My Quest for the Holy Grail of Beauty Products

I am thirty-two years old, and sometimes, I still get zits.  For example: today.  As I write this, I have a lovely zit right on the tip of my nose.  I look like Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer.  Fortunately, this does not happen often.  But when I do get a zit, I want to pound my fists against the mirror and shout at my pores, Why?  Why? What do you need - a facial?  More moisturizer?  Less moisturizer?  Talk to me!  Just tell me what you want!!!

At my age, shouldn’t I be the master of my skincare routine?  Shouldn’t I have figured out the rituals that will guarantee a flawless complexion?  But when I look at my face in the mirror, I have no idea what to do.  Despite all my years of reading magazine articles, visiting my dermatologist, and trying new products, when it comes to my beauty routine, I might as well be consulting a Magic 8 Ball.  (Should I exfoliate tonight?  Outlook not clear.)    

When shopping for beauty products, I have two main strategies: (1) read the labels and pick the product that is best designed for my beauty needs; or (2) buy the product that comes in the prettiest box.

I know I am supposed to actually read the packaging in order to identify the product best suited for my skin type but I don’t know what my skin type is.  Is my skin oily?  Dry? Acne prone?  Sensitive?  I DON’T KNOW.  Can’t someone just teach me a magic spell to make my zits go away?  And another magic spell to fight wrinkles?  Why isn’t Hogwarts real???

For now, my quest for the perfect beauty routine continues.  I am like Galahad searching for the Holy Grail, except, spoiler alert, I am never going to find my grail.   

How Did People Shop For Groceries Before The iPhone?

I recently decided to try a recipe that calls for cippolini onions.  What is a cippolini onion?  Well, to be honest, I have no idea.  But I wrote “cippolini onions – 1 lb” on my shopping list, so that’s what I needed to buy. 

At the grocery store, I could not find any cippolini onions.  I circled the big onion display in the produce department several times, inspecting all the labels:  white onions, brown onions, red onions, pearl onions, shallots, garlic, where are the freaking cippolini onions? 

There were no cippolini onions at the grocery story.  At this point, I had three options:

•           Option One: Go on a Mad Crazy Cippolini hunt and visit all of the grocery stores in a fifty mile radius until I could locate one pound of cippolini onions.
•          Option Two: Consult my iPhone/Google.
•          Option Three: Cry.

I was feeling rational, so thirty seconds later, I learned (a) how to pronounce “cippolini” (it begins with a “ch” sound) and (b) pearl onions are an acceptable substitute for cippolini onions.  Eureka!  I had seen the pearl onions next to the garlic.

Which brings me to garlic.  I love garlic, but I had a very bad experience with garlic when I was first learning to cook.  I was a graduate student and had cooked myself dinner maybe four times in my life (unless microwaving a frozen pizza counts).  But I was on a no-carb diet and desperate to eat something new and delicious.  I thought I had found my no-carb salvation in a recipe for chicken mole that needed two cloves of garlic. 

At the grocery store, I realized I did not know how much a “clove” of garlic is.  I carried an entire head of garlic to the man restocking the potatoes and asked him, “Is this a clove of garlic?”  He confidently confirmed that it was, so I bought and used two entire heads of garlic for my chicken mole.  It was a disaster.  Let’s just say I learned the difference between a “clove” and a “head” of garlic the hard way.  

After the Great Garlic Debacle, I lost my faith in produce department employees.  (I still regard the butcher as a minor deity).  For years, this made me wary of recipes with unknown ingredients.  My iPhone, however, has freed me and now I can always hunt down the most elusive of ingredients. The evil employees of the produce department will never again trick me into ruining a recipe with an unholy amount of garlic.    

How Can I Outwit My Impending Cold?

I’m in that zone where “I might be getting a bad cold but maybe I just have an innocent sniffle.”  I never know how to handle this zone.  Maybe, just maybe, if I play my cards right, I will avoid the cold entirely.  Once I have a proper cold, I know what to do: go on a Vitamin C bender; watch a lot of t.v.; and complain to anyone who will listen.  But before the cold fully hits, I am overwhelmed by my options.

Should I keep exercising? If I take a walk outside, maybe I can trick my body into thinking I am a healthy person who never gets sick.  Or should I conserve all my precious energy so my immune system can battle the evil cold?  Am I just a lazy slug looking for an excuse to skip a day at the gym?

Should I drink lots of tea?  Staying hydrated is important, and tea is warm and soothing for my throat.  But what tea should I drink?  Probably something nasty, like chamomile.  That crap tastes like fake medicine from the middle ages.  If I had to choose between a terrible cold and chamomile tea, I would probably choose the cold.

Should I eat oranges?  Chicken soup?  I know I should eat something wholesome and mother-approved, but what I really want is ice cream.  I know that makes no sense, but when I’m sick or getting sick, I must have ice cream.  Getting a cold?  I want ice cream.  Headache?  I need ice cream. The worst ever case of the flu?  Where’s the effing ice cream???

Like I said, I have no idea how to handle the pre-cold stage.  And, as I wrote this, my sniffle turned into a headache.  Damnit, I’m screwed. Where's the ice cream?

Telecommuting Confessions: The Dress Code Is Pretty Relaxed Here

I would just like to note for the record that as I write this, I am wearing jeans, a clean t-shirt, a cute striped cardigan and black ankle boots.  This is nothing short of a miracle. I am, after all, a telecommuter.  I can spend the day in pajamas and a bathrobe, and I still get paid. 

For six and a half years, I worked in offices with business casual dress codes.  Over the years, I spent a lot of money at Banana Republic. Now that I telecommute, my business casual wardrobe is languishing in the darkest corner of my closet.  But I still try to make an effort to wear nice clothes every day at least once a week.  

I think I am going to have to write a Telecommuting Dress Code before I start dressing like a homeless person.  These are a few of the rules that I am trying to observe:

• Put on real pants by 11 a.m. Sweatpants are not real pants.  Pajama bottoms?  Not real pants.
• It is okay to wear a comfy, stained t-shirt in the house.  It is not okay to walk/drive past the property line in a stained t-shirt, even if I am just running to the grocery store. Let's try to preserve a modicum of dignity.
• I must wear shoes for at least a few hours every day.  No, my electric green Crocs do not count as shoes.  Yes, my Toms are real shoes.  I am a telecommuter, not a prisoner. 

These rules seem really harsh.  Pants everyday?  Yeah, like that is going to happen.  Since I wore jeans today, I think I'm free to wear sweats for the rest of the week. 

Confession: I Secretly Hate Summer Fruit

During the summer, the farmer's market basically gives me an anxiety attack.  There are truckloads of berries and stone fruits, and they are only in season for like a minute and a half.  Because the fruit is so delicious, I am morally obligated to eat as much as I can while the getting is good.  This gives me a false sense of urgency.  Oh my god!  It's here!  Summer fruit!  I have to eat BARRELS of summer fruit OR I HAVE WASTED MY ENTIRE SUMMER!!! (By the way, I remain surprisingly calm during emergencies).

If I don’t buy lots of summer fruit, I feel guilty; so I load up on pluots, peaches and nectarines.  I cart the fruit home, feeling virtuous, and then I don't know what to do.  Should I put the fruit in the fridge?  Or leave it on the counter?  And shit, is this plum already ripe?  Or should I give it a day?  It feels as if there's just a two-hour window for optimal-ripe-but-not-overly-ripeness and that two-hour window always happens during the dead of night. 

And to make matters worse, I always, always, always buy too much summer fruit.  It goes in the produce bin in the bottom of the fridge, and I forget about it.  It ripens, over-ripens, and then languishes for several days until I remember: holy shit, I bought peaches! By then, the fruit is rotten and this makes me feel even more guilty. There are hungry people everywhere, and I can’t bother to eat my peaches.

It’s a vicious cycle: buy summer fruit because I must celebrate the season; forget to eat pricey summer fruit; feel guilty because I am wasteful; buy more expensive fruit that no one will ever eat; and repeat until the end of summer. 

Now that summer is over, I feel relieved.  I can just buy some bananas because JFC, all I want is a banana.  This afternoon, I ate an apple and you know what?  It was amazing.     

I Used All Of The Ink In A Cheap Blue Pen!

I realize this is not cause for a parade or even a small cake, but I still want to commemorate this event: today, I used up all of the ink in one of my cheap blue pens. 

In my world, this rarely happens.  I often lose the pen while it still has plenty of ink.  Or, more often, I chew on the pen and destroy it. Yes, I must confess: I am an incurable pen chewer. Here is the expected life cycle for one of my pens:

1) Unchewed: also known as "a pen Courtney has not yet touched."

2) Gently chewed:  I look at these pens and think "this is not too bad, my husband will probably not notice."  These pens are allowed to stay on the table, shelf, desk, etc. and be seen by the world.

3) Harshly chewed:  I keep these pens safely hidden in my purse.  They are my guilty secret (shhhh).

4) Mauled: these pens are beyond disgusting.  Even I do not want to use them.  I bury them in the trash can.

I suppose Freud would have something to say about my pen chewing habit, but you know what?  It could be worse.  I don't smoke, snort cocaine or watch Desperate Housewives.  In the world of bad habits, "pen chewing" is child's play.

Warning: This Post Contains Graphic and Disturbing Imagery

I love Halloween and everything about it except Halloween stores.  It's too much.  An aisle of plastic pumpkins and candy at the grocery store?  Charming.  An entire warehouse devoted to fake tombstones, oversized novelty spiders and plastic skeletons?  DEPRESSING.

I did not think it was possible to make a Halloween megastore more depressing than it already is, but someone found a way: put the Halloween megastore in an old Borders.  (I described my last trip to the Borders at my mall here).

The mall didn't even try to conceal the fact that the Halloween megastore used to be a bookstore.  Quotes about books are still painted on the walls.  For example:

"Books are the carriers of civilization.  Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculations at a standstill."  Right. Well, sound the alarm, because apparently civilization is going to hell. But no worries! We have a huge selection of slutty witch costumes!

Behold, the old newsstand.  Is it symbolic that the magazines have been replaced by bloody masks?  

And lastly, my personal favorite: "Good novels are written by people who are not frightened."  Now, there are no books (let alone any good novels) in sight. But there is this scary ghoul thing hanging from the ceiling.  The word "irony" comes to mind.