Mint Infused Lip Glaze for Fresh Breath
To Christi,
For Valentine's Day Mom sent me a tube of Strawberry Mint Lip Glaze. I've become a compulsive applier of Lip Glaze and spend my day ignoring the warning "for external use only, do not ingest." Originally I had the same qualms about Strawberry Mint Glaze as I did about Cocoa Butter--something that is named like a food and smells so decadent should not also be a topical cream with the recommendation to induce vomiting. (Strawberry Mint Glaze is ninety five percent natural so I feel I'm in the clear as long as I'm only licking it off of my lips.) This brings to mind and stomach the familiar and shameful, though unapologetic, feelings that I harbor deep inside of me, reserved for memories of my childhood, or similarly childish, behavior. (I recognize that certain, very many, of my behaviors are horribly embarrassing, yet I am reluctant to feel remorse for my entire life. Things like untied shoelaces, biting my tongue while I eat--for goodness sake, I've been eating for twenty three years, shouldn't I know the limits of my teeth--, looking in my purse and not finding my bus pass as I board the number one, or forgetting to look both ways before crossing the street, (oh woe to my life as a pedestrian!), these are things that start to break down my steadfastness and composure and bring blood to my cheeks and my brain right back to that self loathing I felt for yanking too hard on Danny Austin's hair while in the fifth grade.)
Gasp! let's begin again--for Valentine's Day Mom sent me a tube of Strawberry Mint Lip Glaze...
It reminds me of sitting on the yellow-green carpet, between my dresser and the open door of the closet, giving one of the Totally Hair Barbies that I had received for my birthday a hair cut (this is the closest I've been to hairdressing, and the mangy hair do that adorned the newly christened Moderately Attractive Mullet Barbie resulted in such feelings of remorse that I've since turned in the shears). In between pulling dolls out of the old bread box that served as Barbie's Dream House (alternatively the home of the Box Car Barbie) and hiding plastic hair strands beneath the carpet in the closet I caked my lips with my tube of Strawberry Lip Smackers. (I may also have been wearing plastic nails and stick on earrings, I'm sure that I imagined myself to be very glamorous--just like you felt when you wore your pajama top collar very low on your shoulders to show off your collar bones.) The door to my bedroom was closed and the smell of Strawberry Lip Smackers had permeated the room. You barged in, rudely interrupting the pleasant aura that characterized my beauty parlor, demanding to know what I was eating. I was not eating my Lip Smackers, per say, but since I'd managed to do away with an entire tube in the course of the afternoon, and my lips were soundly stuck together with strawberry glue, my defence was far from air tight. There it is, the root of all my troubles, tucked into a corner of my bedroom, sitting on the yellow green carpet, ashamed because I had accidentally eaten a tube of Lip Smackers. This, I'm sure, is sometimes how puppies feel.
In a similar vein--do you remember my Barbie who lost the little bobbin on her neck that kept her head attached and swiveling? I started stuffing crayons into the hole in her neck to try to give the head something to hold to, except that the crayons kept breaking off and getting stuck in her head--we called her Crayola Head Barbie, or possibly Brainiac Barbie, because she at least had something in there--and then, since there still wasn't anything that the head could hold onto and so the head kept falling off, Dad just jammed it on really hard, so that her head became horribly wide, on account of being full of crayons and neck, and her neck became horribly short--we called her No Neck Barbie, or possibly Football Barbie, since she no longer had the long, graceful neck that characterized her type. I still feel sad about little No-Neck, because I failed her in the cosmetic surgery wing, and because she was the only blonde Barbie that we had and the brunettes looked down on her for being less fancy. Also, did you sometimes pretend that the yellow green carpet was a topographic map of a million river beds? And the blue carpet in your room was either an ice skating rink or a field of cirrus clouds? And the carpet in the hallway was a desert for the exiled toys to wait for the coup to end? I did sometimes.
Hope the kids and folks and you are wonderful.
Love,
Carrie
For Valentine's Day Mom sent me a tube of Strawberry Mint Lip Glaze. I've become a compulsive applier of Lip Glaze and spend my day ignoring the warning "for external use only, do not ingest." Originally I had the same qualms about Strawberry Mint Glaze as I did about Cocoa Butter--something that is named like a food and smells so decadent should not also be a topical cream with the recommendation to induce vomiting. (Strawberry Mint Glaze is ninety five percent natural so I feel I'm in the clear as long as I'm only licking it off of my lips.) This brings to mind and stomach the familiar and shameful, though unapologetic, feelings that I harbor deep inside of me, reserved for memories of my childhood, or similarly childish, behavior. (I recognize that certain, very many, of my behaviors are horribly embarrassing, yet I am reluctant to feel remorse for my entire life. Things like untied shoelaces, biting my tongue while I eat--for goodness sake, I've been eating for twenty three years, shouldn't I know the limits of my teeth--, looking in my purse and not finding my bus pass as I board the number one, or forgetting to look both ways before crossing the street, (oh woe to my life as a pedestrian!), these are things that start to break down my steadfastness and composure and bring blood to my cheeks and my brain right back to that self loathing I felt for yanking too hard on Danny Austin's hair while in the fifth grade.)
Gasp! let's begin again--for Valentine's Day Mom sent me a tube of Strawberry Mint Lip Glaze...
It reminds me of sitting on the yellow-green carpet, between my dresser and the open door of the closet, giving one of the Totally Hair Barbies that I had received for my birthday a hair cut (this is the closest I've been to hairdressing, and the mangy hair do that adorned the newly christened Moderately Attractive Mullet Barbie resulted in such feelings of remorse that I've since turned in the shears). In between pulling dolls out of the old bread box that served as Barbie's Dream House (alternatively the home of the Box Car Barbie) and hiding plastic hair strands beneath the carpet in the closet I caked my lips with my tube of Strawberry Lip Smackers. (I may also have been wearing plastic nails and stick on earrings, I'm sure that I imagined myself to be very glamorous--just like you felt when you wore your pajama top collar very low on your shoulders to show off your collar bones.) The door to my bedroom was closed and the smell of Strawberry Lip Smackers had permeated the room. You barged in, rudely interrupting the pleasant aura that characterized my beauty parlor, demanding to know what I was eating. I was not eating my Lip Smackers, per say, but since I'd managed to do away with an entire tube in the course of the afternoon, and my lips were soundly stuck together with strawberry glue, my defence was far from air tight. There it is, the root of all my troubles, tucked into a corner of my bedroom, sitting on the yellow green carpet, ashamed because I had accidentally eaten a tube of Lip Smackers. This, I'm sure, is sometimes how puppies feel.
In a similar vein--do you remember my Barbie who lost the little bobbin on her neck that kept her head attached and swiveling? I started stuffing crayons into the hole in her neck to try to give the head something to hold to, except that the crayons kept breaking off and getting stuck in her head--we called her Crayola Head Barbie, or possibly Brainiac Barbie, because she at least had something in there--and then, since there still wasn't anything that the head could hold onto and so the head kept falling off, Dad just jammed it on really hard, so that her head became horribly wide, on account of being full of crayons and neck, and her neck became horribly short--we called her No Neck Barbie, or possibly Football Barbie, since she no longer had the long, graceful neck that characterized her type. I still feel sad about little No-Neck, because I failed her in the cosmetic surgery wing, and because she was the only blonde Barbie that we had and the brunettes looked down on her for being less fancy. Also, did you sometimes pretend that the yellow green carpet was a topographic map of a million river beds? And the blue carpet in your room was either an ice skating rink or a field of cirrus clouds? And the carpet in the hallway was a desert for the exiled toys to wait for the coup to end? I did sometimes.
Hope the kids and folks and you are wonderful.
Love,
Carrie
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