a little while. 

My Recipe:

A Handful of fresh spinach, 5 large strawberries, 1 banana, 1 small piece of ginger, 1 cup of water, 1 cup of orange juice and 1 tablespoon of brown rice protein powder all blended together and it turned out great. I knew it was healthy so I was going to drink it regardless of whether it tasted like grass clippings or not but alas it was healthy and tasted good...so rarely the case. 

Try it out and let me know what you think or post healthy recipes that you make that are also tasty! Any vegetarian main courses you know of would be greatly appreciated. 

Happy Weekend

Questions for whomever

Does anyone that reads my blog know anything about freelance writing? I am curious about possibilities for earning a little bit more money every month...Shocking I know. But again shocking, I would like to pay off my debts faster and save more. So anyone that knows of anything that doesn't involve being spam/ signing up for $5.99 a month for sketchy "amazing" job opportunities that are most usually crap than I would be THRILLED to hear about it!


I hope everyone had a great first weekend of February 2012!

Highlights in photos

Some highlights from our trip to Tianjin 

Awesome mini bar, Sky vodka, Hennessy 

The icy river outside of the St. Regis

Pretty bridge

Totally unrelated, the pretty flowers my hubs got me just to be sweet