Makeup and Cosmetics

Yesterday Ricki got into my makeup. It is not the first time that she has experimented with cosmetics. (See HERE and HERE.)
I saw her hiding something behind her back, a sure indication that she is up to some type of forbidden mischief. As she saw me approaching, she realized that her time with the “goods” was VERY limited, so she quickly extracted some eye shadow from the bag and swiped a purple swatch across her neck, and then would have applied it to her mouth, but by then I had, in a rather strong-arm way, intervened. She grumbled, as usual during any spat with me, that I was being “cheeky and insolent”. [Our sages say that “He who disparages another, defames with his OWN defect.” Oh, how true!]
Later in ther evening, she had been listening to a tape and was in a better mood. She asked me to turn on the computer for her, and I agreed, with the provision that she first clean up her room. [ie., pick up the books she has thrown behind her bed, the junk between her bed and the computer table, and the dirty laundry from the floor.] As she was attacking the mess, she came across the set of creams and body-care products that I had bought her over half a year ago for her birthday.
(See HERE.)
Suddenly, the creams (which much to my disappointment, had hardly been touched since their acquisition) looked VERY interesting to Ricki. She was examining them one by one, and looking at an instruction page I had written for her at the time of their purchase. I hesitantly approached her and asked “Do you want me to explain to you how to use them?” And she actually agreed to listen. For once in a long time we had a lovely mother-daughter moment. Gee, maybe she WILL eventually grow out of the “teens”!