Adventures in Aveeno®

So.

As a loyal customer and excellent consumer, I tend to purchase any new Aveeno^® products almost immediately after I'm aware of there existence on the market. Yes, this compulsion does border a bit on the obsessive; I've at one time or another used Aveeno^® shower gel, shaving cream, hydrocortizone cream, face wash, and shampoo...in addition to each and every one of the lotions they offer. Mm. I've also at one point or another had strong urge to ignore the implied age restrictions of the anti-aging creams and see what they can do for these insomniac eye-bags I have.

I am by no means I blind consumer. I do credit the good people at the Aveeno^® headquarters for, as the homie puts it, legs that are the same color all the way down with no breaks (ha!), I cannot really make any statements of largesse about most of the other products they've got on the market. Granted...it is nice to know, that if I'm ever in Des Moines, Iowa and can't find any appropriate black girl products, Wal-Meezy is sure to have something I can use until I get back to civilization.

[Side note: Black girl products are usually found in the back of beauty supply store in the same shopping plaza as a Family Dollar or Food Lion. They are not the brown (or more and more these days, bright orange) bottles of Vaseline Intensive Care or Jergens lotion) that can be found in your local Target. Black girl products are large tubs of a deceptively creamy-looking substance, consisting largely of shea butter, tropical fruit, and grape seed oil. End note]

Point? Yes. I had one. So geeked about my new lotion. Geeked enough to tell all of the homies who may feel extra ashy during the winter months that are coming....get hip to the "Postively Nourshing" joints that have revolutionized my whole life...do it today....in fact, spend all of the energy that you've got stored up for clowning me for posting about lotion...and get to your local grocer and cop this lotion.

You'll thank me.

Peace Be

Adventures in Love

So.
I have been in love twice.
Twice and a half if you include this unrequited situation I seem to never quite be rid of, but I don't usually when I'm in the midst of being profound, so we won't include it.

I've been engaged once (twice? once and a half?) proposed to thrice, and secretly I'm certified to teach in Washington because for a brief period of time - maybe 14 or 15 months - we were going to move to Seattle.

If the numbers aren't adding up in your mind....it's because they don't add up in real life, and it dawns on me, that I....do not have this relationship thing down as well as I think I do. The cheating and settling notwithstanding...I had a thought.

I have never...just been in a relationship...I've always been somebody's first something...or they've been my first something....first date after the big break up, first adult relationship, first relationship period....and being someone's "first" something is a far cry from being their "only" anything...which is all we really want from the person we're in a relationship with.

Beyond that....sad to say....is that I'm usually not "happy" in a relationship until it's settled into a state of codependency....which I think we already knew....but no one wanted to say out loud until now...I may not know what a happy, healthy, adult relationship looks like.

We...may need to work on that.

Peace Be