Stinky Stuff

"You would be SO beautiful, if only you wore a little lipstick."

How many times have I heard my Mom utter that sentence? I think we've already established that while I certainly am a girl, I'm not really a girly-girl. My daughters are always asking, "Do you ever wear these shoes, Mummy?" when they find a dusty pair of heels in the back of my cupboard. My son is always telling me I should wear skirts more often and I think my DH wishes I owned a bra in a colour other than white. Don't get me wrong, I quite enjoy getting all dressed up to go out somewhere. I quite like putting on make-up, pulling up stockings, wearing expensive jewellery and looking smokin' hot. I'd just rather not have to do it every day.

I will admit that I do kinda take this not-a-girly-girl thing to the extreme. I lack the time, patience, or ability to use things like hair "product", hair dryers, moisturisers and exfoliating gloves. My morning beauty routine is something like this: Get up. Pee. Brush hair. Brush teeth. Get dressed. My evening routine is like this: Get undressed. Pee. Brush hair. Brush teeth. Get into bed. Many nights I skip all of that and head from get undressed to get into bed with no stops in between.

A major reason for my lack of girly stuff is that I have a heightened sense of smell. Seriously. I can smell certain spices in a food, before I taste it. If I smell certain things it will often trigger a physical reaction ... some smells just make me want to puke. We have to get rid of the toilet in our en suite because I swear I can smell the Ghost of Pee Past, even when nobody else can. My idea of hell is to be trapped in a Lush store without a gas mask. I shit you not, I have to walk a wide circle around the place because simply standing within 10 feet of the front door gives me an instant headache. Anyway since most girly stuff is pretty heavily scented, I avoid it at all costs. You know when you buy those el cheapo gifts of baskets of smelly stuff, because you don't know me well enough to buy me a real gift? Yeah, NO thanks.

Anyway my smell issues extend quite a long way ... well into my working life, too. In one of the bakeries I worked for, we used to make lavender palmieri. By the trolley load, so we're talking maybe 20+ trays. I was fine making them, tray-ing them up, and so on. God HELP ME if I had to be the one to get them out of the oven, though. The first time I did it, my eyes watered, I started to hack and choke, and I told N.N. that it smelled like a hundred old ladies had DIED in that oven. I swear it took a few days for me to recover. Yeah, never again. N.N. was responsible for taking out the trolley after that. To this day she and I lovingly refer to them as, "dead old lady biscuits."

But I digress.

My beauty regime - or lack thereof - is a source of some amusement to many of my friends, especially those (hellllloooo, 007 and heeelllooo, Neighbour's Wife) who not only have a beauty routine, but, you know, excel at having one. People who know how to work a flat iron. People who can apply lipstick while driving. People who, you know, wear matching earrings to their outfit. This is not me.

007 gave up on me a while ago (and frankly, I would have, too) after all her lovely gifts of smelly stuff and jewellery were graciously received...never to be seen again (although I do wear a very cool necklace she made me.) Neighbour's Wife, though...she's a new friend. So she didn't understand the rules of emzee gift giving. Rule One: No stinky stuff, ever. Rule Two: No girly crap like spa vouchers. Now she and I have talked about this. She thinks she is going to convert me. In fact her mother thinks she can convert me, too. NW asked me about what moisturiser I used, to which I asked, "Does a bar of Dove in the shower count?" She assured me that NO, it didn't count - even after I said it had one quarter moisturising cream. The nerve of some people! Her Mom then told me that I might be laughing now, but when I was 50 I'd regret it (the non-use of moisturiser, that is.)

Now this is where one of the benefits of being fat comes in. You ever met a fat person with wrinkles? NO. Because the fat...FILLS IN the wrinkles nicely. Bonus!

Neighbour's Wife is convinced she's going to get me onto the girl-stuff bandwagon, though. Last week, she came to seder with a big ol' present for me. The box was labelled Mecca Cosmetica.

I tried, people. I really, really tried to look all thankful and grateful and ooohhh-isn't-that-nice. In my mind, I'm thinking holy SHIT. Now I have to pretend like I used this stuff, when I *know* it's going to gather dust at the bottom of the bathroom cupboard. Great. NW must have been able to read this expression because she said, "emzee. Really. IT'S OKAY. I thought *hard* about the whole no-stinky-stuff thing (yes, she used that expression)." I'm still looking doubtful, because, you know, the freakin' box is HEAVY. So she says, "I thought about the whole pastry thing. I really did. Just...trust me, okay?"

Yeah, NO.

I waited until after they had left to open the box.

I opened the box.

I opened my eyes.

I found a big ol' bottle of something called...."Cinnamon Buns."

I almost peed in my pants from laughing. It's a shampoo/body wash/cleaning goop thing...which smells like...freshly baked cinnamon buns. I shit you not. Not only does it literally smell like cinnamon buns, or like a freshly made horchata...but it has a RECIPE for cinnamon buns on the front of the bottle.


This, my friends, was the Neighbour's Wife playing some serious stinky stuff hard ball.

The second item in the box was a container of Gingerbread Man Salt Scrub. You open this tub open, and I swear to god it's like walking into an oven filled with gingerbread men (neither dead nor old.)


Okay, so maybe she's telling me I smell and have dry skin, but I prefer to think that it's Round One of the war of emzee versus the stinky girl crap.

As I stepped out of my shower today, DH smelled my shoulder and said, "MMMM!! Cinnamony goodness!"

I think it's fair to say that Round One goes to the Neighbour's Wife.