From the Desk of Dr Toni Lodge #010

Hello - and WELCOME to blog number 10! This feels like a super momentous occasion, don’t you think?! Like when you exercise three days in a row, or finish a book that sat on your bedside table for 6 months. Or when you have three tubes of toothpaste on the go because you bought and opened a new one without realising the first one wasn’t finished yet, and then you forgot BOTH of them when you traveled out of town for work - so you now have three toothpastes on the go? And it would be wasteful to throw two of them out, and you can’t put an open toothpaste in the cupboard, but having three open makes you feel a little ~uneasy~! So you alternate between tubes of toothpaste until they whittle down to only ONE toothpaste on the go - and victory is yours! No? Must just be me.

But this 10th blog is like fucking off two open tubes of toothpaste! It’s finishing the book! It’s reaching the goal! So I thought I’d talk about my nipples.

Last week I had a photoshoot for something very exciting.

I’d like to take this opportunity to say I fucking H A T E it when people say ‘I’m working on something very exciting - more details soon!’ but it’s actually true. It’s cool, but I’m not allowed to say anything. But TRUST me when I say it’s sick… More to come on that soon, I’m sure.

But I had this photoshoot, and I was really, really nervous.

I’ve only ever been part of ONE photoshoot before, and it was with Ryan for our podcast cover art! You know, all of the photos of us are from one day. And I was fucking nervous before that one as well.

But this one I was flying solo! So I didn’t have my little security blanket with me. I’d only met one single person who was going to be there, and then there were all of the other people actually taking the photos and organising hair and makeup and styling and whatever else - so it was just little old me.

Automatically of course I go into overdrive of trying to pump myself up and act cool and like I wasn’t shitting myself.

I sat down in the makeup chair and the makeup artist Julia and I were making small talk and getting along well, and she was fucking LOVELY, so I started chilling out a bit.

Until she asked me what I normally do for makeup.

I don’t wear a lot of makeup. My go to each day is glowy skin vibez which I get from sunscreen and primer. That’s about it. We chatted through some options and decided on a really natural look, and when it came to asking what kind of lipstick I’d like, she said ‘just a pinky nude would be great on you for this, I think!’

And before thinking, I blurted out ‘I read online the other day that the perfect nude lipstick for you is the same colour as your nipples?’

And she half laughed, and before I knew what was happening I followed it up with ‘but you can’t exactly go into Mecca and get your tits out every time you want to buy lipstick, can you?! Haha!’

She responded well, in all honesty, she laughed and moved on.

All things said and done, I actually think this is a GREAT life-hack, and would LOVE TO KNOW:

What is your life hack that has become part of your every day? What’s a great thing you learnt one day that you now use all the time?

My fave recent one I learnt off TikTok is that if you smash the core of an iceberg lettuce on the bench, you can just pull it out easily.

Please share amazing life hacks here and maybe we’ll share some on the pod next week!

Thanks for hanging around for 10 blogs.

Love you!

Toni xxx