I promise you that I am not becoming obsessive about lipstick. I’m not. I’m truly not. (Well, maybe a little, because it turns out it is still February, the month when you need your obsessions to keep your adrenaline level up so you don’t just drift off to sleep all the time.)

But the other day, just after I posted about the saga of entering into an eBay auction for my favorite discontinued lipstick and ending up being in a bidding war, I got an email from my friend Diane in California, and she said, “What were you thinking, giving out the number of the lipstick you love? You will never, ever find that color again!”

What an amazing idea that was–it made me laugh out loud. I could just picture the handful of people who know about my little patch of the blogosphere all rising up and rushing to eBay so they could snap up the last tubes of a lipstick that apparently looked good on so few people that even Cover Girl gave up on it some time ago.

And then today…well, today I was working seriously hard on my novel. VERY VERY hard indeed, and my characters were having a huge fight, which is difficult for me because I myself am not very good at fighting. I can never think of the right thing to say until about 48 hours later, yet these characters are supposed to be good at fighting. They Stand Up For Themselves, and they know all the right snappy comebacks…and so I was sitting there, trying to picture what they’d say to each other and getting it all down on paper, when suddenly it seemed imperative that I go back to eBay and just see if there were any other #612s left.

Sometimes you have to do things like this, even if you would rather be getting your work done.

And guess what! There were approximately a kazillion tubes of #612 left, including one woman who has–get this–FORTY ONE OF THEM, all for $2.99 a piece. Forty-one tubes of my favorite discontinued, impossible-to-find lipstick…all with BUY NOW written beside them. A person didn’t even have to bid for them. Just take them off her hands.

And this, after I’d spent an hour of my life bidding for one tube of it on eBay the other night.

I toyed with buying the whole stock, enough to see me into my old age, but that seemed excessive. I have a small house, after all. So now I have quietly bought five more of them…but I’d just like to say to Diane, who has similar coloring to me: You’ve got the number. I think it would look lovely on you, too!

And next time you come to visit and we walk around New York, people will say, “Look at those two women with the #612 lips. Don’t they just look smashing?”