Face mist + critique groups+ slight improvements
May I recommend
A face mist
Happy 2022, you guys! Maybe this one will be better?
We’ve started the year with a lil dose of Covid in the ole house-erony, but cross all of your fingers and knock on all of the wood, so far it is manageable… Thank you vaccines! Thank you boosters!
Now onto an important recky that I have been mulling over for many months: A face mist.
As I delve ever deeper into my forties I become ever more interested in nonsense to put on my face. Part of this is pure vanity created by capitalist patriarchy’s drive to make women hate ourselves in order to sell more stuff and keep us inward-focussed instead of demanding societal change. So, obviously - wrinkles, ew!
The other part is because my old, forest hag skin feels better when I apply creams, unguents and tinctures to it. I am less of a painfully arid, dried up crone and a titch more of a refreshed dewy maiden.
I do a bunch of things I don’t understand, including a retinol (retinoid?); a moisturize, a Vitamin C, a Vitamin A (maybe that’s retinol?), hyaluronic acid, etc. Most of the time I get them from The Ordinary, which is very inexpensive and Canadian (sort of —I think now it’s been bought by a big American company) and they wrap things in tissue paper when they send them to you, so it feels like you’re getting a present.
At my last re-up on The Ordinary supplies, I chanced upon this little guy.
As I have already told you all, I love to spritz things on myself. Why not spritz my face? I wondered? For 12 dollars this seemed like a reasonable question. Why not spritz my face, indeed!
So now, once, twice sometimes even thrice daily I give myself a little spritz of this. I do a weird neck movement to try and catch all of the precious droplets (ugh, droplets… Shut up, Covid). Is it doing a single thing to my actual skin? No idea!
Does it feel nice when I spritz it on? Absolutely!
Does it give me a momentary feeling of indulgent self-care? Yes, of course - I’ve paid 12 dollars for a fancy bottled water with fake “nutrients” that is probably not doing a single thing for my skin… obviously it feels indulgent !
Buy a face mist!
Embrace the spritz!
Do you mist? Tell me in the comments below!
*Programming note: I am hoping to avoid being felled by this plague, but if I’m feeling gnarly, you won’t get a newsletter next week. You have been warned!
My article on my lovely critique group is out.
Check it out!
The year was 2002. Michelle Kwan had a devastating fall in her long program at the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics, the Queen Mother died, and Michael Jackson briefly dangled his baby off a Berlin balcony. I was new to the city of Ottawa and didn’t know many people. In an effort to be more social, one wintery evening I found myself in a highschool classroom being taught how to critique writing as part of a continuing education program.
Resolutions are baloney, do a one or two of these instead
100 Ways to Slightly Improve Your Life Without Really Trying
Here are some of the ones I liked
5 Consider going down to four days a week. It’s likely a disproportionate amount of your fifth day’s work is taxed anyway, so you’ll lose way less than a fifth of your take-home pay.
9 Keep a bird feeder by a window, ideally the kitchen. It’ll pass the time when you’re washing up. (I already KNEW THIS ONE, Guardian!)
12 Sharpen your knives.
27 If possible, take the stairs.
28 Always be willing to miss the next train. (This one is very hard for me - I get INTENSE about missing busses/trains etc)
33 Join your local library – and use it.
39 Send postcards from your holidays. Send them even if you’re not on holiday.
54 Always bring something – wine, flowers – to a dinner/birthday party, even if they say not to.
78 Always book an extra day off after a holiday. (I got this one, too!)
An Easter Island story that’s not about the statues
The Easter Island School Teacher Who Sparked a revolution
This is a great story about how the Indigenous Rapanui of Easter Island threw off Chilean tyranny. Also, if you want to super nerd out, you can read the article I wrote about the Canadian connection to the whole thing… (oh wait, the article is behind a paywall, but you can at least read the abstract) Canada had sent a medical expedition to the island at the same time the Revolution was underway and the doctors and nurses were embroiled in all of the doings and happenings!
Although confined for generations, the Rapanui still had knowledge of the landscape, passed down through oral tradition and preserved by whatever trips to the interior had been possible over the years. Rapu headed for the island’s caves. With the entrances hidden from view by tall grass, the caves were subterranean pockets in the island’s volcanic foundation.
TikTok
Appreciate your meat bag
Has this artist seen a baby?
I like it
I’m so proud of you
Photography is my passion
Hello googoo
Um, like once
Are you kidding me?
Thanks for reading my weekly newsletter.
You can follow me on Twitter here and Instagram here and now check out my website (I’m reposting my old Belgian blog Beer+Waffles there, if you want to take a trip down memory lane! )
Amy Tector, The Honeybee Emeralds (March 2022)