I once fell in love in the vintage section in the back of American Rag in San Francisco.  The dress that called to me was sweet and simple; 1950's, red velvet, short sleeves, slightly full skirt.  Even though it was red - a perfect red, in fact - most shoppers might have passed it by because it wasn't looking for attention with anything fancy or showoffish. 

Dear Preparation H,  I don't want to hurt your feelings, so I'll try and be as kind and fair as possible here. That said, I need to tell you (just so you'll know where we stand) that our one brief and hurried date was enough to let me know: we were not meant to be together.  Maybe I waited too long to ask you out. Maybe the years of listening to whispered stories of all you could do for me set my hopes impossibly high. Maybe the dark circles and bags under my eyes are just too much for any product. Maybe it wasn't really your fault. 

Before school began this fall my eleven year old asked if I'd take him shopping for clothes.  And shoes.  Just the two of us.  On his list: new checkerboard Vans, black skinny jeans, a seatbelt buckle belt, and "cool stuff." 

I was shopping for the holidays last year when I first saw it, and I'm not embarrassed to say that as I reached out my hand to grab the package, I gave the kind of excited squeeeee! that's not generally heard coming from a supposed grown up. It was a tube, all nicely packaged, of Bonne Bell Dr. Pepper Lip Smacker; the very same lip gloss I'd fallen so hard for in the late 1970s. My heart was kind of, well, racing, actually, as I stood in the checkout line with my rediscovered love. Would it be as good as I remembered? Did they dare to mess with the formula?

First off, a confession: mascara and I have had a rocky partnership for the past twenty five years. I have hay fever that compells me to rub my eyes, I'm a crier, and I'm too lazy to find cotton balls and eye makeup remover every night. Once, in high school, I watched my friend's impossibly cool, older, very punk rock sister use a safety pin to seperate her mascara-clumped eyelashes. I went home and tried it, but I was no Joelle and quickly realized that bringing a pin that close to my eyeball was scary and made my eyes water.