So just starting off with something kind of basic that probably isn't interesting but that I really enjoy

I think you remember I said I love that witch hazel Dickinson's maybe

Well I decided to try in the interest of environmentalism I think was the reason I decided to try

I have these muslin cloths

That I use for balm cleansers

Or more specifically the eve lot

But the reason why she uses them or recommends them or whatever and these ones I like are not actually the one that came with her cleanser

I got them from The Grove which is where I get the tree free toilet paper

and I really like the texture of them I really like the way they feel they have a texture they're not soft

And I've heard people saying that they use towels to put on their or washcloths to put on toners and stuff and I thought wow that's really going to use a lot of toner and I mean the witch hazel is cheap but it's not so cheap that I want to just you know fill up a washcloth with it

And people have those reusable cotton rounds but I mean if socks get lost in the laundry can you imagine those things

whereas the muslin cloth I mean you can wash those out by hand they're like whisper thin

So I thought well let me try that

and I am ending up using more witch hazel because it feels so good I just want to rub it and rub it and rub it

How much of an exfoliation that gives me I don't know

I'm trying to be so careful that I don't overstimulate myself because I really want my face to be cleared up

but that just feels so good I love that witch hazel smell and I love that texture and I just go in circles and kind of buff around and I get behind my ears and I do the back of my neck which to be honest with you I have never spent a lot of time on the back of my neck I mean you know it gets washed when I'm in the shower ish

And earlier today I was looking at my face and I was like it is so close so close I've just got a couple little places on my chin and around my nose and then it's it's almost all gone and then I'm sitting here and I'm feeling stuff come up on my chin I'm like in real time feeling it and I'm like what the f***

So I don't know if I had some kind of hormonal surge or what the hell but then I start picking at it and I'm like no no no no no

So I had already put on like a c balm

and it had already all soaked into my face and it was not even feeling like I really had much on my face but it was looking nice and bright but I'm like

Uh uh

So I have this Clinique blackhead cleanser/mask

I'm like well I'll put that on for just a few minutes

So I put it on and I fell asleep in the chair and I had it on for like 30 minutes and I'm like oh f***

So I scrubbed it off with these facial cleansing towellet things

That I used to use to remove makeup

because I would like remove my makeup and then I would clean my face but I didn't want to just have you know makeup all in the cleanser because I wanted the cleanser interacting with my skin

Only these are not actually the ones that I used

they come from the Grove also where the tree free toilet paper comes from but they sent me a packet of the sensitive as like a perk or something and I don't like the sensitive ones nearly as well as the clarifying which were the ones I was using before but that's what I have next to the chair and I figured they would be more gentle anyway

So I used several of those to get that mask off and I mean I didn't put it on my whole face I just put it on the parts where they were or there was stuff going on which was basically my t-zone and jaw but after leaving that on for 30 minutes my skin was like hella dry

So I went and scrubbed it down with the witch hazel again

And I've been trying to work out a system and I figured I was going to be using retinol like every third day which would be three times a week I think one day well no it's probably not it's probably two and on average a half but whatever not like once a week

So I did it last night and my face looked really good today and then it did that thing

And so I was like well f*** I don't know

So I just put the retinol on all the places where the stuff is

And I'm kind of letting that soak all in and then I'm going to put the vitamin c on again but I don't want to just smear the retinol around everywhere and I don't want to dilute the application the retinol is also lighter texture

I swear to God this cat is going to drive me to drink I keep saying I'm going to drink but I keep not making drinks I'm drinking coffee now it's probably doesn't make any sense

So anyway I'm letting the retinol sink in and then I'm going to put the vitamin c on I guess

I just don't understand why it did that

Anyway

I keep seeing all these people on YouTube saying that witch hazel is drying

Very very drying they say

But my skin was dried out from that mask and I went and put the witch hazel on it and then it felt hydrated again

And I don't know whether my skin was dryer a few years ago and just to whatever I've been doing to it I've made it less dry or whether it's because it's the summer and it's hot although it's been summer every year for 6 months of the year so I would seem like I would have noticed if that was the case

I definitely have to do different things in the winter than I do in the summer

But this being in the house all the time is different too

I mean I did all these steps before put all this stuff on my skin and then I would put my makeup on and I would go out and it was like my face felt protected but now if I put much on my face at all it feels like it's just caked up with goo

Which is how I always used to feel

I've not typically worn when I was younger moisturizers

I mean I have it several points but mostly what I would do is I would use a cream cleanser and then some kind of slightly clarifying toner and then serum

and the serum would be light enough that it wouldn't cause me as much congestion in my pores plus it had the active ingredient so it works great and then you know sometimes I would wear moisturizers if there was a particular moisturizer I wanted to try but it was more like eye creams then full on face creams usually

I don't even remember that may not even be right but I know that serums were the thing that I was mostly interested in and I often did not use moisturizers because I did not like the heavy feeling of them on my face

And generally

I'm reasonably happy with my face

My eyes well my right eye doesn't look baggy at all it's got a little bit of creepiness but it's not too noticeable generally if I've got it moisturized and I've got like just the tiniest little crow's feet but the skin is not all thick and you know that thick skin that you get from being tanned

your whole family has got to know about that because you're all just hand all the goddamn time

And all that time in the desert

Well I don't tan so I didn't have to decide whether I was going to do that and sun damage my skin or not do that and wear a lot of sunscreen

I'm pretty much wearing a lot of sunscreen or I'm burning the s*** out of my skin

And I may still get skin cancer I can't be 100% sure because when I was a kid I got badly burned at least once every year and they say it's the stuff that happens to you when you're a kid that really messes you up

But my left eye it has this crease that if I hydrate it enough it becomes a noticeable but it's always there and I hate it I hate it I hate it I hate it I hate it

Anyway the cat he wants to eat

And he's so funny

He eats the same food all the time because

 A) that's the way he likes it

And B) he has to because of his pancreatitis or whatever has to have simple diet and the same food

so I thought well that'll be no problem he has to eat the same food all the time there won't be any question of oh he wants different foods like with buzz he sometimes wanted one food and sometimes one in another food but that was no way to guess which food he wanted and so when he got to be older and you were trying to coax him to eat sometimes you're opening three cans of food trying to coax him to eat something

Well this cat sometimes you open new case

And he's just like I don't recognize that as being my food

And I couldn't figure out you know I mean sure the quality control might not be perfect but how can it be so different that he doesn't recognize it as being his same food

But then one day it occurred to me

It's white fish

Whitefish is very nonspecific so I bet they don't always use the same white fish

and I mean sometimes it's a little bit pink so I think maybe they get some salmon or tuna or something in there too so I don't know

But I'm pretty sure that that is the problem

initially I thought it had to do with texture and the texture does vary from case to case because you know like I say the quality control is maybe not perfect

But then he has so much trouble with hairballs he just cannot competently cough them up I have never met a cat that couldn't cough up a hairball but he just can't so I started occasionally mixing some mineral oil in his food to try to melt the hairballs

Well he decided he likes that and I don't think it has anything to do with when he's got a hairball or when he doesn't he just sometimes he likes his food to have a little bit of warm water and some mineral oil added to it and it's all mixed up so it's like a gravy and sometimes he just wants it straight out of the can

But it might vary

He might want it all day long one way or he might want it to alternate

so you pretty much have to start with it playing because you can't take the water and stuff out of it and you won't eat it if you mix it the way he doesn't want it

so we play this game where I set it down and I go is that okay Kitty do you need me to fix it for you

And he either says yum yum yum

Or he's like no you dumb b**** I'm not eating that

and I have to go doctor it up for him but then he's standing there going hurry hurry hurry you're so slow why are you so slow

Well he's developed this new trait

well lots of new traits he doesn't cut me anymore now he gets up behind me and passed me on the shoulder and then starts just randomly knocking s*** over

Because he's discovered that the threat of my skin care and what not being knocked over is a lot more effective than cutting me which may or may not lead to my feeding him

But now he's decided he wants halfsies

so he'll eat half the food and then he wants the other half of the food done the opposite way

Which works fine if he starts off with it plain and then I can doctor up the second half of it but has previously mentioned I cannot undoctor food so then we usually have to have an argument

and I realized this is not interesting You may not want to be reading any of this You may be going oh dear God

But I'm trying to talk and this is my life

So I highly recommend muslin cloths and witch hazel and I think it would be really good for for post shave if you're shaving but also just really great for cleaning your face

It's a sensory experience I would highly recommend

But demanding cats I would not necessarily recommend

and I get that it's all me because he's a cat and he can't actually make me do any of that stuff

And most people would just say f*** you and take him back to the shelter probably years ago when he was doing the cutting thing

And the neighbors they used to have a dog and kitty was unmerciful to the dog he would tease him and taunt him and rub up against his people so that he would make them smell like him he was just a real a******

But the dog got really really sick and I don't know if he died or if they had to put him to sleep or what but he wasn't very old it was really really sad and they really really loved the dog

But now

Kitty has them wrapped around his little finger

If I let him out and I have the chain on and the door blows shut or something so he's stranded outside momentarily they'll like come knock on the door like if they're out there and they see that he wants to come in they're like knock on the door or ring the bell or something so that I noticed that he's needing to come in

and they have pictures of him on their phones and tablets and stuff

And the father whose name I have never known I know the mother and the son but I don't know the father's name he used to always be gone cuz he's a truck driver but now he's been home for months so I should know his name but I've known him for too long that I can't ask him his name now

He calls him tiger

And of course he is a tiger striped cat but I mean

He renamed it

Which I guess is fair his name is Neptune

And I never call him that because I just don't call him that I didn't come up with that name and I'm not crazy about it but it seems somehow to fit him in some way so that's like his official name but I call him Kitty or a****** or occasionally monster

Also the father went and got his son's super soaker gun to fend off gray cat

Who is kitties arch nemesis I think I've mentioned

So Kitty is definitely using all his resources

But it makes me think all the time

When I was in psychology of women

In college which was a class that I did not particularly care for actually

There was a woman who came to talk to us about abuse domestic abuse

And she's like

okay if you find this joke funny you've been abused probably

So the husband he wants eggs he wants one of them fried over medium where all the white is cooked and all the yolk is raw

Which is actually how I liked my eggs when I ate fried eggs before I discovered poached eggs which I like better

So you wanted one egg like that and he wanted the other egg scrambled soft

But not slimy

So she cooks the eggs she takes them to him and he takes one look at them and he throws the plate against the wall and says can't you do anything right you b****

And she says I cooked them exactly like you asked

And he says you fried the wrong egg

And I started laughing hysterically

But pretty much nobody else in the class did

So I don't know

I hadn't been married it wasn't anything to do with being married

But Kitty makes me think of that joke a lot

He is just extremely high maintenance

And sometimes I'm like dude

Just f****** eat it or don't

But mostly not

and he doesn't cut me anymore but he does menace me a lot

all in all I'd probably be better off if I had a dog that I had to go walk

But he is also very very sweet

So that statement also makes me laugh hysterically so am I an abusive relationship with my cat

so this is going on for a long long time and has not been actually about anything so maybe I'll just stop here and write something in a little while about how I love you and I'm going to bed

Unless I think of something more interesting and coherent

This is really just been in case you just wanted me to talk

Not with the idea of being entertaining just that kind of talk that you do when you're with somebody and there's a need to talk and you're just talking but it's not really about anything

I mean it is it absolutely is about something it's about my life but it's not about anything