Hi! Happy Tuesday! I completely forgot to write last week’s dispatch. Sorry! But, in the last week, I successfully played ukulele on stage for the first time ever, successfully pitched a new show + booked a REALLY COOL guest, and got invited back to a different sketch show that I absolutely LOVE. It’s a good week to be a musical comedy person named Hattie! I’m just gonna make an effort to send these things once a week, with an attempt at Mondays but when that fails, just make sure I get ‘em out. Schedules are for work and this is for fun! I love you.

And now, for the thoughts.

An artist I follow, Susannah Conway, leads a few workshop series; her basic four-week journaling program, which I’ve done before, is really helpful if you have a stack of pretty notebooks and want to, y’know. Use them. She also offers a course called “Loving Little You.” You’ve maybe heard of this sort of stuff, “inner child” work, as it’s called in therapy and self-help circles. 

Even if you haven’t, you probably have! 

On social media (even LINKEDIN, of all places), I’ve seen a wave of users sharing their baby/toddler/elementary school photos. The important thing is that the picture is adorable. The original caption, forever ago, was “This is who you’re being mean to,” but because of capitalism, the captions I see most often are a variation of a job description. “This is who you’re emailing about your contact lens rebate,” they say. “This is who you’re forcing to think about insurance.” Depending on your perspective, as client or colleague, they’re either a reminder that the customer service rep you’re bullying was a child at one point, or a show of solidarity for your fellow laborer in the email mines.

The point is “I was a little kid, at some point. Please be gentle.” And inner child work is much the same. It reminds you that, at one point, you were a small, innocent child! You deserved to be happy! You deserved for people to be gentle with you! And if you didn’t get those things, you deserve them now, and you are an adult, so you’re empowered to give them to yourself now. I’m lucky, because my inner child has been fed a constant stream of mini M&Ms and Tamagotchi batteries for 31 years straight. I’m so happy and feel such satisfaction, I think, because I let my inner child have the reins, and I occasionally lean over to steer us away from the cliff.

So that’s “little me.” But what about “medium me?”

My inner child doesn’t need a lot of healing² but lately I’ve been trying to listen more to my Inner Teen. Frankly, I didn’t listen to Teen Hattie much when I was Teen Hattie. My interests skewed very young (Soda Pop Girls, Holly Hobbie, replaying my Blues Clues CD-Rom way beyond when it was cool) and way too old (being a member of KISS army in the aughts, buying and reading textbooks from thriftstores, writing for a print newspaper). I did have brightly-colored hair, and I made my mom do “photoshoots” with me in the yard, but I didn’t sneak out, or talk back, or do anything bad ever.¹

Maybe it’s the Alysa Liu effect, but over the past few weeks, I’ve been thinking about Teen Hattie and the sharp, jutting, angular corners of her personality. When I say “teen,” I often think “snarky.” Maybe what I mean is “a little off and not yet matured.” Or “earnest enough that it’s discomfiting and strange.” Or “obsessive and hyperfixated and happy about this.”

Here are some things I’ve done or thought about recently that feel like ways of appreciating my Inner Teen:

If you, too, have a perfectly healthy inner child, but a neglected inner teen, perhaps consider going to the mall with your friends and asking your friends if they’ve LIKE-liked anyone recently.

And now, for something verrrrrrrry adult, a continuation of my “boring things” series! Here are some dull, ho-hum, yawnworthy things that have improved my life in the last ~year.

My fellow clotheshorses, what is stopping you from making your sartorial stable look like a dad’s garage? Our bedroom has two of these five-tier shelves, which are not glamorous or elegant whatsoever. But they DO hold beaucoup storage bins, and they’re adjustable for different bin sizes, and you can put allllll your stuffed animals and hats on the top, if you are so inclined. Right now, I have 16 bins on one side, and 17 on the other. Everything is SO easy to access while still being out of the way. Stop trying to make your clothes storage look “cute” and get your shit off the floor by dumping it in lidless bins, then shoving them onto your shelves. Your under-the-bed solly storage is great, your multi-hook closet hangers are great, but if you have a ton of clothes, this is for you.

Tofu mostly tastes like whatever you put on it. But what if…tofu could also taste like…something? I’ve spent a lot of time working on my tofu texture, but I recently learned this Cool Hack for making it more flavorful.

After this, you can fry/bake/roast/sautee your tofu as desired. Or! You can marinate your tofu. The hot, salty water draws liquid out of the tofu, and when you allow it to dry, it becomes more porous. Perfect for a marinade! If you go straight to cooking it, the salt from the water will give it deeper flavor, while also making the texture more airy. I like dousing my tofu in teriyaki marinade or lemon juice and chili oil after it’s boiled and “dried,” then popping it in the oven on a tray of vegetables!

This. Stuff. Smells. Amazing. THIS STUFF SMELLS AMAZING. It smells like Clean.³ I was at my parents’ house, and I said “WHY does it smell so good in here? Is it the laundry detergent?!” You see, previously, my parents started using an Arm & Hammer laundry soap that was sooooooo clean and delightful and fresh that I had to start using it, too. But laundry soap doesn’t make the whole house smell like a cleaning fairy blessed you in the night!

This stuff does, though. It’s a multipurpose cleaner, and I buy the concentrate, and I use it all over. Counters Floors! The area directly behind the radiator (so it gets warm and smells like FRESHNESS)! A tiny little capfull of concentrate, mixed into a spray bottle, will make your whole life delightful! Also great to pour down your bathroom and kitchen drains before guests come to town, as a very subtle air freshener.

Now, it’s time for beauty writing! That’s less boring! Would you like to hear my thoughts on goo? If you are a person who loves administering various goos and mechanisms to your flesh/hair, well, perhaps you would like to know some of my favorite purchases in that category. Read on for magic potions and delightful implements!

$14.99 for 12 oz
This is the product I’m most excited to talk about, so it’s going first, even though I only started using it recently. Did you guys know about milky toners??? I didn’t! Somehow! Despite being generally up-and-up on beauty innovations, I thought of toner as an astringent-adjacent product. Something to deglaze your face after a day of sweating, or mattify it before applying makeup.

Ah, but this? Milky toner? It is for ME and my fellow DRY-ASS FACES.

When I was wedding prepping, I watched a lot of “dewy healthy longwear makeup” routine videos. A couple of them included e.l.f. Holy Hydration Thirst Burst Drops (which I used and liked, but which I cannot confirm are different from any other serum). And a LOT of them included milky toners. There were a number of brands represented—the Versed and Thayers toners were what I saw most, Byoma too. I could not, for the life of me, figure out how a moisturizing toner would even work! Wouldn’t it make your makeup pilly? Surely it could not add that much moisture to your skin?

Then, after the wedding, I signed up for a blind test of a milky toner for a focus group. I would get to try this mysterious product for free, AND I would get $85 out of the gig. Sweet! I went in with low expectations.

Reader? I freakin’ love this stuff.

Let me first state, up front, that the milky toner I tried in this focus group is not on the market yet, so I can’t link you to it, and even if I could, I would not. The toner I tried in the focus group would, if it came to market, be priced at around $34. The milky toner I bought, the Thayer’s kind, is $14.99 for TWELVE ounces, and it actually works better than the sample I tried. So, what does it do, exactly?

I don’t really understand the mechanism here, but I’ll try. A milky toner is very lightweight—this is another reason why I was skeptical—and you splash it on your face like a Noxzema commercial. Think of it as a suspension of Big Chunky Wetness in Plentiful Skinny Wetness. It’s ceramides and peptides and hyaluronic acid, in a bottle of water and glycerin and emollients and whatnot.

So, after you wash your face (or just get your hands wet), you put some milky toner in your hands and slap it into your face. A generous tablespoon goes a long way for the whole face and neck. It REALLY makes your skin look dewy and bouncy. Boing. You WILL look sort of damp after, and if you apply a foundation or concealer after, you’ll still look damp, unless you use mattifying products to combat that. But I’ve found that milky toner makes my makeup last much longer, regardless of what the actual makeup product is. Also, most days, I don’t wear it with makeup. In the morning I apply a lightweight moisturizer over the milky toner. At night I apply a VERY HEAVY moisturizer over the milky toner (more on that later!). I have not encountered any acne or oiliness even after implementing this into my routine.

If you buy anything on this list, make it the milky toner.

(The Leonor Greyl pre-shampoo hair oil, in the magnolia scent)

$20 for the travel size (0.84 oz, which lasted me 5 months); $62 for full size (3.4 oz)

The worst type of product: Fancy Shit That Works. UGH, ugh, ugh.

I learned about Leonor Greyl from Cambridge Chemists, a French pharmacy on 65th and Lexington. My mom and I walked into the pharmacy while she was visiting in May. I told her, “See, the best beauty stores are not your Bloomingdales or Sakses or Sephoras or Nordstroms, but a random pharmacy with good tiny soaps in the window.”

We went in and shopped a little, and the owner/pharmacist mentioned that they would be holding a series of in-store events to showcase the wide range of imported products. The next event, she said, would focus on the woman-owned businesses in stock, and include free samples, free wine, and discounts on all purchases.

SO, I went, and I bought stuff, and I left laden with free samples, and I’m glad I did! I received a few free samples of Leonor Greyl hair masks, shampoo and conditioner. I also tried one of the hair oils in-store, as a leave-in treatment, and I loved the smell so much that I purchased a tiny little $20 bottle of the pre-shampoo oil. My reasoning: it was two weeks before my wedding, and I should probably do something to my hair in preparation, and $20 seemed fair enough, since I planned to just douse my hair in the stuff. Two $10 oil treatments? That’s pretty reasonable for a pre-wedding beautification! I thought.

That tiny little bottle lasted me nearly 5 months of regular usage! QUELLE SURPRISE!

This stuff smells good (ostensibly like magnolias). It is deeply, deeply moisturizing. It is a pre-shampoo treatment; that is, you rub it into the ends of your hair 30 minutes or so before you shower, then you wash it out. It kept my hair from getting crunchy and fried when I used it before shampooing + heat styling; it made my ends wavy and shiny and glossy when I used it before shampooing + air drying. On our honeymoon, it was a very good way to revitalize kinda-washed kinda-crispy hotel hair. It also works well as a finishing oil if you tease your hair or curl it a lot, and you wind up with a giant puff and desire slightly more definition.

When the bottle was empty, I filled it with a different hair oil, and now that hair oil smells like magnolias, too.

$50 for 20 strands of fairy hair

I got more fairy hair over the weekend, so I am inclined to remind you fairy hair is the freakin’ best. Plus, even though I’ve written about it before, every day, I am stopped by someone who did not know about it, and who asks where to get it! So. Did you guys know fairy hair has been a thing? Like, in the early 2000s and before? Because I did not. I learned about fairy hair from two nice older ladies on two separate flights in 2025. 

Still, it’s very weird that I didn’t encounter Fairy Hair until early 2025. In the midwest, we had Quick Gems by Conair, of course, and glitter tattoos which you apply directly to your hairs. But not tinsel! First, in early January 2025, I saw an older lady with a chic gray bob streaked with rainbow sparkles at the gate while I was waiting on a delayed flight. Weeks later, I was on another flight, also delayed, and started talking to the woman next to me (her name was Carol) (wow, I talk a lot). Since she was also headed to NYC, I said, “Hey, where did you get your fairy hair done?” Carol told me to look up Fairy Hair by Michael, and then before I could even open my web browser, she airdropped me his phone contact info. 

Fairy hair is affixed to your hair by a tiny knot, made with a latch hook device. The strands fall out as you naturally shed your hairs. One of my new goals is to get fairy hair more regularly, in the hopes that someday, my noggin will have a 1:1 tinsel:hair ratio. Last month, I did 10 rainbow strands and 10 copper strands. Most of them are still there, along with my newly added pastel green and lavender strands. They look AWESOME. I don’t get a ton of salon services done regularly—I usually only get one haircut per year—so this is a worthwhile indulgence!

This Dispatch has been very list-heavy. I feel like BuzzFeed, or perhaps the BuzzFeed store in LaGuardia airport. BUT IT’S NOT ENOUGH!!!! Here’s one more list…What I Did Not Buy This Week.

And that, as they say, is that. Be kind to your inner teens today, all. Do something stupid on a skateboard. Eat a walking taco and then lick Doritos dust off your fingers. Decorate your workspace with a tiny locker-size mirror and a poster of someone you think is cute. And I’ll see you again soon! Thanks for reading.