Friday, March 12, 2010It's Not Fair That There Isn't an Instruction Manual for this Stuff
I have bad skin. Terrible, no-good, awful skin. I always have. I've gone through phases where I care about it and try to do whatever I can to ward off the evil skin demons, but mostly it just is. The things that sort of work tend to have worse side effects than just leaving it alone, so whatever. Call me crazy, but I tend to think acne sounds a heck of a lot more fun than, say, skin cancer. So, makeup! Makeup is good! And I'm OK with that.
Since Alexis was born, I've become sort of paranoid about putting makeup on in the presence of the very impressionable short person. I just don't know how to explain to her that she is absolutely perfect, but I'm not. She'll have plenty of time for not being perfect later, like when puberty takes over her brain and makes her completely irrational in about eight years. Of course, there's the whole icky feeling about implying that anybody needs makeup to be "perfect," the whole "I want you to be confident in who you are, but screw that, I don't have to be," and the general suckiness that is society's expectations and blah, blah, blah. Grown-up women wear makeup, and I need to wear a little extra. Little kids are gorgeous just the way they are. It makes sense in my grown-up head, but I can't seem to explain it to her.
Today I screwed up. Without thinking about it, I slapped on a little powder and lip gloss while Alexis was in the car with me. She immediately started pleading for "lick-stick." That happens to be on the Almost Permitted List around here, so I passed her a tube of Chapstick and she was happy. For a minute. Then I heard, "My cheeks aren't pretty."
"You are beautiful just the way your are," I responded, perhaps cursing at myself under my breath.
Alexis didn't believe me. She started to cry, all the while begging to put some makeup on her cheeks. Then she wailed the words that were like daggers to my heart, "I want to be beautiful like you, momma."
Oye. Vey. I'm not cut out for this kind of stuff.
Eventually I turned the conversation around and managed to get Alexis to tell me that she has beautiful eyes, a cute nose, and a pretty face, but it wasn't easy.
And it's only going to get harder.
Oye.
Vey.
I Know I Said The Snow Needs to Go Away Once March Arrives, But . . .
In what could only be described as a happy accident, I somehow managed to configure the landscaping in our front yard in such a way that we have consistently had more snow to play with than most of the other houses in our neighborhood. While we might have had two feet of snow in our back yard, at the bottom of our front sidewalk there was easily something closer to six feet of the fluffy white stuff. A quick glance through the neighborhood tonight showed that we are among the last to see our trees or shrubs.
THANK GOODNESS.
There are two reasons that I'm suddenly all about the snow sticking around just a little while longer. For one, apparently our dogs grew extra buttholes when I wasn't looking because OHMAHGAH there are an amazing number of landmines all up in the yard. I'm aware of the fact that Meg (the Bulldog) refuses to let her precious little paws touch anything cold or wet, so she has barely been out the door when she does her business. In fact, I don't think she's walked more than ten feet away from the house in the past two months. I just never really thought through the consequences of her princess antics. I'm aware now. And might need to puke if I become any more aware. BLECH.
The other reason I wouldn't mind a few more days of snow smothering our front yard is a bit, um, embarrassing. People, we still have Christmas lights out there. I KNOW! It's March! There's no excuse! Except that we really haven't been able to see those lights since mid-January, at which time we took down all of the Christmas decorations except for the strands of lights wound around the bushes and shrubs. We had no idea that it would be the last time we would be able to see those lights up until now. I even thought about plugging them in so the snow would melt around them, but I couldn't find the plugs. There was simply too much snow.
That snow NEEDS to stay until Saturday. On Saturday I can deal with landmines and twinkly lights, but not a minute sooner. So if you have any extra snow, could you please throw it on our front yard? KTHXBAI.
