Ran-Dumb Suds

Sorry for going missing the last couple of days. I'm feeling guilty about just not showing up to the party. But sometimes this blogging thing is sorta hard - like I just can't find anything to talk about. Eh, probably nobody was missing the 'what my cats did today' drivel, anyway. But I had promised myself to be more consistent and I have no excuse this week other than I was lazy.

So today I am posting, but I'm not promising this it's anything earth-shattering or anything. It's just going to be the most random of suds.

The other thing I'm feeling guilt and shame about lately is grocery bags. For some reason I just can't remember to bring my gorgeous hemp sacks to the grocery store when I go shopping. I was forgetting them at home every time (along with the stupid list) so I put the whole lot of them in the car, hoping that since they were with me and I could see them when I parked, that I would remember to bring them in. But no. The last couple of times they sat on the passenger seat and it wasn't until I got the 'paper or plastic' question that it hit me. Duh. Forehead smack. Why is this so hard? I mean I really want to do the right thing and BYO my own bags.

Anyone following the Britain's Got Talent tv show that just ended? If Paul Potts (the car phone salesman who sang opera) didn't win and get to sing for the queen, there was something wrong with the universe. If you want to shed a tear or two at the sheer beauty of this man's hidden talent, watch his audition video HERE or just see Simon Cowell caught with his mouth hanging open with surprise.

Here's a little tidbit - I'm a serious fancy face cream user. WIth all the big money and high powered technology that has gone into skin science recently, I have to believe that just like modern medicine, all these new ingredients really are useful in slowing down the hands of time that are pummeling my face. It's just that there are so many out there that claim they are the next dream come true. Copper and minerals, vitamins, retinols, acids, peptides, complexes -- it's enough to make your head spin. But if they all work so great, I wondered why each new product had only one, or maybe two, of these new miracle cures. Why wasn't there one cream that just stuffed it all in there? And then I just recently found one. It's called The Youth As We Know It from Blissworld.com - the super famous Bliss line, from the Bliss spa in New York. They thanked me for my "blissness" when I ordered, indeed. Anway, it's supposed to contain 10 of the top anti-aging active ingredients - the best of what they've found:

1) MMP inhibitors slow the formation of matrix metalloproteinases that causes the breakdown of collagen in the skin
2) wrinkle reduction peptides help improve elasticity and skin tone
3) visual facial 'fillers' volumize hollow areas
4) cellular respiration boosters help reduce redness and stir cellular oxygenation
5) hyperdermal destressors decrease transepidermal water loss
6) 7-day hydrators maintain the skin's hydrolipidic film and skin barrier
7) barrier repairing ceramides increase and repair barrier function
8) vitamin C stimulates collagen
9) pigment inhibitiors brighten skin tone
10) active vitamin A mimics retin-A, but without the irritation

Sounds good, right? So I've just started using it. It's super luscious, but not too rich, and smells of really super yummy grapefruit and mandarin orange, just a little bit, not too strong. I don't know if it's making me look 10 years younger yet. But it's the nicest cream I've tried in a really long while.

While I'm on a roll, I'll also recommend something else I've recently fallen for. It's pasta. I was down at Pike Place Market the other day, not because I actually like to swim in huge crowds of tourists, pushing and shoving behind slow moving strollers and leisure suits like sardines . . . but because I really needed something that was in a little shop there. And while I was elbowing families from Iowa who've never seen a whole fish in ice, I passed this new (or just new to me) stall selling pasta noodles of all types and varieties. It looks like a vegetable stand, but it's bins of every imaginable kind of pasta ever - like they have a dozen flavors of orzo, from sweet potato to southwest flavor to autumn harvest with pumpkin, chestnut and sage. They've got flat pasta, all kinds of shaped pasta, and even dark chocolate linguine. Amazing stuff - they are Pappardelle's. Just in case you want to hit up Pike Place Market for their 100th anniversary this year (it's been hyped to the max here) stop by their little stand - it's in the main veg/fish building, sort of across from Lowell's restaurant.

Oh, and one more thing. I just had the most magnificent melon the other day. If only I knew the name. I was trying new kinds, and the bin had all these different ones, the name stringing all across the front of it of the dispaly. But of course the label that was on this melon just had a bar code. Maybe it's a Crenshaw? Or a Canary? It looks like a more oval honeydew from the outside. The inside looks like the honeydew ate a cantalope - sort of like a turducken. It was green around the outside by the rind, and orange in the middle where the seeds were. And it tasted like a cross between the two also, but about 10 times sweeter. So succulent and juicy and delicious. I'm headed back to figure it out and try others, but it takes awhile for a gal to eat a whole melon before needing another one.