It's raining here. It's been raining for a while. Which is kind of funny because earlier I found a video with a simulated twin peaks diner and I think it had rain in the background and I almost set it to play in the background. I wanted rain.
I still feel a little in-a-funk-y. However my fictitious skincare brand has a first concept product. I'm almost out of my miracol mask, and although I have plenty of other and nicer masks, I am considering whether or not to buy a new one. Why?! I really like it. It reduces breakouts and has some positive benefit for blackheads (not enough, but some) and it also has anti-aging benefits. It's fast (like fifteen to twenty minutes instead of thirty minutes to an hour). Most masks will tell you some crap like ten to fifteen minutes, but most masks will not really accomplish anything unless they are used for thirty minutes or more. This one, once it sets up it has had some effect, for reals. Most masks that fight breakouts will dry your skin, not this one, it leaves your skin soft and toned and like lifted and just really nice. It smells terrible, it feels terrible, it's gloopy and sticky and a pain to wash off your hands. There is nothing nice and spa-like, nothing at all, but it works. It's got red dye and parabens-- it's bright pink why does it need to be bright pink?! It's got a pretty short ingredient list. It was one of the original formulas that Merle Norman created for her skincare line. She was a chemist, or she trained as a chemist, I'm not clear which but she knew what she was doing.
It's got albumen. So it's like an egg white mask except stronger because it has just the protein albumen, not whatever other stuff might be in egg white liquid. My mother used to run after me and smear egg whites on my face when we were at her parent's house and I had blackheads as a kid, and they never did a damn thing for the blackheads or my face-- they were just gross. This mask gets much much tighter. But the thing is that the protein is also amazing for older skin. So this mask works for all ages. Now it was originally too tight for me and it kind of irritated my face, but then I read somewhere that the original instructions were to clean face with the cleansing cream (which is like cold cream, but more like a stage makeup cold cream that like ponds) and then after cleaning it off put another thin coat on your face before putting the miracol on. This is like a game-changer. The oil gets down into your pores and the mask bonds with it and it helps pull more out of your pores, plus it protects your skin from the irritation of too strong of tightening action. I don't use the cold cream. I have. I like it, but it's all mineral oil and though that works great it doesn't feel nice and the green police say it's bad for you and blah blah blah. I know that mineral oil is fine and it removes makeup better than anything else and the eve lom, in fact has mineral oil and I love that, but I'm kind of rationing that because I'm not wearing makeup and blah blah. Whatever. There is also urea which the green people also don't like,but which is an amazing moisturizer and supposedly a mild exfoliant. It also has elderberry powder which is an anti-oxidant and maybe serves some other skin regenerative purpose, at least I'm pretty sure it's elderberry, it might be elderflower or I might have the thing wrong-- it's the latin name and I didn't look it up just now.
I was toying with the idea of trying to make a version without the dye and stuff. I thought maybe I could use aloe instead of water. I was trying to think what other things I could throw in there. I'm picturing it in a small paint tube, which at some point morphed into a silver oil paint looking tube with a parchment-y label-- quite against my will,that's just how it looks in my head now. The mask that comes out is not quite opaque, it's slightly translucent, and the color keeps shifting. It has this slightly paint-like tack to the texture but it's nice and non-gloopy. I started off thinking canadian glacier clay,but then I wound my way around to pollen (which is also high in protein)-- but might cause allergic reactions, to manuka honey. I'm just not sure. Honey might cause it not to tighten properly.
But then. My whole fantasy was shattered because I had this thought. Buy this and this and mix in whatever ingredients you want to try, but surely that will work and give you more masks than you could ever want. And that probably will work. And it might be as good or better, dunno. Or I could just buy another mask for $22. rather than spending a bunch of money on ingredients. That sukoyaka suhada is supposed to be the best stuff ever, but it probably has parabensin it too. Korean skincare doesn't have parabens but a lot of Japanese skincare does. There is not a consensus on paraben danger. New products are largely made with other preservatives, but older formulations are not all being reformulated. {I just checked and it doesn't have parabens.] So, idk, whatever.
I wound myself up into a huge thing, and then I wound myself out of it.
The bex lilas thing, I'm not sure what that is. When I woke up it was in my head. Could be it's the name of the brand. Could be it's a character name. Since I have to start over on the book idea, maybe it's got a name for the character now, dunno.
