Do I look dry to you? Do I smell?

It’s been A Foo-Foo Skincare Christmas Non-Specific Winter Holiday for me so far this year. To wit:

• Bliss lemon + sage products from the guy I dogsit for
• Bliss lemon + sage products (with bonus vanilla + bergamot products) from a co-worker (with no dogsitter overlap—which means I’m collecting the whole set!)
• Imported! Avène crème pour peaux intolerants products from a French co-worker

Best of all? I LOVE Bliss lemon + sage products! They’re (relatively) manly, they smell awesome and they don’t trigger my skin’s hypersensitive perfume issues. The Avène products are also (relatively) manly, also of the citrus family, and also magically engineered not to make me red, bumpy and itchy.

But … um … when you look at this fruity embarrassment of riches through cynical eyes, you have to wonder if there’s a subtext:

Jake! I got you some of your favorite soaps because your butt stinks when you walk.

You poor thing! You must be so uncomfortable with that dry skin and I swear I will push you down the stairs into the waiting arms of a very lonely sewer worker if a single flake of you drifts off and lands in my salad.

I choose to think, though, the gifts were given in the spirit of Jake Likes Lemon Things.

* * * * *

Speaking of dry, flaky skin, I’m finally back in the gym after two full months of Way Too Busy To Work Out. All the just-for-show muscles I’d been so carefully cultivating over the last few decades didn’t shrink as much as I’d feared during my hiatus, and they’ve actually bounced back pretty well over the last two weeks. But boy howdy (that’s cowboy talk) does my skin feel like it’s cracking and ripping every time I get a good pump going. And all the (relatively) manly lemon + sage essential oils in the world don’t seem to help. But if the Hulk had to rip through his clothes to get jacked, I guess I have to be willing to rip through my own skin.

* * * * *

I’m heading home to do laundry (so I don’t have to schlep it to my folks’ house like some poverty-stricken college student) and then I’m driving off for a week of Christmas Non-Specific Winter Holiday R&R with my family. Be good while I’m gone.