Author: the outside lane

My dear Amy sent me a Sephora gift card for my birthday, and I got right to work spending it. I always forget how much I love Buxom. When I shop, I am generally replacing my staples, which include Urban Decay eyeliners (both liquid and pencil), CoverGirl mascara and pencil eyeliner, Too Faced powder foundation and rouge, and Maybelline or Lancome eyeshadows. Sephora had a Buxom value set with a gorgeous lip gloss, and I remembered how much I love their lip gloss, so I bought it!

I am extremely pleased with everything that came in the set. I don’t really care for the color of the lipstick, but it wears really well, and I can use it as a liner. I give this whole set 5 stars. Oh, and the lipgloss? So pretty!

Not so pretty? My nails. I wore a gel polish for too long and my nails suffered for it, and they’ve been breaking and looking nasty. I haven’t had time for a manicure, and I had two presentations to make and respects to pay to a framily member–which I was not about to do with grotty nails–so while I was at the grocery store, I picked up a set of press-ons. Yes, I did that. I did. I was walking down that aisle and I saw some Fing’rs brush-on nail glue and thought, “That might work.”

I bought these Broadway Nail Petites in “Real Life Everyday Style”.

They did work!

I wore the nails for six days with no problems, and was very happy with them. But I was also glad to pick those suckers off on my way home from the service. After spending the afternoon cleaning up the backyard (Hoo decided that the inside of his bed would look better on the outside, and the backyard looked like it had snowed fluff) and making good on a promise to take the boy to the bookstore (for Legos, no less) before getting his hair cut, I headed for the nail salon. My regular place was packed, with people waiting in every chair, so I passed on by and headed for the salon I’d seen close to Thor’s haircuttery.

Have you ever been stabbed with a pair of cuticle trimmers? Now I can tell you that I have, and I can tell you that it is incredibly painful. Have you ever had a nail tech start to well up with tears while working on your feet, not because your callouses are tough as a camel’s, but because she hates her job hours because she never gets to see her kids before they go to bed? Or, have you ever had a nail tech beg you for help getting a new job? I can tell you that I have, and that she was incredibly grateful for all the advice I gave her*.

I had a tandem mani/pedi, which I don’t really like to begin with because that’s not relaxing to me, but it became even less so as the guy doing the mani first cut into the meat of my ring finger as the pedi girl simultaneously cut into the meat of my big toe. Left hand, right foot, suddenly stinging with pain and then worse with the alcohol and whatever that stuff is they brush on to stop the bleeding. Mani guy clipped me again, then, as he was reaching for the alcohol, STABBED me in the thumb with the cuticle trimmers.

Traumatizing.

But you want to know what the saddest part is? The saddest part is that my nails and toenails look better and cleaner of cuticle, and my heels are softer than any salon has ever left them–minus a couple of blood dots. And do you know why that is sad? That is sad because I can never go back there again.

*I have edited this post because it sounded harsh when I read it again.  I don’t fault anyone for crying because they can’t see their kids, and I had great compassion for the girl.  I have cried at work because I would rather have been with my baby, too.  I don’t think you can time-and-place-for emotion like that, and I was glad to offer her some tips on how to find, apply for, and get a job that would help her get home before her children were sound asleep.

It’s Spring Cleaning time for us. We’re either very early, or very late. Actually, we’re very on time for Texas. Spring is too hot for Spring cleaning, and Summer isn’t fit for more than just lying on cold tile, panting and hoping someone with more resistance to heat will come and hose you down with ice water. So, we’ve begun to clean out the garage in mid-January.

I’ve written before about having previously created a scary hoarder nest for myself. Depression is a beast, and looking back you can clearly see my state of mind in the state of my housekeeping. I am never going to be June Cleaver, but at least I am no longer Leslie Knope. When B and I got married, we moved from our respective dwellings into a small apartment. I brought with me 20 years worth of clothing. I am not exagerating that number. I had items of clothing in my care that I’d owned since I was 13 years old. You can imagine how quickly that becomes a nightmare.

We went from the apartment into a decent sized house, filled that up, then downsized to less space than we’d had in the first apartment when we went into the townhouse. We were brutal in shedding our possessions. I think I stocked at least three Goodwills full of clothes, and we either sold or gave away half the furniture we owned. We still had a storage unit full to the brim.

We moved from the townhouse into our current rental last April, picking up an additional room of office space for B, and a garage, so we were able to move all our bookshelves back inside and bring everything else out of storage and into the 1-car garage. But, we still have a room full of furniture out there and about 10 storage tubs worth of clothing and assorted items. Guess what? That goes next week, along with probably another two massive loads of things I don’t wear anymore. I called a local charity and they are sending their truck by to pick up our donations. Yay!

By the end of next week, I might just have divested myself of enough that I have a normal sized closet instead of the bloated, bursting all over my bedroom thing I have now. I thought I had done that last year, but I also had a walk-in closet last year. What we picked up in office space, we lost in closet space, so I need to halve my belongings yet again. It’s a huge sign of health and growth that this doesn’t make me sad. In fact, I feel excited and ready to get rid of more.

In other news, somehow our office radio station has been tuned to Country & Western that seems to play a lot of 80s and 90s C&W hits. This means I know all the songs. A Trisha Yearwood song came on and I thought, “Oh god…I remember when she was a new face. Isn’t she retired now?”

Mom and I used to drive from here to Georgia at least three times a year, and we listened to a lot of C&W on those trips. I have such fond memories of those drives. The Viewfinder in my brain always clicks through to stops we would make in Jackson and Vicksburg, Mississippi, and stretches through rural Alabama that are sin-ugly, but beautiful to me. For various reasons, making that trip isn’t feasible right now, but I am thankful for the memories.

I’m in the mood to travel right now. You know, that trip we just took up to Eureka Springs is one of my most favorite trips ever. I have no idea why. I don’t know if it was the surprise at how beautiful the landscape was, or the surprise snow, or the surprise/hilarity of the Corvette convention, or just the town itself, but everything came into perfect place and I am left with a whole impression of perfect contentment.

Nah, I’ll tell you what it was: It was the company.

I am so fortunate to have the family and friends that I do; it seems blasphemous to complain about anything else in life.  So I won’t.  Instead, I’ll write about Thor because there are a few things I want to jot down to remember.

He’s getting older, and as he grows and matures, some of his peculiar idioms are dropping away.  My favorite thing he used to say was, “Bite sumfin?”  This was one of his first full sentences, and it was his way of requesting a meal.  After just a few weeks he filled that out to say, “I wanna bite sumfin!”  Frequently, he would request to bite a “sargess biz-kit”.  Now, he just asks for sausage.

A couple of years ago, he started asking which team the Cowboys were “versing” each week.  B has been trying to break him of that, but he still enverbiates “versus” and I smile every time.  Sorry.  I think it is both cute and shows a good understanding of how gerunds work–even if it isn’t a word.  (Come to that, I’m not sure enverbiate is a word.  It isn’t in the dictionary, but you know what it means, right?  It means to turn another part of speech into a verb.  For example:  I went to a party, to party.  The latter party is the enverbiated form of the former.)

I am LOVING watching him with his dog.  He is so besotted with that animal.  We went for a drive last night, and Thor held his puppy, patting, rubbing, cooing at him.  “Oh, Hooey-Hoo,” he would press his cheek to the top of the dog’s head, “I love you so much!  You are the best dog in the world!”

I asked him, “What did you think when you saw Hoo for the first time?”

He said, “I just couldn’t believe it!  I thought you were just bringing me out another toy, or something, but I saw him and he wasn’t a toy.  And–oh, Mama–I have wished for a dog for so many years!  I just love him so much and I will always love him.  He will always be my good dog.”  And there, he turned his attention from me to say, “Hoo is a good boy!  Yes, Hoo is MY good boy!”

I remind myself of these things, of how lucky I am to be married to my husband, and how blessed I am by the family I was given and the family I have chosen, and everything else melts away.  That’s what it’s all about.