At the age of 37...

My once-again rapidly approaching birthday brings to mind a small confession that I've been meaning to share for some time, and it is thus:

I never, ever used to use those fantastic-smelling lotions that my friends got me for birthdays and holidays.

Oh, sure, I liked the way they smelled. I've always been a big fan of the Aveda-slash-Body Shop-slash white musk lemon verbena mandarin lime what have you sorts of stuff. I would sometimes remember to swipe some around on my body when I was, like, going out on a hot date, that sort of thing.

But, moisturizer-free, my skin has historically tended to be really soft, and one of the few joys of being zaftig is that a certain level of plumposity in one's face tends to fill in wrinkles fairly well. So, all these years have gone by, and I've never really paid THAT much attention to my skin, other than to pluck random Gramma hairs and to tend to the odd zit. So, the lotions mostly just sat around in my bathroom cabinets, growing old, until I would realize that - hey! I've had this bottle of hand lotion for ten years now! - and, with the shades of my mother permeating my being, I would, shuddering, pitch the stuff.

Last year, however, Trish got me, for my birthday, a nice little sampler of Burt's Bees moisturizers. They're not the usual yellow label stuff, though; these are in purple boxes, and they have a nicely-preserved, Tilda Swinton-looking Woman of a Certain Age on the front.

Is it now, said I? Has it come to this? Have I been creased by time? As I peered into the mirror as unflinchingly as possible, it occurred to me: Yes, there are some lines there. And, erm, some of them are, as it turns out, kind of...deep, actually.

I, suddenly, knew that I had really, really been kidding myself for Quite Some Time. The forehead? It looked like Edward Scissorhands had gotten to it. And the two frikkin' horizontal lines between my eyebrows might as well be a tattoo. And...when I pushed up the skin around my eyes? It stayed up, for just a nanosecond, like it was made of crepe paper.

That night, I began to moisturize in earnest. And it's been all downhill from there. I swear, since my birthday last year, I have become a total Unguent Ho. If it's greasy and expensive, I will slather it onto my face and hands and neck with no questions asked. It could be made of thousands of baby kitten toes, and I would not care, if it made any difference whatsoever in this sudden desert that is my complexion.

So, my friends? I promise not to let any more fancy creams, lotions, or oils go to waste. If you've tried them, and they smell good and/or promise to erase ten years with every application, I will accept them gladly. And I'll wear them to bed, EVEN THOUGH it makes me feel about as sexy as Ethel Mertz from I Love Lucy. (Sorry, honey.)
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Five days 'til 38...and I'm clearly in my annual pre-birthday funk.

I'm terribly sorry to inform you that history suggests that this will not ebb until I'm nursing my post-birthday hangover. So, expect some droning, mewling, pissing/moaning, etc., to be spewed forth for at least the next few days.

In the interim, here is Marianne Faithfull, singing the Anthem O'The Soccer Moms. Enjoy.



(And, I also found this, which made me totally miss Absolutely Fabulous!)


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Four-Word Film Review of Bee Movie (which I took the chillen to Sunday):
Movie? O.K. Seinfeld? OVEREXPOSED!