Friday, January 29, 2010

Make-up Tricks

   I love makeup. In fact, I adore make-up. But it was not always so. It all started in the eighth grade when I became  the envy of every girl in Sister Ursulina's class.  Their mothers had you-can't-wear-makeup laws that they enforced like police while my mother chased me around the house chanting "a little lipstick will do the trick!" The implication that I needed a "trick" was mildly insulting but I soon realized it was easier to make-up than fight.

   I started my aversion to addiction journey with a smear of Revlon Love That Pink. By my Sophomore year in high school I had advanced to the daily ritual of heeding home room teacher Mrs. McGuire's request to "please wash off that eyeshadow."  It was cream Revlon in a little lipstick-like tube and it matched my green uniform perfectly. Darn Mrs.McGuire!
   I like the idea of a signature look but I've never had one. For years and years I've tried scores  of products and hoped that the next lipstick or eyeshadow would do the trick. But it hasn't happened yet and it probably never will.  In fact, thanks to a fabulous gift, at this moment I am wearing the latest Chanel Eye Gloss and my entire eye lid looks like black patent leather.  It is very au courant and edgy but I do not think it's doing the trick.
   I didn't think, though, that opening another great gift, a Rouge Dior Serum de Rouge #760 Rose Figue/Raspberry (don't you just love the names?) would be so educational.  I was a cereal box reader as a child so I can't resist scanning all the small print that comes with the make-up.  Can you believe that Luminous Color Lip Treatment has fifty ingredients in its 2 gram, 0.07 ounce tube, including trimethylolpropane trisostearate and octinoxate iethylhexyl methoxycinnamate? What?
   The real fun for me, though, was the info/warning sheet.  Praise for the lip treatment's "unparalled formula" and  how it "instantly delivers a sumptuous glow to your face" appears in no less than fourteen languages!  That is amazing and you feel so ooh-la-la internationale. It's like a trip around the world in a tiny tube and that more than justifies its exorbitant price, of course.
   I have to admit, too, that the stuff does give "unique pleasure when applied" but I regret it isn't life-changing. Damn, though, if it doesn't  look darn good!  Thank you, Dior, for the education and especially for at least  trying to do the trick.

Wednesday, January 27, 2010

Great Quote from Great Book

Art is life, playing to other rhythms.

                                   from  "The Elegance of the Hedgehog"
                                               by   Muriel Barbery

Monday, January 25, 2010

Alliteration Write or Wrong??

   What's wrong with alliteration?  Why does it get such a bad rap?  My son and I were discussing it just the other day.  He is a blogger and Journalism major and believes that alliteration is never a good thing. My take is that it can be fine, fun and fabulous if not contrived, and in moderation, of course.
   I think Alex's anti-alliteration attitude comes from a professor he had in college. He taught that your future would be full of failure if you embraced the horrible habit.  In fact, after I wrote the man a one sentence e-mail about an article he had written online, he told my son I must be the reason for his "problem."  The professor said that alliteration must be hereditary!
   Even after that rehab class, Alex is still tempted to use the A word once in a while but he takes it one temptation at a time.  Dr. Drew would be thrilled.
   One of our friends who blogs almost daily actually confesses her addiction to alliteration on Facebook.  She has guilt about using it as if it were a crime. Alliteration is NOT an illegal drug, for God's sake.

   I have no qualms about breaking the A law.  I mean, if you see a resplendent red rooster why can't you write "I saw a respendent red rooster?"  Why should you have to change it to, say, a showy red rooster or a beautiful red rooster just to avoid committing what's almost become the eighth deadly sin? Hmm?
   Sometimes you just want your words to be fun.  That's why I love a little lovely alliteration on my plate every now and again. But I vow to curb over-indulging in the future.

   

  
  

Thursday, January 21, 2010

The Big Fs - Ranked

   Fitness (read Health) probably should be first on any resolution list but in these unstable times we're all consumed by $$$ concerns. So first on the list is -
   1.  Fortune - Finding Funds is a priority.
   2.  Future - What to do to get the funds?  It's never too late but the best blessing in the world is knowing what you want to do with your life. Never knowing is a curse!  There was a book a while back - "Do What You Love and the Money Will Follow." It would be wonderful if this turns out to be true. It takes some guts to apply this theory, though. Also, one can enhance the future by doing something fulfilling that helps other people or the earth.

 3 and 4.  Face and Figure -  There's a dilemma in ranking Face and Figure besides an admission of vanity. When you reach a certain age, (although the truth is that some people go to pot at 26) they say you have to choose between your face or your fanny.  (My daughter hates the expression "they." Who ARE "they?") This is not as hard a decision as in, perhaps, "The Caucasian Chalk Circle", (I was a drama major and you know Brecht) but stressful nonetheless.  In general terms, when you're older and your face looks good your body is probably too plump and when your body is trim your trim face looks, drawn, old and gaunt, even if you're sweet sixteen.  So you have to go Zen and balance it out - somehow. And usually, a few pounds on the hips is worth the effect on the face. Men now are going Huh? but women understand. (And considering all the problems in the world right now, I feel like a fool for worrying about this!)
   5.  Fashion - always Fun. A quick tour through the pages of Vogue or Harper's Bazaar once a month is a fine activity.

   6.  Fitness. Face it, you'll never be happy if you don't have good health. So fitness should be the overall goal.  And, yes, it would be #1 if we weren't so darn worried about the $$$.

  

Tuesday, January 19, 2010

The 5 Fs - Found Again

     When suffering through the annual New Year ritual of throwing out the old and making room for the new last week, I found a decades old list of resolutions.  It was my famous (to me) list of Fs.  The 6 Fs were Face, Figure, Fashion, Fitness, Future and Fortune. I know, this must sound hilarious to you.  And you're singing "You're So Vain," but yes, without a doubt, I was super serious about working on these categories. (And still am, I must confess.)  But the game now is for me to rank their urgency from 1 to 6 and report my findings.  In other words, time marches on but times change, as well. So should my face be priority #1 in 2010 as it was in 1990?

Wednesday, January 13, 2010

A Short Treatise on Lady Gaga

   Thank the gods for KKCK FM in Marshall, MN.  If it were not for this radio station no child in southwest Minnesota would ever have heard music.  Pardon just a little hyperbole but gol dern it's prit near totally true.

   And if KKCK were not on the air it never would have had the power to enlighten an old mother like me.  (And I mean mothers as in moms and not mother you-know-whaters.)

   So recently during my morning ablutions I was listening to the aforementioned KKCK and Lady Gaga's  "Bad Romance" caught my attention and, with toothbrush in mouth, I had a proverbially light bulb moment.  I said, you know, I'll bet many mothers think this is garbage and that Lady Gaga is nothing more than Lady Gagag. ( People in these parts have an affinity to the gag reflex when they are disgusted by something.  The finger stuck in mouth gag gig.  You can picture it, yes?)  But I think she is ever so talented.  
   Why, I mused, do I think this? I promptly came up with eight reasons.  And here they are:
1.  Gaga is different. When was the last time you heard such sounds from a human voice?

2.  Gaga is exotic.  You hear the song and are transported to a bar in Istanbul or a cafe in Cairo (minus the incessant car horn blowing.)
3.  Gaga is talented. Maybe even super-talented. Read a short bio (Wikipedia will do) and be very impressed with this Italian New Yorker. 
4.  Gaga has a great voice. (Part of the talent, obviously.) Especially the almost a growl range.
5.  Gaga is deliciously decadent. (But this is pretty much an illusion.)
6.  Gaga makes you want to dance: the darn song is energizing.

7.  Unplugged people as well as metal boys and girls can appreciate some techno now and then.
8.  For old people, it brings back good memories of bad disco.

   And some sound (yes, a pun) advice for all the faint of heart  moms out there.  No need to read the lyrics to "Bad Romance." OK? Just listen to the music. 
   P.S. Oh yes, and Moms, don't watch the music video either. 

Monday, January 11, 2010

The Christmas That Wouldn't Let Go

   When my son was nine, Christmas took hold of him and would not let go.  He had had a great Christmas, and maybe that was the problem because when all that was left of it were cracked walnut shells we thought his heart would break, too.

   Days were kind to him but at night in bed he cried.  I thought maybe music therapy was the answer but "Silent Night" only triggered more nostalgia.  The opposite end of the spectrum failed miserably, too.  Neither "Frosty the Snowman" nor "Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer" turned his gloom to glee.

   Next, I tried decorations.  All the remnants of the holiday had been put away in an out-of-sight-out-of-mind attempt; now we put them up again.  Tons of silver tinsel hung like vines in a jungle over his head in bed but they seemed only to take root on the hold he had on the holiday.

   Once again, down came the reminders.  Hopefully a clean slate would do the trick, but this did not work either.  "Get over it" was a last resort suggestion I knew would fail (and was cruel), while "Cheer up, it's only ten and a half short months until Christmas comes around again!" fell on a deaf soul.


   So it seemed his soul was just slow and time was the only prescription left as it often is in cases like this.  And after a few more sad weeks he was looking up and forward to Easter.

Monday, January 4, 2010

Hefty Bag Horrors

     In 1986 I put a big wrinkle in the wrapping world the day Santa decided to use simple unadorned sacks. OK they were black plastic garbage bags - so what? And they were tied with big red bows.  So there.

     My excuse for the unfortunate choice in wrapping?  I was expecting a baby in April (that was you Alex, ahhhhh) and was very tired (ok, lazy) and facing me was a mountain of extremely odd shaped toys ripe for wrapping. Have you ever tried to wrap a football?  Peyton Manning made it look so easy on his cute commercial this year but, now this gets technical, even if the ball is in a box, there is always a portion of the ball popping out of the box - why on earth they do this I'll never know but it makes for one very awkward wrap experience.


     Then there was the issue of Optimus Prime.  Can you really picture OP in all his glory wrapped in adorable Santa paper?  It would be criminal.  Would Jamie have thought that was respectful of the big guy?  Isn't there more poetic justice in having that bad ass (as my daughter would say, I disclaim) lifted triumphantly out of an earthy, raw black bad ass bag?  Of course there is. But Jamie saw it the other way. " Why are all my toys in a garbage bag?" was the bewildered message on his face.


     The gifts were a hit but the bags struck out.  Now, twenty years later, there ARE plastic Christmas bags - for everything.  But they are red or printed prettily instead of down-the chimney-soot-black.  There are even bags for bikes and cars, for heaven's sake!  And just like the new Windows 7 commercials, think of me next year when you see a great gift wrapped in a super Santa Sack.  Plastic Christmas bags were MY idea!