1000 Words About My Face

Back when I posted about my Amish Beard, more than a few people caught the whole "I think I've finally got my acne under control" thing. They asked for details and an explanation and HOOOOW?, but I was all "Man, that makes for some boring blogging." I emailed a few people and talked to a few on twitter about how I finally got things under control and was going to leave it at that.

But then I remembered that I've never really cared if it's boring up in here. Ahoy! Bring on the boring post about controlling acne! (Feel free to skip this if it isn't your thing. I promise I won't be offended. Much.)

So. Thing the first is that I strongly believe that what works for one person doesn't work for another. I have friends who can wash their faces with the crappiest soap on earth and have absolutely glowing complexions. Meanwhile, I can go through an elaborate production with over-priced products and still end up with -meh-. It seems that -meh- is actually as good as it's going to get for me (I've even tried going dairy-free and gluten-free to see if food allergies were part of the problem, which was a pretty radical experiment for someone who thinks pizza is a food group). I'm embracing -meh- because -meh- is a heck of a lot better than what I had even just a year ago.

Anyway, now that we have that "sorry if this doesn't work for you" disclaimer out there, I'll say that salicylic acid is the devil as far as I'm concerned. If my face so much as enters a room where it is, MAJOR breakout. It's because of that fact that I made a discovery that has probably been the main reason things are much better lately. I was standing in the face junk aisle at Target trying to figure out which toner I wanted to buy. Olay Oil Minimizing Toner has been my favorite for a while now because it seems to find dirt that other products don't. As I perused its ingredients and compared to other products to make sure no salicylic acid was trying to sneak into my life if I tried something new, I noticed a little something that made me stop and think.

Hydrogenized castor oil.

There's castor oil in Olay Oil Minimizing Toner. I thought it seemed weird that there would be oil in a product that is supposed to get rid of oil, so I took to Google to try to find an explanation. After all, it seemed like that product actually did find dirt on my face when I had already washed it with a zillion other things.

That Google search led to a reminder of middle school chemistry. Water repels oil. Oil attracts oil. Remember that? With that reminder in my head, it suddenly didn't make sense to wash my face with water. It's just pushing the gunk INTO my pores, right?

A little bit more Googling happened and I eventually discovered the Oil Cleansing Method. Basically, you mix castor oil with some other oils and you wash your face with them. AND IT WORKS. For real. I've been doing it for over a year and while it hasn't completely cured my adult acne, it definitely is better. DEFINITELY. If you want to hear me wax poetically about how much it has improved the blackhead and oversized pore situation, ask me. I'll happily sing a song, do a dance, and tell you all about it. For hours.

The tricky part of the Oil Cleansing Method is that you have to experiment and experiment and experiment until you find the right oils and quantities for you. I'm currently at 50% castor oil, 25% grapeseed oil, 20% jojoba, and 5% tea tree oil. That blend seems to be working for me. Other blends caused cystic acne (Fun! NOT.) or dried my face out too much, but a little more trial and error led me down the path of improvement.

There is a ton of information online about OCM, so I'll just say check here and here and here for posts from other people who have had great success with it. I'm over a year into being dedicated to it and some of those people have been doing it even longer, so it's really not a fad.

I do the OCM thing four nights per week right now. I use the Olay Oil Minimizing Toner along with Olay Regenerist Detoxifying Facial Scrub on my off days. That's mostly a lazy thing. OCM takes a few minutes and sometimes I just want to go to bed, so I cheat. I also use benzoyl peroxide on the rare occasions that I end up with a breakout. The last factor is that I use Retin-A every night, but that prescription actually came about because it is supposed to help clear up the old acne scars. I'm not sure if it really makes a difference with the acne or not since the recent two months I wasn't using it were so stress-filled that I couldn't tell you if it was helping or hurting or what.

Long of the short, the Oil Cleansing Method is the main factor that seems to have fixed things. It took a while to figure out how to make it work for me, but it was totally worth the effort.

That concludes the longest, most boring post I've ever written. Don't you dare disagree with that because I'd rather not read through my archives and discover just how many boring posts I have. (HINT: All of them.)

Wait! Here's a random photo that has nothing to do with anything. It just seems appropriate to make this post even longer than it already was.

WAIT! One more thing. I only needed a couple more words to go over 1000 words in this post, so here they are. Do I get a cookie?

Wife In Training

I should know by now that jumping on my Nag-asawki and naaaaagging my husband is about as effective as offering him a punch in the face when I want something done, but I can't seem to help myself sometimes. I naaaaag. And naaaaag. And naaaaaag.

I think it was in our marriage vows that he has to put up with it. It was somewhere after that sickness and health bit but before the drunk uncle went all cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs.

He puts up with the nagging just fine. However, I am 110% certain that he survives by choosing to not hear me. Unless I throw the words beer or boobs into my sentence, he's completely deaf to my messages.

I'm pretty sure his ability to just not hear me when I nag is how he managed to go two years without really fixing a broken closet door in our house.

In his defense, he did once sort of fix it, but that sort of fix sort of only lasted a week or two. After that brief fling with a functional closet door, we went back to having a bi-fold door that wouldn't stay on the track. One of the top corners would dislodge itself pretty much constantly. That caused the bi-fold door to turn itself into a standard door and it would open up super wide, thereby blocking the most used hallway in our house.

It was really freakin' annoying, in no small part because when the door managed to drift all the way open, our dog Cody would lose his mind. He would stand and viciously bark at the door, as if it was Dora the Explorer. (What? You haven't trained your dog to attack Dora? You should.)

This morning I finally found a way to get my nagging about that door to result in action.

OK, so, technically Alexis was the one who finally found a way to get it fixed. All she had to do was to open the closet to grab her coat.

Oh, and she had to get attacked by the door. That probably helped.

I was sitting at the dining room table waiting for the school bus to come haul away the crazy child when she decided she needed a different coat than the one I had already pulled out. She went running over to the closet, pulled the little knob, and then tried her best to run away when the door started to fall on her. Unfortunately her attempt at a getaway ended up looking more like a Scooby Doo stand-in-one-place-while-running maneuver and less like the Roadrunner getting away from Wile E. Coyote. The closet door bounced off a wall and landed squarely on top of the poor kid.

The wall suffered FAR more damage than the kid, by the way. While the wall has a big gash in it now, Alexis was left with a nearly microscopic scratch on one of her thumbs. I'm sure it really did hurt, but it's truly nearly invisible to the naked eye. If I didn't have her to moan and groan in the general direction of the cut, I probably wouldn't be able to find it.

Once she was done freaking out that the house had attacked her, the kid was PISSED about the door falling on her. "You told daddy to fix that!" she declared OVER AND OVER AGAIN.

"Talk to daddy about it," was my only reply. I didn't need to coach the kid. I knew she would throw the book at him the minute she saw him.

And she did. She guilted that man like no small child has ever guilted a grown man before. He was her fiddle and she played beautiful, beautiful music.

The door was fixed ten minutes later.

You will never be able to convince me that nagging is a bad way to get your husband to do things around the house. If I hadn't nagged my husband over and over and over again, Alexis would have never learned how to jump on the Nag-asawki and get some results of her own.

Glitter Bomb

I finally sent a little something out into the wild a few weeks ago. My Photography site is live, and I'd love it if you would stop by. I'm still working through a few kinks, but at least it's out there.

Because I adore you and appreciate you for sticking with me here, I'm extending special pricing for a limited time. Email me at burghbaby (at) gmail.com to book a session before the end of February and you will get your session, a print release, and a CD with 5-7 images for $75. I might even include a little bit of glitter at no additional charge because ARGGGGHHH! WHY DID I THINK LETTING ALEXIS BLOW GLITTER EVERYWHERE WAS A GOOD IDEA?

Whoops.