On the second day of Christmas, my true love gave to me...

Oh, Mom!

I love my mom.

She's had a hard time of it, what with giving birth to two sarcastic, Marxist, feminist, mover-shaker-heart-breaker-talk-backer daughters who don't really know how to put on makeup or do their hair but somehow adore beauty products.

She herself hates anything - candles, perfume, hand creams, soap, deodorant, "atmospheric home scent" - that's not strictly fragrance free. She never craves anything fancier for her face than some good ol' Noxema.

Many a Christmastime have my sister and I come up with the perfect gift for Mom only to realize that we've willfully ignored her preferences. Fizzy lavender bath stuff, of course! Never mind that she never takes baths! Coriander-scented savon for the kitchen! Okay, so she washes her hands with the dish soap - what are you trying to say?

She is a wonderful mother, and as wonderful mothers are apt to do, she coos over the gift, hugs me, and stores the unopened package under the bathroom sink when I give her such stuff. I've weaned myself of the habit by now. After a few exhilarating successes (one was a manicure set, the other a bottle of Hermes' Caleche that she wears maybe three times a year) I decided to quit while I was ahead.

In my imaginary twelve days of gift-giving, however, I would love to give my mom a long day at a spa with a full spread of Harnn products at her disposal.

To the best of my knowledge, Harnn is a Thai company that produces a complete line of spa products, founded in 1999. I find their design is absolutely gorgeous and their prices quite steep. They have such an interesting and unusual range of scents, from subtle to forceful, that I think she would find a couple she really liked. I myself am seriously enamored of their Jasmine Pomegranate hand cream. So pretty! Such a ying and yang of smell!


Maybe some Red Rice soap for my mother?

Or some Night Nourishment cream, with essence of Water Lily?

Check out all of Harnn's smart and sophisticated stuff on their pretentious and somewhat new-agey website.

Do Good While You Travel!

I'm not a person who travels much.

Don't get me wrong, I love to travel. I'd travel all the time if I had the time or the money. And there have been times in my life when I did have those things, but the last five years or so have not been those times.

But I have been traveling quite a bit lately. I've flown up to Burlington, VT twice in the last month, because I was being courted for a job up there (which I've accepted, and I'm moving in 3 weeks!). I've stayed in a lovely local hotel up there, and in an, um, acceptable Days Inn. Each trip was three or four nights at a time. On someone else's dime, thankfully.

(Side note: that Days Inn put two "eye makeup remover towelettes" in my bathroom every day, but there was no iron in the room. Makes me wonder who they think their customers are. And I was counting on having an iron, dang it. No, I did not try the towelettes.)

I am one of those people who does not use the hotel toiletries. I prefer to travel with my own, even though it's a pain in the neck these days. Three-ounce bottles, one-quart zip-top bag, blah blah blah. Grrr! Still, I'm not inclined to leave my hair to the hotel toiletry fates when I'm traveling for a job interview. That's just not smart.

But I still take the hotel toiletries home with me.

That's right, I stockpile them, even. I squirrell them away in my suitcase so the maid has to replace them. I sometimes stop by the front desk and ask for extras, even though there are usually more little bitty soaps in the room than I would ever need in the first place. I bring my own toiletries and use them carefully so I can throw away the container the morning I'm heading home... in order to make room for the hotel toiletries I'm stealing.

See, those tiny soaps and bottles of shampoo, while I'm not going to use them, can be used by somebody. My church collects them to donate to a local homeless shelter, to go into "toiletry kits" for people living on the streets. It's possibe to donate directly to a shelter and bypass the middleman, but my church makes it easy: I'm going to church anyway, whereas I'm not necessarily going to go out of my way to swing by the shelter as I'm riding back into town. And voila, I've done something good for someone who needs it, all by saving something I wouldn't have used otherwise.

If you are a person who travels a lot, or you know someone who does, do a little research about resources for the poor and homeless in your area. Find a church or community center that makes it easy to donate your unused hotel toiletries. If you belong to some kind of House of Worship, ask whoever is in charge of outreach/mission work to do a little research on the congregation's behalf, and put out a collection bin every week to accept donations.

Use your traveling to do some good for your fellow human beings. Everybody needs to wash their hair. Not everybody has the money for a giant bottle of shampoo -- or a place to store it. I went to Burlington, VT this weekend, and bought a house. And now there will be three more people in Atlanta (without houses) who can, at the very least, wash their hair a couple of times.

Christmas!

In what is already shaping up to be an awful week, there have been 2 bright spots and both are related to Christmas.

1. We purchased our plane tickets to go home for the holidays.


2. Bob and is back! Along with all of its other holidays-only treats, LUSH has reintroduced Bob!

It's spice-y and citrus-y all at once. I love cinnamon/clove mixed with fruit. It smells great on me. It's a weird shade of green mixed with orange that will turn your shower water a dirty brown but! It smells so lovely and leaves you nice and clean. (And the little bits of gold glitter will not stick to you.)

It's time to make a trip to Georgetown and stock up for the year ahead.

Also check out the champagne snow showers. Very yummy. I love that it's out in a solid perfume. Still wintery, but a lighter fragrance than my normal Chanel No. 5, which is a little heavy for day wear.

I love the fragrance and this was only out in shower jelly last year. Those are weird because why would you want to keep something in your fridge? I'm sorry, but am I the only person who's refrigerator is at the opposite end of the house from the shower? But whose bed is really close to the shower? When I'm all clean, the last thing I want to do is trudge back downstairs to put my shower gel back in the shower. I want to curl up in bed.