Damn You, La Mer.

La Mer is like heroin. Try it once and you are hooked. But the samples are definitely the gateway drugs. For me, it started innocently enough with a hit sample of the Creme de la Mer. Which led to the purchase of a small jar at $130/ounce. With the small jar came a sample of The Lifting Face Serum. Then it was a purchase of the small jar of Creme de la Mer and The Lifting Face Serum (1 oz. costs $235 + $130=$365). With The Lifting Face Serum came a sample of The Lifting Intensifier. And who doesn't want intense lifting in your 40s? Uh huh. That's right, nobody.

So, the next purchase was inevitably the large, sorry medium (the large creme is a supersized $1390!) Creme and the Combination Lifting Face Serum and Lifting Intensifier at the bargain total price of $545 ($235 for 2 oz. Creme, $315 for Combo).

I'm not even going to discuss The Radiant Facial, The Eye Balm, The Concentrate...

Then one fine day my dealers cosmeticians at Neiman-Marcus call and say it's double InCircle points day and they have a super special gift for me. I race in, whereby a sample of the Body Lotion is thrust upon me. I don't even want to know the price. The madness must stop, I say!! I run out of the store, down the mall to Happy Harry's and buy a bottle of Oil of Olay for $9.99. That's a savings of $535.01!

But after all that gorgeous, skin-plumping La Mer, my skin feels like the desert. In August. I try Chanel and Kiehl's and an assortment of Olay products until I stumble onto Lancome and its High Resolution creams for face and eye. After one use my skin feels somewhat French-ish. La Mer-ish. Soft. Smooth. Finally. A replacement. An affordable replacement. My affordable replacement and I get along just peachily for months and months until the day I find the junk stuffed in my makeup drawer, under the blush. A sample of La Mer's The Radiant Infusion. I try it just once. What's the harm, right? Wow. It makes my face cream glide on. I feel younger. I look at least 5 years younger. Oh, I'm imagining things, I think to myself. I keep trying it. My bottle is getting emptier and emptier. Best of all, The Radiant Infusion is only $95 for a 4.2-oz. bottle! That's a deal in La Mer Land. And it works under my cheaper (but still not cheap) face cream from Lancome. How happy am I?

And then yesterday, I run out of Lancome only to go to Macy's to find that they have discontinued my creams!! It has taken me YEARS to find them and they have discontinued or specifically are "reformulating" my perfect face and eye creams. *sob*

I know this has happened to you. With lipstick. Face cream. Jeans. Something. What's a girl (or guy) to do?