lush

10 years ago (wow. I'm old!) when i came to europe to backpack for the summer, i fell in love with this little cosmetic/bath stuff chain called Lush.  at that time, we didn't have Lush in america (i think back then, the closest one was in canada), but it seemed like i could find one in almost every city we visited in europe. the place was incredible - i could have spent a fortune there, but luckily for my bank account, my backpack didn't really provide the most hospitable environment for bath bombs and pots of blueberry face masks, and shipping boxes of it home would have been insane.

on a nearly daily basis, something reminds me that there isn't a sephora in this entire country - i've bitched about this before, and i'm still not over it, but i was shopping in cambridge on saturday and came across my old buddy Lush, and it's helped a little with the pain.

the thing i like about lush is that everything on the label of ingredients on their products is something i can easily pronounce. hell, most of it is stuff that you can find in most well stocked kitchens.  i'm not a vegetarian or a vegan and i'm not going to get all over someone's ass for using aerosol hairspray, but if i can get something that i LIKE that does what it claims to that doesn't involve applying/ingesting something completely chemical, then i'll do it. so i ran into Lush, and it was as wonderful as i remembered it being. there was so much stuff in there, i could hardly wrap my head around it, so i just gravitated toward the things i instantly recognized.  i got a couple of bath bombs, some lip balm, and a blueberry based face mask (which i used today and it was INCREDIBLE) - and then i stumbled upon the table with the salt body scrubs.

a sales guy walks up, and is doing what sales people do: trying his hardest to convince me i NEED this salt scrub - he tells me how he loves it, how it's their "best selling product," how he uses it almost every day - and he does that thing that i usually try to politely decline, where they grab your hand and apply the product to it and awkwardly rub it in and wipe it off (that kind of stuff is precisely why i ended up working in the stock room at victoria's secret and not on the floor - because i refused to be the creep who was rubbing skanky lovespell lotion all over strangers arms while trying to convince them that it was the perfect scent for them, even though i thought it smelled like a drunk prostitute....), but the scrub felt so good that i really didn't mind - and then he says something that MADE me buy it - he says "you can even use it in your hair! see? i use it in my hair! it makes it soft and shiny" - and it was true. his hair did look very soft, and it was very shiny.

why did THIS make me feel like i HAD to buy it? because i didn't believe it. i thought "that's the most absurd thing anyone has ever even suggested to me - to put a freaking SALT SCRUB in my HAIR" - but i DID check the label and they do actually suggest it for hair,  and  i'd already decided that i DID need a body scrub (i'd been thinking it for days, actually), and i liked this one enough to buy it, and since i was buying it, of course i'd totally put it in my hair so i could witness it NOT working, and then have my own private "i told you so, sales guy!" party in my bathroom.

so i got my little jar of Rub Rub Rub:

so i'm in the bath today and i'm having this really hard time even getting my hands, with their little puddles of the scrub, up to my head - it felt wrong and unnatural - i kept thinking that the harshness of the salt would break my hair, and giant chunks of it would fall out of my head - but i took a deep breath and did it, and it was strange....at first it was like i'd gotten out of the ocean, tripped, and fallen backwards into the sand (i can attest to this, since it's absolutely happened to me), and honestly it was kind of gross and annoying, but then i did what the directions and the sales guy had told me to, and rubbed it into my scalp - it felt AWESOME - and there was even a little bit of a shampoo-like lather going on - you can feel some of the salt starting to dissolve, and it's really neat.  i rubbed it in for probably around 3 minutes, and then rinsed - my hair felt the way it feels when you've been swimming in the ocean - i don't really know how to explain it aside from saying it was a little stiff, and a little more tangled than usual - i DID follow up with a tiny bit of conditioner on the ends of my hair, just to help with the tangles on the ends.

anyway,  none of my hair fell out, and when i dried it, it felt AMAZING. my hair is so freaking soft, and has a more noticeable shine - it's as soft and shiny as it was after the last time i had some shine/deep conditioning treatment done to it the last time i was at the salon that cost me 3 times as much.....so if you have a lush nearby, go try this - and pretty much everything else they make, cause it's awesome, too - and if you have a sephora where you live, well, i hate your guts.