deodorant

much love to one of sweetest people i know, erin. she has the most beautiful personality. she made a special trip to come visit us. she's spent the last couple years in ottawa. notice i made a conscious effort to make the city distinction so as to not accidentally spit out the word toronto despite my belief that the words ottawa, ontario, and toronto are all readily interchangeable. there's too many o's and t's to confuse me, and hey, i'm technically from vancouver. my grade four teacher (technically that is a canadianism, because americans would say "fourth grade teacher") told me a story once that she moved from england to vancouver, and her friend asked her to pop over and say hi to her friend in niagara falls. because canada is that small.

what few people on the westcoast realize is that ontario is the center of the canadian universe (anything west of and including manitoba will never have a hope of actually having an effect on any federal election). however, when ontario natives come to visit BC, they see the ocean and never want to go back. BC really is that much better.


somehow we started talking about how impossible it is to find plain, women's deodorant that doesn't contain antipersperant. there are so many men's deodorants on the market, but it's few and far between for us women. uncomfortable with the idea of preventing my pores from sweating in an area with so many lymph nodes, combined with the thought of my family history of breast cancer, i've spent many, many years trying to find women's deodorant. besides, deodorant never leaves a white powdery mess on dark clothing.

when i was young i used a lady's speed stick teen deoderant gel....it was green. i remember seeing it on pharmacy shelves up until at least a few years ago, but now that i google it, i see it comes in 5 new flavors (strawberry!) but it is now also an antiperspirant. i've also tried the J/Â/S/Ö/N products, and tom's of maine, and while they are natural and don't contain the dreaded aluminum chlorohydrate, i didn't find that they worked entirely well. when i was a teenager my mom brought me back jagged "alum crystals" from the philippines, which she made me grind to a powder with a mortar and pestle. it worked the best at cutting smell but the mortar and pestle bit was a bit tedious and i resorted to using a sporty men's deoderant for many years, because i wasn't satisfied with tom's or the J/Â/S/Ö/N products. when i thought about it - i wondered just how different "alum" was from aluminum chlorohydrate, too. it did, however, allow me to sweat.

so then a couple years ago, i found an alum crystal product on the market. and it is the best thing i've ever found. you just wet it (which i very well could have done with my bag of alum crystals had they not been so jagged), and apply. and no smell, and it lets you sweat. another problem with a lot of the women's deoderants i'd tried is that they're gel-y and therefore sticky, perhaps promoting sweat and odor causing bacteria. not so with the crystal. the crystal is my best friend, and it even comes in a travel size!

i'm reeling a little at the thought of my non-strapless wedding gown in the august heat, and i may indulge myself with a watermelon antipersperant for just a day. because with what few lady's deoderants are available on the market, i was always jealous of the 100+ different scents that you could get for antiperspirants.