Oooooh, Shiny!

In the winter I walk around in a semi-mummified state. Since we live in a high desert, it's very dry and cold outside. In our house we heat with a wood stove and electricity, which produces dry heat. You've seen movies where somebody suddenly dries up, crumbles into powder, and blows away in the wind. I'm not quite there yet, but close. I can slather on the lotion and moisturizers, which help, but as soon as I wash my hands the protective covering is gone and I feel myself withering away. (And my age has nothing to do with it, so don't even go there!)

For Christmas, I received an industrial-sized bottle of Olay Quench body lotion. (Keep reading, this isn't a paid ad or anything.) I tried it and it worked beautifully. My hands felt very soft without feeling greasy. So the next time I washed my hands . . . my skin was still soft! Whatever they put in this stuff works miracles.

A few days later I was typing on the computer. I do a lot of that, you know. The bottle was sitting on my desk and I put a little more on my hands. As I was holding my hands up and once more marvelling at the results of this miracle in a bottle, I noticed little sparkles. My hands were reflecting the light! It was like body glitter, but much more subtle and nearly microscopic. What in the world did they put in that lotion?

A quick check of the back of the bottle gave me the answer with the last ingredient on the list. Mica. It's a rock. It's very shiny and soft, for a rock, and you can peel it into extremely thin layers, and apparently grind it up into tiny shiny particles. Yep, I took a geology class in college so that I could identify ingredients in my hand lotion. I can also identify quartz and obsidian, also very shiny. I don't remember much else from that class. Most rocks are dull and just, well, rocks. Although there was this one very cute guy in my class . . . But I digress.

So I'm thinking, why are the advertising people not all over this? A lotion that makes your skin sparkle in the light? With the current Twilight craze, their sales could go through the roof! (Vampires are now sparkly. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, ask a teenage girl.) Maybe I should contact the company. I wonder if they work with freelance writers?