My face stinks

I have worse acne now than I did as a teenager. In fact, as a teenager, I enjoyed (read: took for granted) a nearly perfect complexion. Although I do not have a serious problem now, it is enough to have made its way onto my self-consciousness radar which, for a woman who cuts the back of her own hair without using a mirror, should be regarded as at least somewhat significant.

I have been fighting the good fight with benzoyl peroxide and have in the process created many, many bleachy spots on towels, shirts, and various other things that contact my face. Miraculously, the fuscia pillowcase from Ikea has been spared. Ryan likes to point out that slathering my face in a carcinogenic goo every night may be sabotaging my efforts to prevent all disease using primarily blended spinach as prophylaxis. Perhaps, he suggests, I should increase my chances at disease-free success by not dipping my face in toxic, bleaching, burny solutions.

He may have a point.

Thus, last week at the supermarket, I decided to take a gander at the offerings of the "natural" products aisle (I scoff at and enquotiate the word natural because uranium is natural, people, and we need to be conscientious enough to read our labels, but I digress). I found a vial of tea tree zit prevention somethingorother and determined that all of its ingredients were edible, so I bought it. I anointed my face with it. It is more effective than the benzoyl peroxide ever was, and the linens will thank me.

But it makes me smell like a hippie. I don't care how many times I have been accused of actually being a hippie for reasons including my distaste for meat, political views, or thoughts about western medicine in general, though I do think it strange to be a called a hippie when I don't smoke pot. I do, however, mind that my own face smells like the love child of a health food store and a Phish show.

But I don't mind it enough to stop, at least for now. Sorry if you have to smell me; at least your eyes won't be offended by my blemishes. Blemishes!