Ooey Gooey Goodness

“omg!  your skin is GORGEOUS!” is a compliment nearly everyone likes…right? I mean… nobody wants to hear ‘wow!  your skin looks like Salt Flats’… do they?  I didn’t think so. And as I age I am more and more focused on keeping my skin as supple as possible, all things (age and… well, age) considered.  Since I don’t have a lot of ‘excess adipose tissue’ it’s more of a challenge (y’all remember when that KY nurse told me that, right, as she was poking around my hip and butt?  ‘oh, darlin’ – you have a lovely figure.  I’ll bet you just look amazin’ in a swimsuit, ’cause you don’t have any excess adipose tissue back there’.  But that ain’t gonna help you now… I’m sorry, but this is gonna sting just a bit, sugar’... right before she popped me in my ass with what felt like the Biggest Needle in Kentucky!!!).  So.  ‘No Excess Adipose Tissue’ is great for my shape – but not so good for my skin.  I now take collagen peptides, collagen and more collagen… but for surface plumping? Nothing beats some gooey body butter – or a LOT of gooey body butter.  Or butters.

um… I might like butters just a LITTLE!

I love bathing rituals – love scented soaps and gels, love the feeling of washing away the day (or night) in hot, soapy goodness… and even though I rarely use a lot of soap, the combo of that and hot water isn’t kind to my skin.

Enter the gooey goodness.  I wear it ALL.  Oils – usually start with that on damp skin.  Then I cart some tub of goo to my bedside (or the toilet – a great place to sit when you’re still wettish and covered in oil.  Toilet seats are way more forgiving than sheets).. and I get to working with the goo.  I’m discovering that I enjoy non-branded scented goo almost as much, if not more, than actual perfume – in most cases.  If a perfume I love has a scented goo, I’m IN! But that is for another post.  For those cheap and cheerful gooes (how on earth do you pluralize ‘goo’?)  not associated with a specific perfume, I’ve found that a ‘spa-smell’ is very relaxing.  Rosemary (great for the hair), chamomile (one of my most (and one of A Good Friend’s least) favorite scents.  I can sit for an hour, watching ‘Candice Renoir’ (what a lunatic – I adore her), massaging some spa-ish butter into my adipose tissue.

Here are a few of my favorites:

1. Blame Tom.  I went to Trader Joe’s to pick up the lovely lemon body wash (it’s lovely, lemony fabulousness) and… omg!  They’ve got the Brazil Nut Body Butter back in stock!  Omg.  Made of decent ingredients, it really does smell like salted caramel and pistachio.  The first scent hit is a bit ‘extra’ but it soon settles down to a sun-kissed skin scent.
2. Yadain Cultural Solutions (www.yadainco.com) – pretty much everything in their body butter lines (that’s a goodly number of them, up there in the photo) – all Shea butter based, my favorites include the Eczema and Acne butter, mostly because it just smells good – and it seems to do the trick, especially for those pesky milia.  Ditto the Turmeric and Aloe.  The florals are … okay.. I mean, they feel GREAT!  But if I’m going for a non-perfume butter I like a slightly more acrid scent (insert shrug).
3. Lotions.  Nah, fam.  I go hard in the paint, greasing up my … well, everything.  The only lotion I actively use is No5 and the Amouages but that’s because sometimes the cream can be overpowering, scentwise.  But for every other line, I’m Team Goo, especially the more generic (non-branded perfume types) scents!  Something about those almost-generic scents can be very calming, requiring less emotional investment than a powerhouse perfumed cream does.  Yadain crafts especially for the  skin/hair needs of People of Color but the products are not exclusive to us (Missy March is white as the driven snow and she likes…some.. of their stuff.  The Eczema was an EPIC FAIL for her, though.  She hates the smell.  She said ‘ well, maybe when my nose is fixed’.  Hon, if you hate it NOW….LOL! oh, well.  More for meeee!  I use the facial butters as well, getting the unscented, adding some tea tree oil and slathering it all over my face and body.  I must smell like Spa Girl – but nobody has complained so far…so (yet another shrug).  I highly recommend this line (I pay for mah stuff, like errybody else, so this is just a PSA.  I really do like their line – a lot!)

You’d think, come Summer, that I would lighten up on the goo – but You’d. Be. Wa-RONNNNG!!.  We’re having extreme heat, drought and high winds and it’s sucking all the moisture right out of my skin.  It’s like living in High Desert – in Illinois.  Gee, thanks, Climate Change.  So I’m going through a tub of butter every two weeks (yes, I am that psychopath).  I recently discovered a leeetle bit of crepe on my right bicep!  After shrieking for 3 hours (yes, tears were involved) I got out the collagen and some of the body butter and started the massage.  Between that and the increased Arm Day exercises (biceps! triceps!) I’m getting rid of it – but it’s slow going.  Bette Davis never lied when she said ‘Old Age Ain’t for Sissies’

But… I mean.. really!  What better way to spend an hour… or 5?

What’s your take on skin care?  Are you a goo-er?  No goo? Dry oils?  No oils?  Motor oil (oooh! )… lmk!

btw – I have NOT forgotten last week’s giveaway – M. Jacques got bitten by something and his hock is swollen so he’s not poking anything this week.  I’ll holla on the winner at my next post, promise!  (he’s FOINE, btw – just covered in antibiotic goo).  I just goo’d him, so now I’mo go goo myself – again.

gotta keep ’em shiny!