My Quest For The Perfect Natural Deodorant

Last year, Anthony and I watched this documentary about the harmful toxins that are entering your body through your lotions, makeup, hairspray and deodorant. Horrified yet hesitant to give up my favorite brands, I have tried to make the switch on most of my beauty products and now I use organic, all natural shampoo, conditioner, body wash, makeup and hairspray (for the most part). But finding that perfect natural deodorant that won't leave me smelling like a Sumo Wrestler after a brief walk across the street? Next to impossible. I think I would have a better chance at actually becoming a Sumo Wrestler....

First, I tried a brand named 'Crystal' that looked straight out of the 1980's. I'm pretty sure the girl on the front of the bottle was Jane Fonda and I felt like I should be working at a strip club with that in my possession. It was the wet, roll-on type which I immediately hated but I tried it anyways to save my body from those nasty toxins. I'm not a really sweaty person naturally and only perspire heavily after a good workout. I usually didn't smell after a workout with my trusty 'Secret' deodorant, but after a light jog with 'Crystal' I smelled like a farm animal. Toss.

Next I tried some hippie brand at Whole Foods but I couldn't stand the scent of patchouli that lingered around my body like the cloud of filth that followed Pigpen from Peanuts...that one was trash. Feeling hopeless, I bought another brand from Whole Foods called 'Kiss My Face' and after using the same brand of lotion, I was feeling optimistic. That one was also sticky and smelled like a man but I decided to try it out before my spin class. Bad idea...I'm pretty sure a few people behind my bike wished they were sitting on the other side of the room. I even gagged a little after I smelled my armpit post class. 'Kiss My Face?' How about 'Kiss My Stench!'

Before I went back to my harmful, loaded with free radicals 'Secret,' I thought I would give 'Tom's of Maine' a try. I was from Maine, so it should do the trick, right? Apparently, that wasn't how it worked. This natural deodorant was not only a deodorant but an antiperspirant to boot. Hooray! I was so confident that I wouldn't stink after a quick run on the treadmill that I even had Anthony give me a whiff afterwards. Double bad idea. I smelled like I hadn't taken a bath in weeks, then took a bath in the dirty bathwater from Honey Boo Boo's entire family. I quit my search and drove to Costco to stock up on 'Secret.' What's the harm in a little aluminum when you smell like a million bucks? No harm, I promise.

You’re Too Big To Fit In Here….

Yesterday I took my car to the car wash, which is on the ground floor of the parking structure next to my office. It was as easy as pie. For $15, I dropped my car off at 7:00 am before work and it was ready by lunch. And let me tell you, they did a fabulous job! Bob (my Audi) was very happy and couldn’t stop smiling the whole ride home. So of course once my fiancé (I’m obsessed with saying that word by the way) saw Bob he asked if I could take his Tahoe to work the next day so it could get a wash. And because I am such an amazing fiancé (I really heart that word) I agreed.

I got up the next morning, hopped in his Tahoe and began my lovely commute on the 10 freeway. I drive Anthony’s truck sometimes to work so I am familiar with it but it’s just so big compared to my little Audi. I always feel like a giant beast in his Tahoe but I like it because no one wants to mess with me. I finally arrive at the parking structure next to my work and pull in. Right off the bat I notice the swinging yellow bar above my head that said ‘clearance 6’2” and I wrinkle my brow and think, “I’m pretty sure this thing has a clearance of 6’ so I’m all good.” I pull the ticket, the gate arm opens and immediately a read light above my head starts flashing, “overweight, please back out.” A.) How dare he? And B.) OH *%$#!

I look around, duck down a little so I wouldn’t hit my head (it makes no sense, I know, but everyone does it when they drive in parking structures!) and proceeded straight ahead to the car wash. I was convinced that on my way there I was going to slice the top off Anthony’s truck, bring home a convertible to him and NEVER be able to use that word ‘fiancé’ again. But lucky for me, the Tahoe was 6’, nobody said anything to me about being too big, and his truck is nice and shiny…and in one piece. 

From Hot Dogs To Hollywood

After I graduated college in 2003, I had no idea what I was going to do with my life like most college graduates, right? I was working at the hot dog stands in Freeport with my best friends, Alicia, Jeri and Holly when we came up with the idea to move to Los Angeles. We actually had a brilliant idea to utilize my contacts at MTV and pitch them a reality show about the 'six' of us (our friend Elaine from Ireland and Alicia's English Mastiff, Sampson would also be joining us on our trip out West). Our plan was to rent a camper, hitch up my Jetta to the back and drive from Maine to California with no apartment and no jobs awaiting us in Los Angeles. Sounded like an amazing reality show right? Unfortunately after our meeting with MTV, they decided they had too much on their plate and luckily for us (now that I think about it) the show didn't happen. If our idea were to be pitched to MTV today, I am sure we would all be famous by now, and probably crackheads and in jail too.....Alas, the MTV team we met with created The Hills shortly after our meeting and I didn't end up like Lauren Conrad or Heidi Montag.

Anyways, back to our trip....so on that snowy and freezing January 9th morning in 2004 (as you can tell in our picture, we were freezing), we packed up the camper and set forth for Cali. None of us ever have driven something that big and back in that day when there really wasn't any sort of GPS, we had the old fashioned paper maps in hand, routing our way across the US. We made many stops along the way of course as we had nothing solid waiting for us upon our arrival in LA. Now that I say that out loud, it sounds CRAZY!!! My poor parents...how did they let me leave their warm and safe home in Maine? Because I'm the middle child, that's why! 

I remember stopping in Maryland the first night to pull over and sleep at a truck stop in the freezing cold. Then we made it to Atlanta to tour the Coca-Cola factory and then headed down to Tampa to visit Alicia's brother and sister-in-law. I think we even went to Hooters, oh and Disney World of course. Next we went to New Orleans where we shacked up at the shadiest mobile home park I have ever been to (sorry Mom and Pop) and partied our faces off on Bourbon Street. Then I think we drove to El Paso so Jeri could visit her Uncle while we stayed in a Wal-Mart parking lot (brushing your teeth in the Wal-Mart bathroom at 7:00 am is a hoot, let me tell you) and drove across the border to Juarez, Mexico where I valet parked my car so we could walk around for a few hours- again, am I freaking crazy??? After those adventures, we made it the to Hoover Damn, the Grand Canyon (this was an educational trip too) and to Las Vegas to visit Holly's grandmother and party of course. Finally, we made it safely to Los Angeles where we found a two bedroom apartment and eventually jobs and lives. Surprisingly, I am the only one of us who remains in LA and am still compiling our adventure for a book...you would all love to read about it, right? 

Bubbles Gone Wild

Sundays are the perfect day for a bubble bath, right? Especially when you are feeling under the weather like I am today...So I lit my candles, filled up my glass with OJ, turned on Lana Del Rey and started to run the tub in the bathroom. Since we moved to a bigger apartment in our building last week, we not only got a bigger bathroom but a jacuzzi tub to boot. The only problem with the tub is that the jets don't work on their own with the button in the tub, so in order to turn it on, you have to go into the toilet area, open a secret hatch door and plug it in. Yeah, we are getting that fixed soon....So, I squirted the coconut bubble bath in the tub, turned on the hot water and 'plugged' in the jets. I probably should have waited to plug them in until the water was higher than the jets but then I just wouldn't be Erin, would I? So as I am sitting in the living room with Anthony, waiting for my tub to fill up, we heard a strange spraying sound coming from the bathroom. I run in to see the jets spraying the water everywhere like the water show at the Bellagio in Vegas. I hurried in to the toilet area to unplug the jets and quickly clean up the mess I made before Anthony could see. Just as I was enjoying the relaxing tub, the water was finally submerging the jets so I called Anthony in to plug them in for me. Such a hassle right? Just as I was finding my zen, I noticed that the bubbles were starting to come above my chin and I was drowning a bit in my own bathtub. There was nothing I could do so I screamed for Anthony to unplug the jets before I was killed by Mister Bubbles himself. We definitely need to gets those fixed...

Extreme Diets Make For An Extreme Mess

You can ask my friend Alicia, if there was a diet trend, we did it. Neither of us even needed to loose weight yet we were constantly on the heels of the newest diet trend that could make us 'skinny.' We tried the Atkins diet, the South Beach Diet, cutting out dairy, cutting out meat, cutting out food in general. We ate only baby food for a few days straight, did a cleanse that consisted of water, lemon juice, maple syrup and cayenne pepper (it tasted like pond water) and even tried the Alli pill. If anyone has ever tried the diet pill, I am terribly sorry that you had to go through what I went through and if you haven't tried it- don't...EVER!

This may make you look at me differently, but I don't care. Al Roker once pooped his pants while reporting live on TV at the White House and we still look forward to hearing his weather report every morning. Besides, I didn't exactly do what Al did...but it was close. When you take the Alli pill, it supposedly blocks the intestines from absorbing some of the fat that you ingest in your food. It sounds great until you go to the bathroom and see what looks like bright orange pizza grease staring back up at you. Disgusting. And its not only nasty looking but its kind of like you took a laxative and you can't help when or where it wants to come out. Disgusted yet? Yeah, so am I just thinking back on it. Let's just say that one morning I woke up and had to throw my sheets away. Immediately after, I threw those pills away. That's all I will say about that. Thank goodness I have smartened up and realized that the only thing that keeps you skinny is eating healthy and working out...and laxatives- just kidding! Never again. Never again!

I Said YES!

As many of you already know, Anthony and I are engaged and I couldn't be more excited to marry my best friend. But many of you may not know how it all went down. We went to the East Coast for Christmas where we would be traveling from Boston to Maine to Toronto all in nine days. (Little did I know that my engagement ring was already at Grace and JJ's house in Maine awaiting our arrival). After a few days in Boston with Grace and JJ, we drove up to my parent's house in Maine to spend Christmas. Ironically, the first thing my dad did when I told him that we would be spending a day in Niagara Falls at the end of our trip was wave his ring finger at me and wink. "Do you think he's going to propose?" he asked as he giggled like a teenager. I was definitely hoping he would but I didn't want to get my hopes up and I knew that he still had to talk to my dad. Funny enough, when my dad made that gesture, Anthony hadn't even talked to him- it must have been fatherly intuition.

As our stay in Maine was winding down, I was very aware of the fact that I never saw my dad and Anthony alone together, so I figured that the timing just wasn't right and I decided that I would just be patient and let it happen when it happened. So off we went to Toronto. The city, although freezing, was beautiful and we were definitely having a blast being American tourists. On our last day of our vacation, we planned to go the Niagara Falls (ironically dubbed the Honeymoon Capital of the World). Our train from Toronto left at 8:20 AM, which meant we had to get up early to get to the subway, which would take us to the train station. Well, that didn't happen as we planned and we had to hail a cab and pray we would make our train because of course, we were running late that morning. Once on the train, go figure the WiFi didn't work and after two hours on the Amtrak, we finally made it into Niagara Falls only to discover that we had to take another bus into town. Were we filming Planes Trains and Automobiles 2? Once we got into the heart of the Falls, we thought we were at the Jersey Shore as the town resembled a boardwalk/carnival with a Hershey's Store, Ripley's Believe it or Not Museum, Hard Rock Cafe and various haunted houses to boot. I turned to Anthony and said, "this day is going to be an adventure!" Little did I know...

After we explored the falls, ate a few hot dogs, checked out the local casino and had a drink at Margaritaville, Anthony suggested that we take a ride on the Skywheel Ferris wheel where we could sit down, relax and enjoy the view in our own enclosed and heated cart. Although I am terrified of heights/Ferris wheels, I agreed to go on because I wanted to see the Falls from 175 feet in the air. We were enjoying the ride ands snapping a few photos when he blurted out that he had a confession to make. He kept telling me that he had one more Christmas gift to give me once we got back to LA but he said that he wasn't going to give me the gift in LA now. I was completely confused and asked him if we were going on another trip and he told me to close my eyes. I honestly still had no idea what was going on and was wondering if he was going to give me my gift at that moment- maybe a purse or something? But then I felt the cart shift and realized that he was getting down on his knee. I removed my hands from my eyes to see the love of my life kneeling in front of me with a gorgeous ring. I swear to God I blacked out when I heard the word 'wife' and still have no idea f I said yes. I was in total shock! I did manage to ask him if he asked my dad and he told me he asked both of my parents when I was in the shower on Christmas Eve. What a little bugger! I couldn't believe this was really happening. I think I finally mustered out an answer and gave him a big ole smooch. I had no idea I could go from a normal girl being scared to death of Ferris wheels to a fiance whose new favorite thing was a Ferris wheel in that short amount of time but I did. Let the wedding planning begin!

Only In Maine...

When you grow up in Maine, it is common that you trek out back in the woods to cut down your Christmas tree every winter. The Demchak's were no exception and ever since I can remember, that is how we did it. And even after the kids moved out of the house, that is still how my parents, John and Rhoda do it. Last weekend, the two of them bundled up in their L.L. Bean gear, hopped in the truck and drove out back in the woods to cut down the Christmas tree. Once they found a good spot, my parents jumped out of the truck, (my dad holding the chainsaw and my mom peeing her pants laughing) and made their way through the woods to find that special tree. My dad was leading the way, chopping through the tree limbs that were in their way with the chainsaw, trying to get to that perfect tree.

Once my dad would see that glimmering pine tree destined for the living room, he would cut down the 75 footer, watch it fall, then cut off the top that would fit in the house. After a few pines went timber and my parents shunned the so called 'Charlie Brown' trees, they found the perfect one that would be ideal for the Demchak house. My mom, still peeing her pants, watched as my dad strapped the trees to the back of the truck with chains. The two found the perfect tree and not to be wasteful, a few others to use in the dining room and maybe even to make a wreath. Only in Maine....