lesterbee

poor neglected space

2007-08-09T17:22:00.000+10:00

oh poor little lesterbee blog... it seems my "personal" has combined with my "crafty" and all manner of both are now being posted on my onegirl blog. i like this little space though, and i'll keep it here, but for the time being, until i find a purpose for this space, just visit me over there.

xox
lester

ps. and if you're wondering about the house renos - they're going. slowly. and because i have to live with them and view them every day, i haven't really felt like posting about them. BUT there should be some major progress whilst i'm in canada for three weeks and there will be plenty of "decorating" pics on onegirl when we get to that stage.

23.05.07

2007-05-23T16:49:00.000+10:00

so we've been in our new house for a little over 5 weeks now and i thought i'd better do an update as to what we've achieved since then! in short, not as much as i was expecting but i guess that's always the way with renos. we're limited to saturdays and sundays as the short days are really cutting into what we could be getting done in the evenings - i keep telling myself that things will progress much more quickly in the summer when we're working on the big changes to the back of the house and kitchen (if we ever get the front bit done)! anyway, here's a running list:

shane has pulled all of the plastic cladding off of the house to reveal quite filthy, and in average shape, pale salmon pink weatherboards. lovely! he's also pulled out most of the air conditioning/heating units in the front, including the one that was in the old brick fireplace - it looks so much nicer without a hideous 70's heater stuck in the middle. i bought some great vinatge leadlight windows for the front two rooms:

they need a coat of antique white paint and a few panes of glass replaced before they go in. from the same ebay seller i bought 6 old solid wood doors for the grand sum of $20 and when shane was picking everything up the guy gave him 3 more doors so we're pretty well set in that area.

yes, they're filthy but i'm planning on giving them a wash this weekend (while i keep a wary eye out for spiders). since the doors were such a bargain i think we should splurge on some really beautiful vintage door handles, just need to convince shane. i also picked up a fantastic 1930s fireplace mantle for $50 from an antique store in newport that was closing down - the master bedroom is going to be soooooo nice!

i 've spent heaps of time in the garden - making shane cut down two giant dead trees, tidying up the lawn and pruning branches. i got myself a compost bin and have the front garden bed along the fence cleared and ready for 6 rose bushes that i just ordered. never thought i'd be a rose person but they're all growing so well in the dry weather and almost everyone on our street has beautiful blooms at the moment - just felt i had to jump on the bandwagon. i ordered a variety of bare rooted hybrid tea and floribunda bushes in pale creamy apricots, whites and pale pinks. i think they'll look lovely with our soon to be pale blue/grey house with antique white trim.

and, um, that's about where we're at! over the next few weeks shane will be working on restumping the house (it's been partially done but not in a patriculary good way so he's basically redoing all of it) and then we have to decide where to go from there - probably the bathroom reno which will see me scurrying to work at 7:45 am to shower on cold winter mornings!

13.05.06

2007-05-13T20:09:00.000+10:00

happy mother's day, mom! these are all blooming in our yard right now, it's so interesting to see what pops up week to week.

01.05.07

2007-05-01T11:28:00.000+10:00

sweetpeas are sprouting...

and baxy is cute as ever on his very first birthday!

20.04.07

2007-04-20T10:46:00.000+10:00

baxter is sooooo diggin' the backyard (and i don't mean diggin' as in holes in the ground) and so am i. it's so amazing to walk around and know that all this space is mine (and i pretty much mean mine as shane's not much of a gardener), all these plants, all these trees, and all, all this grass. i think someone forgot to tell out yard that we're in the middle of a huge drought. everything is growing like crazy and we're devoting this weekend to yard clean-up. shane's got the chainsaw and trailer from bendigo to get rid of a few dead trees, including one that takes up a HUGE amount of our backyard. i can't wait until it's gone to see how much room we really have and to free the gorgeous hibiscus tree/bush that is trapped beneath one of the fat, gnarled branches. check out the blooms:

i've got to get some pics of a tree in our front yard that started blooming this week, too. it's amazing - and i really can't tell you how much i love that plants bloom all year round here instead of the limited 4 month growing period i grew up with in canada. i still find it hard to believe that flowers are just popping up now, in the middle of autumn.

and, mom, look! i pruned back the LEMON tree (not limes like we thought) last weekend. did you know lemons have big, very sharp thorns?

that creepy awning stuff is coming down this weekend!

12.04.07

2007-04-12T15:54:00.000+10:00

a group of us went to the point nepan music festival last weekend and stayed at our friend ben's absolutely gorgeous beach house. fabulous company aside, i just don't think i'm a festival kind of gal anymore. lineups. expensive everything. crowds. more lineups. bigger crowds. it was the first year of the festival and they had some royal screw ups - the line ups for the completely under numbered women's toilets were unbelieveable on saturday. one of my friend's sister waited in line for 40 MINUTES and gave herself a migraine in doing so. nice. all of this made me a little cranky but sunday was a huge improvement. after a leisurely, early morning walk along the beach with emily, ben and our dogs i was chilled out and already knew what to expect from the day. we drove in two cars, paying $20 for parking instead of the $10 each we paid on saturday to take the (supposedly free) bus. they added a whole bunch of extra women's facilities and there seemed to be slightly less people milling about. the weather was absolutely amazing and we lay in the sun and soaked in the tunes. saw plenty of good bands but my highlight had to be the magic numbers who had me up and shaking my ass like i haven't for a mighty long time.

lou and sandy

em and ben

06.04.07b

2007-04-06T21:19:00.000+10:00

my upstairs neighbours, the 20 something gay asian duo (yet not a couple), are having friends over for the 50 millionth night in a row and are VERY LOUDLY enjoy round after round of karaoke while alternating running up and down the stairs while calling out to each other while stomping like elephants and i'm sitting here, drinking a pleasant glass of red wine, giving them the double bird and whispering "one more week, suckas."

06.04.07

2007-04-06T20:22:00.000+10:00

well hello there! long time no, er, write... my little craft blog seems to have taken most of my attention and affection lately but that is now to all change, for a few long months anyway. we took possession of our new house yesterday and i'll be writing here more often with updates and possibly rants about our renovations. my sister has been begging for photos and i promised her some here yesterday but i found it's really hard to get a decent shot of the place. there are trees that obscure the front and the doorways are at such angles that it's nearly impossible to get an over view of a whole room. so let me paint a picture, if you will...

it's a 1940's weatherboard house that was originally a 2 bedroom but has had an extension done on the back so it now is a 3 bedroom. the extension is a bit shabby so while we'll be keeping the same dimensions, it probably has to be pretty much rebuilt (which means taking down the faux wood wall paneling that covers every wall and CEILING. fig.1). the three bedrooms are at the front of the house and are in pretty decent shape - by that i mean all we have to do to is rip out the existing built in robes (note: australian houses don't [or didn't in the 40s] typically have closets so many had wardrobes built in the 70s or 80s. sidenote: they also don't typically have basements which really sucks. all that extra space, just lost. and wouldn't it be the perfect spot to wait out those 40 degree days???), rip out the carpet (which we started on today) and then build new robes and paint all three rooms and the hallway. i'm expecting this to take up to 3 months (i'm trying to be realistic, even pessimistic, about how long the renos will take in hopes that if i expect the worst, i will be pleasantly surprised) (wow, this is just like having a conversation with me, isn't it? lots of asides and extra bits!) which means we'll be living in the extension/living room for that time - queen bed, 3 seater and 2 seater sofa, armchair, tv, plus a myriad of boxes and our clothes in suitcases. all in one comfy room! won't that be fun?! once that is done we can move into those three rooms while we work on the rest of the house for god knows how long. see, we're changing the bathroom into an ensuite; the laundry room into the main bathroom; and the toilet with bizarre closet/room where it looks like the previous tentants may have chopped people into little bits (fig. 2) into the laundry room. then there's still the kitchen(fig.3) and extension/living room to redo. yippee!

as many people who read this here long neglected blog will know, we looked at houses for a looooooong time. almost a year. and the house we've ended up with, our house, is good but it's by no means great. the yard is great. the sidedrive is great. the house is only okay but it will be great. it's just going to take awhile. and a lot of work. but shane pulled up all the carpet and i filled three garbage bags with bits of rubbish and fallen leaves/blossoms/weeds from the yard today so at least we've made a start. and it's ours.

fig. 1

fig. 2

fig. 3

02.03.07

2007-03-02T11:46:00.000+11:00

my sister-in-law, julie, sent over a bunch of photos of shane and i for my australian permanent residency application, these are a few of my favourites:

taken in jules' backyard, october 2006.

taken at my in-law's, possibly christmas morning? or a morning shortly after, december/january 2006.

taken in december 2005 at one of her art openings in fitzroy, called "white trash", they gave out these newspaper hats painted white. classy!

18.01.07

2007-01-18T15:32:00.000+11:00

gratuitous photo of myself watching tv with baxy - for my mom, who enjoys such things.

11.01.07

2007-01-07T22:05:00.000+11:00

i hit the op shops saturday morning and found a bit of gold - in silver form. a necklace with 10 sterling charms attached for the mere price of $9.99. the real excitement in all of this, to me, was that more than half of the charms are from canada, with two from jasper including the absolute classic, jasper the bear.

there is also one from "husky tower calgary" (stamped on the bottom) which had me a bit confused as i've never heard of husky tower, despite living 2 hours from calgary for a good 26 years and spending many a weekend there (now husky house, a cheap breakfast spot, i remember well). a little googling revealed that husky tower was name changed to calgary tower in 1971 so these charms must be quite old indeed. i love this little bit of canadian history, discovered in a random australian suburban thrift shop.

in other news, after a very quiet and luxurious period last week, work has fired up with a vengance and the amount of stuff i need to get done in the next three weeks alone has me gasping to keep my head above water (she says, as she types out a blog entry with a pile of work to her right). i discovered in the last month that i can happily spend 6 hours a day just reading blogs, listing items on etsy, leaving and reading comments on flickr, replying to emails... where is my internet time going to fit in with this crazy amount of work, damnit?

01.01.07

2007-01-01T11:06:00.000+11:00

my buddies, enjoying a new year's day siesta.

happy new year! i'm busy drinking coffee, scratching mosquito bites and planning for the day, the year, after a last evening of 2006 in sarah and sharpey's backyard with plenty of food, good wine and dogs playing madly (and, forementioned mosquitos). new year's eve is really much more pleasurable in the southern hemisphere - none of this trying to look cute and fancy when it's bucketing snow outside and standing on street corners in -31ºC trying to catch a cab whilst your toes freeze into little bloodsicles. while christmas benefits from a little cold weather, new year's should always be outside, with a warm breeze and firecrackers in the background.

i'm glad 2006 is over, happy to shed the whole year like an old skin. it was, in all ways, the best and worst 12 months i've had yet and despite all the bad, i've ended the year feeling entirely happy with my place in the world. with a growing sense of excitement to live in this inspiring city, thrilled to fall asleep every night with my best buddie(s) (baxter must be included, of course), secure in the fact that i've made some true friends this year and i'm lucky enough to see a few of them every single day at a job that feels more like a place to hang out (most of the time).

we've got some big plans this year and a lot of things to look forward to: finally finding a house which we can fix up and make our own, my mom visiting in march for two weeks, a music festival weekend with lou, sandy, em and ben in april, possibly adding to our little household (another puppy? a baby? who knows!)... and i have many, many resolutions which i hope to stick to. i love a new year, especially when it starts on a monday - it truly feels like a fresh slate.

self portrait challenge::26.12.06::red::

2006-12-26T22:35:00.000+11:00

even though sitting at the cricket today i found myself shivering for warmth, both shane and i were once again caught out by the power of the aussie sun and have very red faces this evening as a result. i thought my sunburnt face conveniently suited the december self portrait theme of "red" and so i join in the self portrait challenge again, starting one resolution before the year even begins (now i just have to keep it up).

26.12.06

2006-12-26T19:21:00.000+11:00

well, the coldest christmas day on record thwarted the all-day-beachfest that shane, julie and i had planned but if there is one lesson i carry from growing up with my holiday-loving mom, it's how to put on a warm, cozy and gut-busting christmas spread. combining aussie and canadian traditions, i threw on the holiday tunes, popped a pot with whole cinnamon and cloves on the stove for a spicy holiday aroma and got to work putting together maple glazed salmon, sauteed garlic prawns, potato salad and a classic green salad. we opted for a light meal, knowing that when the three of us get together, we can put away an amazing amount of fancy cheese, dips, deli treats, biscuits and turkish bread - which we did in fine fashion once again. jules rolled out of here around 6pm, all of us proud of the 6 hours of solid eating that we had accomplished, and leaving shane and i to rub our swelled tummies while watching episode after episode of carnivale.

we woke up this morning to yet another chilly day and bundled ourselves up for a trek to the famous MCG as i bought shano test cricket tickets for christmas. cricket - meh. it was cold, it rained, australia has already won the test so the english weren't exactly putting in a whole lot of effort (from what little i understood abut what i watched for 7 hours today). we did get to see shane warne get his 700th wicket so i guess that was a highlight... ? anyway, even shane was over it by 5pm and i was pretty happy to get home, get on the computer and have a nice warm cup of tea. ahhhhh.

14.12.06

2006-12-14T12:51:00.000+11:00

forest fires raging across victoria are filling the city with smoke, not exactly the white christmas i've been dreaming of. it's really like nothing i've ever experienced before - i walked out to the hazy park yesterday morning and looked up to see the sun as a glowing, pale orange sphere in a bed of gray. it was really amazing but by the time i went back in to get my camera it had risen enough that it was out of most of the smoke and more of a bright, blazing orange. i hope the cool change we're supposed to get this afternoon helps to bring the fires under control, keeping houses and families safe, and making everything seem a bit less apocalyptic around here.

life with baxy: a rough guide

2006-12-11T14:58:00.000+11:00

written for the lovely emily who will be taking care of baxter next week while we're in sydney.

eating
baxy likes food. a lot. he will eat anything. and i mean anything. he is especially fond of earplugs. and possum poo. and tissues. and anything plastic. we try to keep small things out of his reach which is basically means off the floor as he can’t reach much higher.

as for food he’s allowed to eat, we feed him half a cup of Advance in the morning before work (if you feed him right before you go, it makes the sad eyes a little less sad) and half a cup around 6:30 pm (along with any odd and ends he picks up off the floor while i’m making dinner. loves frozen peas.) he also gets a frozen bone/lamb offcut in the morning as a little bonus to keep him busy during the day. pigsears are also provided if he is driving you insane and you need an hour of peace (great if you have guests around).

bodily function(s)
much like a cat, baxter has been “litter”trained to accommodate our apartment living. he comes complete with a large, aluminium tray and piles of newspaper with which to line it. the newspaper must be changed frequently (like, sometimes twice a day) as bax is a refined beast and doesn’t like to pee on the soiled paper. plus changing the paper often means no yucky pee smell in your kitchen! poo should be picked up with tissue and flushed promptly ‘cause, man, it really DOES smell and is quite gag inducing.

now having said all that, you have a backyard and baxter loves to do his business outside so the tray will probably only get usage during the day while you’re at work. if you let him out first thing in the morning and as soon as you get home from he should be more than happy to relieve himself outside (marking your house and yard as HIS territory, after all).

sleeping
easy. baxter loves to sleep. he has a little kennel that we lock him into (hey, he likes it, okay?), after making him have a wee, which he isn’t too thrilled about because he has usually already been sleeping on the couch for an hour. he’ll trot into his kennel and not say a peep until the alarm goes off and he yelps to be let out. we bring him into the bed and under the covers for a half hour of cuddling until i have to get up. feel free to alter baxy’s sleeping arrangements as you see fit. he can sleep under the covers all night if you so desire or you can do away with the morning snuggling (although i highly recommend it).

the park/walks
baxter loves the great outdoors (are you sensing a theme here? he’s a pretty easy going dog). he’s not too road savvy though so must be kept on leash until he’s in a designated off leash area of a park. he will play with any and every dog around although often bites off a bit more than he can chew with the big dogs and then will need to bolt between your legs to avoid being stepped on after he’s riled them up. if small dogs are irritating him and playing too aggressively, he WILL take them on but only after being goaded for quite awhile. it’s pretty easy to break up the deathmatch, just pick him up and walk away. he’ll more than likely have a great play with the very same dog the next day.

if you encounter stairs, he will need to be carried. really.

11.12.06

2006-12-11T10:49:00.000+11:00

trying my hardest to feel christmassy but it's pretty hard when it was almost 40ºC all weekend. i did spend about 6 hours yesterday, holiday tunes blaring, baking up a storm of christmas cookies, recipes courtesy of martha. i made chewy chocolate gingerbread for the fifth (or sixth?) year in a row and this year tried out the carrot cake sandwich cookies instead of my standard shortbread. both very highly recommended, although maybe try to find a day that's not ridiculously hot to have the oven on for 4 hours (my oven is pretty small and i only have two little wee pans that fit in there so the baking took far, far longer than i anticipated). the actual making of the cookies dough was made oh-so much easier for me this year with the help of a beautiful 50s sunbeam mixmaster, dropped off in exchange for future cookies by my good buddies, lou and sandy. it worked like a dream and was so stylish as well, i've been scouring eBay all morning trying to find one all for myself. the only personal little touches i threw in to the cookies were to add my famous (to me) burnt sugar crackle to the gingerbread (melt a cup of sugar in a saucepan and drizzle over the cookies, crunchy and delicious) and to add some vanilla bean paste to the cream cheese icing. again, highly recommended!

28.11.06

2006-11-28T17:15:00.000+11:00

my blogging mojo is a bit wayward these days, i'm trying to get back into it but for now just look at cutie bax, what a sweetheart.

13.11.06

2006-11-13T12:49:00.000+11:00

as usual, i've been a bit lazy about posting here, think i might make this a more photo heavy blog as i've been taking heaps of random shots lately that have nothing to do with onegirl stuff. i've been taking all these shots because i recently signed up with istock to sell my images as stock photography for advertising, web design, etc. it's not going to be a huge money maker or anything like that, it's more of an excuse to stretch myself as a photographer and take photos that i might not bother to notice otherwise. for example, we were in bendigo over the weekend and i spent some time documenting a few of the treasures shane's dad has tucked away around the house:

gold.

::house hunting update::
well, nothing tooooooo exciting to report, or maybe i've just lost the ability to be excited about houses by now, but we're putting an offer in on one house this week, before auction, and if our offer gets turned down, there is another house that's going to auction on saturday that we'll bid on. still haven't heard anything about dreamsville and have pretty much written it off at this point...

30.10.06

2006-10-30T21:39:00.000+11:00

yes, i've been laying low. our dream house auction was postponed (and is still postponed*) due to some problem with the paperwork and i just didn't feel like writing about it until the second auction was over. house number 2, which was quoted at $270,000 to $300,000, went for $364,000 on saturday, after we were way knocked out of the bidding with our maximum price of $352,000. shane and i were (are) both feeling quite deflated with the whole house business. it's all very frustrating. with the money we are pulling it between us we could easily afford to look at spending a bit more but with interest rates rising and the prospect of me being out of work for a few years in the foreseeable future (not THAT foreseeable, settle down!), a $300,000 mortgage seems almost impossible as it is. for those of you not in australia, when i quote the selling prices here, that's only the beginning as the government then tacks on something called "stamp duty", which is really just a big fat tax grab that will add about $18,000 to a $350,000 house, bringin our qactual buying price to $368,000-ish. yuck. and have i mentioned that we're not even looking in good areas as far a melbourne in concerned? even though i love dreamsville, it did cross my mind that i might not want to go out past dark for groceries in that suburb. yep. we even got to the point over the weekend where we discussed not buying now, just renting for the next couple of years and socking away money... but that means renting some crappy house to keep the rent low and worthwhile, it means living in someone else's house, not being able to put up pictures, paint, garden, etc, etc. and, afterall, a house is an investment. so the search continues.

*the realtor gave me the news last thursday, in a really reassuring tone, that the paperwork would certainly be cleared up and the house back up for sale before CHRISTMAS.

highlight of my day:

2006-10-18T11:46:00.000+10:00

savouring
every.
last.
delicious.
morsel.
of the first banana i've had since cyclone larry wiped out the banana crops in MARCH.

who knew fruit could bring such joy?

16.10.06

2006-10-16T10:04:00.000+10:00

::UPDATE::

house: still in love with dreamsville, auction is this weekend but i'm really, really trying not to get my hopes up. our number two house goes to auction the week after and if we don't get either of those, it's back to square one. not a square i want to be on.

hair: very slightly lighter, maybe one shade, but the colour i used did take quite a bit of the reddish tones that were left from the dark, dark brown out, leaving a bit more of a golden hue so i'm happy with that - for a few weeks, anyway.

health: gave up on the dairy fast pretty quickly. number one it is bloody hard to avoid dairy and number two i didn't see any improvements in the 5 days that i did avoid it, if anything my skin was more itchy. it's been better the last two days for whatever unknown reason (lower temperatures? stars cosmically aligned? who knows...) shane thinks i should try this skin clinic in st kilda. it sounds good but at $90 for the consultation and $180 for the cream/supplement kit, it's an expensive exercise if it doesn't work...

12.10.06

2006-10-12T17:08:00.000+10:00

wow, it's officially 36ºC today and that, my friends, is a hot, hot spring day. luckily it's also super, crazy windy which takes the edge off a bit plus i'm in an air-conditioned office and enjoying a frozen V8 citrus splash juice box so all is really quite good with the world. i've finished up my work for the day a little bit early and am just enjoying listening to the lastest Paste magazine music sampler and plotting fun for the weekend. we have to look at a few houses early saturday and then shane is heading off to bendigo for the night so i might head up to brunswick to visit a few shops i've been hearing about from very well dressed friends lately. i've been scoring some great vintage patterns during my thrift shopping lately and have a few set aside to (hopefully) become a few new summer tops for me which should keep me busy for most of sunday. i lightened my hair a bit a few weeks back but this summer weather is making me want to take the plunge and go a lighter still (it's still a medium brown at this point, lighter on the top than the ends as my dark ash blonde roots come in) - i'll take before and after pics if i think of it and don't look too haggard the morning of!

07.10.06

2006-10-07T09:09:00.000+10:00

wow, thanks so much you guys for your responses to my last post. as i finished typing that entry i thought, "man, i'm just having a big whinge into cyberspace." but really was feeling hugely frustrated with the whole thing and it felt good to vent. i'm very, very open to any advice or suggestions out there so, heather, bring on the chinese herbs!

a friend of mine had an extremely interesting detox experience last week, something about placing your feet in a special water filled machiney type thing (wow, i'm eloquent first thing in the morning!) and all sorts of bizarre gunk comes OUT OF YOUR FEET??!! she sent me a link with more info, which i have at work and will update this post with on monday, and while it all sounds a bit too good to be true, she said what was in the water after her session was amazing and that the practitioner could even tell what sorts of supplements she had been taking from the residue. don't know, i think i'll be letting jose go for a few more sessions and see if she gets results before doling out any cash for that one...

anyway, it's been a full 36 hours without dairy now and my observations are:
• soy milk in cereal = tasty
• frozen berries, while delicious with yogurt and muesli = mushy weirdness in cereal and milk
• soy milk in coffee = very surprisingly tasy

we're off to look at a few houses today, including another walk through of both dreamsville and number two, which i'm hoping will clarify things a bit. i really need to get rid of this nervous energy i feel hangin' around me about this house, just can't take two more weeks of subtle crabbiness!

05.10.06

2006-10-05T17:09:00.000+10:00

i'm alive, really, just have my attention divided in an all encompassing split between houses and my health and am finding it hard to settle down to blogging. i made the classic mistake of finding my dream house the other week and now it's all i can think about - what sort of price is it going to go for? am i crazy for thinking we might just get it? should i not even hope for it so i'm not disappointed? okay, let's be realistic here - it's not my DREAM house, it's not even in a suburb we were originally looking at, but it's the only house we've been through yet that made me suck my breath in and made my mind go wild with possibilities. it's the only house we've been through that i thought, "we could be happy here for 20 years." instead of "hmm, we're going to outgrow this." we have a back-up house, one that's in a better suburb but has it's own faults, as they all do in our price range. it's going to auction the week after dreamsville so we'll see...

as for the health side of things, i'm just utterly sick of being itchy (eczema) and just feeling all-around unhealthy. i eat ridiculously well - lots of fruit and veggies, lean meat, rice, wholegrains, blah, blah, blah and very rarely indulge in things like chocolate or snack foods (for the last few months anyway. had a bit of a chocolate binge before that), never eat fast food, am watchful for preservatives and chemicals in my food, etc, etc. and still don't feel like my body is working quite the way it should. i've gone to two acupuncture treatments that, while extremely interesting, didn't really have an effect but did make me really want to fix whatever it is that's the problem. i did a gluten fast for 10 days which i thought might really be the root of things but it also hasn't changed anything. the first few days i felt lighter and more alert but really, it was probably because of the extra carrots, celery and rooibos tea i was incorporating into my day to fill out my gluten free lunch. excluding gluten has had no effect on my eczema, constant tiredness or digestive troubles so tomorrow we begin phase two of the personal allergy testing: no dairy. this one is going to suck. i eat yogurt every morning, have milk in my coffee and love cheese. boo. but at this point i'm so frustrated that i'll happily give it all up if it clears my itchy skin. soy milk with bran cereal and fruit for breakfast, lots o' tea 'cause soy milk in coffee just isn't quite right, and let's hope to god we don't have something cheesy and delicious like pizza for friday lunch tomorrow.