Homemade Isn't Always Best

 I was sitting in the waiting room at the doctor's office yesterday and I spied a magazine that I hadn't seen before on the table. It wasn't over three years old, so I picked it up. I don't remember the name now, but it was something to do with mind and home, or health and space, or body and fat.

I am not a Martha or Oprah fan; I don't read their magazines, watch their shows, or treat my family as well as they treat their pets. I make things that I can make, buy things that should be purchased, and see a therapist to maintain my inner well being. Done.

I started to browse the pages. According to this magazine, if you have enough natural bird's nests and some orange zest you can not only cure world hunger but also make some attractive accessories for your next family wake.

What really caught my eye was an article about making your own beauty products.  It just grabbed me and started to make me choke a little on my own drool. Here's why...

I am a life-long tomboy. Beauty products are not entirely foreign to me, but let's just say that since the fire (7 months ago) I haven't even opened the lipstick that I purchased so that I didn't walk around looking like sad death (as opposed to the happy death that I look like now that I have happyhappyjoyjoy pills). Really, aren't things that you are going to put on your face the exact type of things that you WANT to purchase in a store? - you know they have already been lab tested on non-animals and packaged in such cute little containers.

Being a tomboy as a kid meant that I didn't sneak into mom's room and play with her make-up. No, I was busy playing Cowboys and Indians. When playing that, what do you need? Warpaint. So being the crafty kid that I was, I decided to make my own warpaint (a Martha in the making obviously). I went into the basement with my best friend and we created a concoction out of whatever liquidy paint like things that we found in my dad's workshop. Then we applied our homemade beauty product right to our baby skinned faces.

After a few hours of running around in the neighborhood, I went inside to get cleaned up - only I didn't. I scrubbed and scrubbed and my war paint only looked brighter as my face turned red. That's when mom got involved. Her wise move was to, you got it - scrub even harder! I knew that my face had either been scrubbed completely off so that the bone was showing or was about to burst into flames from the heat produced from the vigorous rubbing. She considered washing me in turpentine, but had a flash of brilliance and threw me in the car.

Off she drove to the neighborhood drug store - the old kind with a soda fountain in the front (it was probably 1970 - I'm not THAT old.). She dragged me in, lifted me up by my pants waist and held me up over the pharmacist's counter. "What do I do with this?!?" is all I can remember of the conversation, as I immediately retreated inside my own head to feign innocence and avoid any eye contact with the people in the store.

I don't remember much after that, as she took me home and proceeded to perform a home exorcism (that's certainly covered in an article in O magazine) on my warpaint that probably involved some radioactive chemicals and a little bit of voodoo. Luckily I have no visible scars, the mental ones are deep rooted and festering. Hopefully those of you who are wooed by articles praising the qualities of homemade beauty products have better success in your ventures.