There is something soothing about putting lotion on your winter skin. Seems that our skin always craves attention. If you didn’t know it, your skin is the largest organ of your body. Okay the largest external organ, but the largest anyway you look at it. Well that should give you creepy thoughts. It did for me until I made friends with my skin. I never gave my skin much thought when I was young and pliable. Now? Well considering the average skin can measure like 22 square feet in size I think it is about time we give skin its due. Yes 22 square feet! It is more than four and half feet by four and a half feet all laid out. Like the size of a bedroom window. That’s a lot of responsibility to take care of.
I remember a funny line I heard once from a friend when my other half cut himself with a knife when he was probably opening a bag of cookies, (he was the original cookie monster). Anyway he cut himself slightly and this friend looks at him and said, “Jerry, you have a rip in your outer covering.” That has stuck with me for years because I regularly put nicks, holes, cuts, scrapes or a tear in my outer covering. But! Yes a dried out crackly “but.” HAHA But I take it easier on my outer covering as it matures. Oh it still self-heals, amazingly enough. But as we use up our days here on mother earth our skin gets more fragile. Then it cries out for gentler attention.
Have you looked closely at the lotion aisle lately, or ever? Not just a zing and zip through to pick up what you usually buy. I mean stop and peruse the selection. I must admit I usually get the same thing over and over and I like it alright, it smells like cherries and almonds and does what it is supposed to do. Makes me all smelly good and pliable again. So there was really no reason to get something different. But that shopping gene in me, because I am a girl, reared its head and I bought something “new” and “ultra” wonderful. What a mistake.
It wasn’t that I wasn’t happy with my normal selection. But the words, “mature skin care” caught my eye. Well I have matured a titch over the years so I thought maybe I should show some love to my outer covering. Might just be that magic potion that we all dream about. Soft, smooth, sun kissed. Baw-hooey. The words of pride and promise said I would feel new, rejuvenated making me believe that the dry air of the season would never again make me feel like crackers that crumble as you crush them up and scatter them onto your tomato soup! This stuff was like putting on lard! No, no wait it was like putting myself into a sack of white glue mixed with lard and something that smelled like an old, very old lavender sachet found in the back of grandmas’ underwear drawer. Suffice to say I don’t like it. But I spent like $6.95 for it. What to do, what to do?
I know people who are tight with a dollar. I have not thought of myself as uncomfortably tight. I do happily know that sometimes, like everyone else, I squeak when I walk and talk about money. Money does not, however, run my life. But this lotion. I felt like I got took and I wasn’t happy with my purchase. So it sat on the bathroom counter for the longest time. I would occasionally give it a pump and test to see if it got better with age. It did not. When I was feeling doubt about myself I would pump a dab into my hand and give it a try. Over and over, for about three months I tried it. Over and over again I mumbled that it still was really, really bad lotion. I just couldn’t bring myself to toss it and go on. Gave thought to giving it away. But I don’t have anyone I don’t like that much. HAHA
Finally last week I had enough of that white plastic sentinel mocking me and I threw, yes literally threw it in the trash. Well at the trash. As a last stab at me it broke open and—well let me just say this. The wall behind the trash receptacle in the bathroom will not have to worry about maturing anytime soon.
Guess what I am saying is, stick with what you know and you should have a smooth winter.
Trina lives in Eureka, Nevada. Find her on Facebook, Instagram or at itybytrina@yahoo.com
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