Friday Five: 3/21/25

An incredible candle, a miracle for earlobes, my favorite new lipgloss, a refreshing beverage, and the world's most overrated cereal

It has somehow been just shy of a year since I last did a Friday Five (four things I love, one I don’t!), which I simultaneously refuse to believe and also very much believe, because life is moving at a breakneck pace, but here we are, back again with another one, even though I have sort of an icky feeling about consumerism right now. Still, I do believe in the power of little treats to cheer oneself up, and I also believe in the joy of spreading the word about things you genuinely love, so here are four things I’ve been enjoying lately, and one that can take a long walk off a short pier.

1. First up, an 🚨 ALERT! 🚨 The alert is that 🚨🚨 THE TRADER JOE’S TOMATO LEAF CANDLE IS BACK IN STOCK AFTER A TWO YEAR HIATUS. 🚨🚨

We’re living in exciting times here, folks. This literally made my week. This candle smells exactly like tomato vines—a glorious, fresh, summer-is-coming scent—and it has an amazing throw (ie: the smell fills the room). But two years ago, Trader Joe’s pulled it off the shelves quite abruptly because it kept….uh….spontaneously bursting into flames, obviously not a great quality for a candle (or anything!) to have. I was bereft, and spent a sad chunk of 2023 and 2024 scanning the shelves every time I went to Trader Joe’s, only to leave disappointed. But I guess (hope!) they’ve now reformulated it to no longer be a fire hazard, because I was thrilled to discover it on my grocery run the other day! The packaging is way cuter than it used to be, it’s like $3.99, and yesterday it was burning in my kitchen while my kids did their homework and I could smell it TWO ROOMS AWAY as I came in through the garage. Today I plan to go back and buy five more. You know what I’m going to become? I’m going to become the kind of person who has a “house candle.”

Looking cute on my desk there, little green candle. Competing with the big bois like Diptyque and still you shine.

2. Next up, a “miracle” product that somehow actually is a miracle.

Okay, try to look past the atrocious packaging, which looks like it was designed in 1993. Try also to look past the fact that you have to buy these at Amazon (although you can apparently, in keeping with the 1993-ness of them, buy them at Claire’s too!) This is something of a niche product, I realize, but if the niche you need to fill is “can’t wear most earrings because they pull on the holes in my ears,” then boy, is it your lucky day! For whatever reason, my piercings have ripped in both of my ears over the years, and I have had to have them both sewn up several times at the dermatologist. (My very first blog post, back in 2005, was actually about this; I remember very little of either the blog post or the dermatologist visit, except that he had a BIG BOWL OF GUMMY CANDY EARS IN HIS WAITING ROOM. Was it around Halloween time? I mean, sure, let’s give him the benefit of the doubt and say yes? Because otherwise he was probably a serial killer?) Anyway, this has meant that I can only wear the very lightest earrings imaginable, and even then, they often slip and pull down and look weird. So when I ordered this product (god knows what weird google search led me to find it), I very much did not believe that it would do anything for me. It is essentially a thick, clear, textured sticker that you put over the back of your earlobe and poke the back of your earring through. And yet, somehow, it changes everything! It is, and I am not mincing words here, an actual miracle! I can wear any earring now and it’ll sit in the exact right place on my earlobe. For the two people this will likely help, you’re welcome! For everyone else, I’m sorry I gave you the mental image of a bowl full of gummy ear candy in the waiting room of a doctor who is about to sew up your ripped ear.

3. There are three things you can count on in life: death, taxes, and Holly Burns giving you a solid recommendation for a berry-colored lip product.
   

As a person who used to help name things for a living (including the Layout app, RIP), I can tell you that “Fat Oil Lip Drip” should never have made it off the conference room whiteboard and onto this packaging. (I am mentally starting a “namestorming” doc in my head and it is savage.) And yet, this product is great! I don’t know that I would call it an oil, per se—is that just Gen Z rebranding ‘90s lip gloss for us?—but it is glossy without being sticky or tacky, and it stays on for a surprisingly decent amount of time. I bought the shade “That’s Chic” —a name that almost cancels out “Fat Oil Lip Drip”—and I love it; the color is that exact “my lips if they were a bit chapped” shade that I’ve been after my whole life.

4. Are you looking for a refreshing non-alcoholic drink that is not another darn pamplemousse La Croix? I mean, who isn’t?

Last summer, we went to visit my brother and sister-in-law in Chicago. After an epic day of sightseeing and Cubs-game-attending, we came back to their house right as one of those perfect midwestern summer storms was starting, and my brother was like “go sit on the porch and read your book, I’ll hang out with the kids!” He offered me something to drink, and I chose one of these Lagunitas Hoppy Refreshers in a glass bottle, despite not really being a beer person, because it was like 90 degrees outside and two thousand percent humidity and my brother told me how….well, refreshing they were. (See? That is a good name!) And he was right, they are incredibly refreshing! They taste like nothing I have ever really tasted before, but they don’t taste anything like beer. They basically just taste.…crisp. I’m not really a big drinker these days, and I love to have one on a Friday night as a little kickoff to the weekend (I know, I know, getting real crazy in a very specific forty-something Northern California mom way). They are best consumed on a porch in Chicago in the middle of a thunderstorm while someone else is playing Uno with your kids, but they’re pretty great in all other scenarios too.

5. And now, for the denouement of Friday Five: the product that just ain’t doing it for me, no matter how much it may be doing it for everyone else.

Oh my god, I’m sorry, this “grain-free cereal” is disgusting. Disgusting! More disgusting than the mental image of a bowl full of gummy ears! It’s like if someone cut a cardboard box into little shapes and sprinkled it with Sweet n’ Low. The influencers were all just getting paid a ton to sell this to us, right?! (I fell for it! Don’t fall for it!) I actually don’t even know why I bought it — I don’t even like cereal, beyond the heaping bowls of Special K with Red Berries (So vague!! Which red berries?!) that I ate during the first trimester of both of my pregnancies when it was all I could stomach. I think I was drawn in by the siren song of PROTEIN, but I one hundred percent fell prey to the marketing machine here, and I am glad I only bought one (crazily overpriced!) box. Oh my god, I am equal parts angry and nauseous just thinking about it. Nauseous enough for a bowlful of Special K with Unidentifiable Red Berries? Maybe!

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