While the nail salon had the deal running for a $13 gel polish manicure, I was doing really well! Then, the deal ended and they went up to $30. I tried another salon, and it was full of children running around, and there is no way I am going back to the happy nail salon where the manicurist cried while she did my pedicure–not my feet’s fault, I promise! So, when I was in Ulta a few weeks back, I shelled out for the Red Carpet Gel Polish Pro kit.
I figured it wouldn’t be too difficult to do my own gel polish. After all, the most important things are to be sure you only get the gel polish on your nail, and not on your finger, and to not look directly into the light. You start with clean nails, brush on some starter stuff (and try not to spill it all over the floor), then brush on the Structure and bake for 30 seconds, brush on two layers of color and bake for 45 seconds each, then brush on the Brilliance and bake for 45 more seconds. They call it “curing”. I call it “baking”. You rub on the Purify and you’re finished. If you’re halfway decent at painting your nails, you can be finished in 10 minutes.
Start with clean nails.Paint, bake, paint bake, paint bake, paint bake and you’re finished!And a week later, you still have glossy, pretty fingernails!
I got my kit for $15 less than it is listed on Ulta’s website here, but even if I had paid full price, I think it is worth it. The kit is very easy to use, the color wears well, and I like the idea of being able to take care of business myself if I chip a nail.
It is very important to buy some orange sticks to go along with this. When you are painting your nails, use an orange stick to clean any color or base out from between the nail and your fingermeat before you bake. If you bake the gel to your fingermeat, then it won’t adhere properly to the nail, and it will peel right off.
A few times a year, we try to take 4-day weekend roadtrips to get out of town. Let me begin by telling you that the only thing I enjoy more than roadtripping with my family, is sitting at home with my family. My husband and my son are both excellent travelers, and you couldn’t ask for better travel companions. This trip, we added in Hoo, and he was surprisingly good–save for his having minor meltdowns when it started to rain, and when he saw cows for the first time ever. He lost his mind over the cows.
Hoo’s view.
We usually get down to Corpus Christi at least once a year, and spend a day in Port Aransas, on Mustang Island, where the beaches are nicer. This year, we decided to skip to the chase, and just stay in Port A. Following are reviews of some of the products I bought specifically to take on our trip, and of some of the places we visited while we were there.
Since we were traveling with Hoo, we knew we needed a good kennel for him. He has totally outgrown the one that came home with him, which seemed massive at the time. Since he’s clocking in over 40lbs now–help me–I went with the Dosckocil Pet Taxi, sized 36W x 25L x 27H. This is made for pets between 30–70lbs. It was great! Perfect for him. We put it in the trunk unassembled, and just put our suitcases in it. It traveled well, was simple to assemble when the time came, and there was plenty of room for Hoo to stand up and move around when it was time for him to go into Puppy Jail in the condo. 5 out of 5 stars.
This blueberry muffin dry shampoo was perfect for our Hooberry muffin.
I was worried about that wet dog smell, and that wet dogfish smell that Hoo might bring home from the beach, so I made an impulse buy of Pet Head Dry Clean, blueberry muffin waterless spray shampoo. You can spray it on wet, damp, or dry fur, then towel it off, or brush it in. This was another amazing purchase because Hoo never smelled better! When we would leave the beach, I would hose him down to get the saltwater off, then give him a towel rub, spray him down with the Pet Head, and give him a quick brushing. He never stank. In fact, he smelled quite nice. The bottle was easy to manage with one hand, and Hoo didn’t seem to mind it. 5 out of 5 stars.
Fun in the sunshade!
We planned to spend as much time as possible at the beach, and unless we were going to get a vat of sunblock to dunk ourselves in every 15 minutes, we were going to need some shelter. Also, I thought Hoo might need a place to rest between barking at seagulls. I spent a couple of weeks trying to decide between the Coleman Beach Shade and another shade without a floor. The deciding factor was that the Coleman Beach Shade could be zipped up to make a changing cabana.
For about five minutes, when I was taking the thing down, I wished I’d gotten the floorless model, but outside of those few, sandy seconds, this was perfect! I was able to put it up by myself (with the help of our next tent neighbor’s loaned hammer) on an extremely windy day (the trick is filling up the included sandbags first, and using those to hold the thing down, or getting a 7 year old to put his foot in a strategic spot), and it came down just as easily. I even got it back into the tiny bag that it came in!
We fit 2 beach chairs, a 27 can cooler, a dog, and other beach stuff in comfortably, and when we got hit by a sudden storm, the three humans and the dog just zipped up inside until it had passed. I wouldn’t have wanted to spend a night in such a small space, but it worked out really nicely for what we needed. Oh, and none of us got sunburned, so mission accomplished. I kind of can’t wait to take it out again. 5 out of 5 stars.
Those 2 beach chairs were also an impulse buy. I was shopping for the cooler and Target had the chairs on sale for $10 each, so I bought them. These worked out well because of the high back. We could actually sit and relax, and there was room enough for Thor to sit on my lap through the storm.
Me getting my Norma Desmond on in my beach chair, in the cabana. No sunburn + Wicked awesome turban = Great day
While in Port A, we ate at a few different places worth note. My absolute favorite was Seafood and Spaghetti Works. The name of the restaurant pretty much sums up the menu. B had shrimp tacos, and I had spaghetti, Thor had a kiddie pizza, and Hoo got my meatballs. We were all very happy. 5 out of 5 stars. We ordered in from Port A Pizzaria on Saturday night because Thor had gotten a little too much heat during the day. We had pizza, calzone, and fried ravioli. It was all fairly good. Nothing special, but nothing bad. 3 out of 5 stars. We also ate at Castaway’s Seafood Grill and Beaches Cafe & Bakery which were 3.5 and 2.5 out of 5 stars, respectively.
My absolute favorite place to go in Corpus is Pier 99. I love, love, love their food, and am all about their fried oysters. They do a really light, cornbread coating, nothing is greasy, and everything is as light as fried food can get. It doesn’t hurt that they are on the water, right next door to the USS Lexington (which we did not visit this time), and just down the block from the Texas State Aquarium (which we did.)
Thor and a dolphin friend.
Thor had a good time at the aquarium. I don’t think it is a patch on the Dallas World Aquarium, but you can’t argue with its view of the Bay. 3.5 out of 5 stars.
We wanted to stay as close to the beach as possible, and the best price we found was for a condo/motel combination called The Beachcomber. I am putting a picture of the sign here so that you can see it, remember it, and then avoid it.
Now, I’m not high maintenance when it comes to lodging. I do love luxury, but I also have a deep, abiding fondness for dives. I don’t expect a lot from a beach condo in the first place. When I stay at the beach, I don’t want to worry that I am tracking in too much sand, or that I sat down on furniture in a wet swimsuit. I just want relatively clean, with a decent bed, and a door that locks.
The best thing about the Beachcomber is its location. It took about five minutes to walk from the front door into the water. You can’t beat that. The worst thing was everything else. It smelled funny, the sheets were stained, the doors were broken–like pieces of the door were coming off–the carpet was outdoor carpet that looked like large rodents might have given birth on it, and it was impossible to close a door without lifting and slamming.
On Sunday morning, the toilet quit working. We weren’t able to contact anyone to come fix it, so we used the shower in the best case, and drove to Whataburger in the worst. Like I said, I’m low maintenance on lodging, but I do require plumbing. Otherwise, why wouldn’t I just go sleep on the beach in my tiny cabana?
.5 out of 5 stars.
Overall, it was a fantastic trip. I was with all my favorite boys, and we had a lot of laughs. Nothing is better than being with my family.
We rarely see anything in the theater anymore, so I am just catching up on last year’s movies. Recently, I have watched This is 40 and Les Miserables, and that is what I am going to remember when I start to feel huffy that I only get to see new releases in theaters when there are Marvel comics characters involved. Iron Man has never let me down. Judd Apatow? Hulk needs to smash.
I watched This is 40 and found myself actually squinting at the screen in consternation. Who were these horrible people? Horrible, useless, vapid, whiny, irresponsible, awful people. You’ve got Pete and Debbie, a couple who are turning 40 years old, their kids, Sadie and Iris (13 and 8ish), and their assorted family and friends.
Pete owns a failing record label. It is failing because he only wants to sign musicians he likes, and he appears to have terrible taste in music. We find out that Pete has missed a mortgage payment and rental on his office. He paid $30k for a neon sign to hang inside his office, though, and he appears to be paying for his father’s living expenses? Oh, and he is hiding all of this from his wife, who he appears to hate.
Debbie owns a retail store incongruently staffed by Charlyne Yi and Megan Fox. If you are going to hire one of those women to represent your brand, you are not going to hire the other, lest you cause great brand confusion. She is utterly useless. She thinks one of her staff has stolen $12k from her but does absolutely nothing about it, other than to take one of them out for dinner to discuss it. She seems to hate her husband and her children.
If Paul Rudd and Leslie Mann had any chemistry, (or if Leslie Mann could act) it might work, but this was just bad. You can pretty much see every moment when Action was called, and Cut brought blessed relief–especially, and most strangely, in the scenes between Mann and her real life daughter, Maude Apatow.
Those children in the movie? Is that what other people’s kids are really like? If so, how did they make it out of childhood? Actually, it was the terrible teenager who made me really hate the parents.
To sum up, this movie is a masturbatory exercise in middle-aged ennui. Two bored, pretty, white people, who can’t manage their money, who refuse to take responsibility for themselves, and who are leaving their children to be raised by Apple, have problems because neither one of them can act like an adult for longer than 10 seconds in a row. I hated them, and kept hoping worse things would happen to them. That’s not how a movie is supposed to make you feel.
No stars out of 5–there was nothing redeeming about this movie. Not even the costuming. John Lithgow was redeeming, but he was wonderful and Lithgowian, and did not belong in the movie, so I don’t give any points for him.
I had higher hopes for Les Miserables. It’s been a long time since I read the Victor Hugo novel, and I’ve only seen the play in bits and pieces, so I was excited. Maybe if I’d seen it before Oscar season, it would have played better to me, but by the time I sat down to it the other night, all I could see was Anne Hathaway’s acceptance speeches.
If you aren’t familiar with the plot, the movie opens on Wolverine, who is serving out the end of a prison term for having stolen “a mouthful of bread.” General Maximus Decimus Meridius is his jailer, who reminds him he got 5 years for stealing the bread, and 15 for running from jail. But, he hands Wolverine his walking papers and they sing to each other the equivalent of, “I’ll be watching you.”
Wolverine has to choose between good and bad, he chooses good and goes on to become mayor of a slumtown. Princess Mia Thermopolis works at one of his factories, where she has nicer hair and teeth than anyone else because she pays attention to her hygeine. She is also hiding a baby back home, and for some reason this pisses off the other factory women who insist she be fired. Since she’s refused to put out to the factory foreman, he fires her. Wolverine is too busy hiding from Maximus to save her.
Princess Mia sells off all her worldly possessions, including her hair and teeth, before finally selling her vagine. Blah blah singing about dreams and tigers–
Do any of you have trouble getting into a show if it is overly dramatic? I mean, there is drama, and there is wank. Les Mis, the movie, is wank. Maybe it’s because of the extreme closeups, and because you can see the actors working so hard to emote, whereas in a stage production you are taking in the whole of the actor and the actor’s surroundings? I don’t know. But rather than being impressed and touched by the strings of saliva in Hathaway’s maw, I was just a little bored.
Don’t get me wrong, I feel for Fantine. I felt for all the prostitutes in the scene–I feel for the other prostitutes more. Maybe that’s it? Why Fantine? Surely she wasn’t the only girl out there who was working it because the rent was due. But she was the only one out there weeping over how much her life sucked. And since she pretty much sings about what a party girl she was before becoming Teen Mom, I’m not sure where my sympathy is supposed to lie? Maybe if she’d been nicer to her coworkers, she wouldn’t have ended up in such a mess? Maybe if she’d just embraced the role, she could have released her own sex tape and gotten a reality show?
Anyway… Wolverine adopts Karen Smith from her caretakers, Borat and Mrs. Lovett, and tries to make a new life for them where Maximus can’t find them. Karen’s weather-telling tatas fall in love with a cute spare who sings like Kermit the Frog, who is loved unrequitedly by an actual Broadway performer with amazing pipes.
Then it’s all confusing with singing and pining, and fighting, and who cares because Fantine was actually the best part of the show. And, Anne Hathaway did an incredible job, and deserved her Oscar.
3.5 out of 5 stars. I gave it an extra half star because I enjoyed how uncomfortable Russell Crowe looked the whole time.
Bonus mini-review: Silver Linings Playbook. What was that? That was it? That won Oscars? Dang. 2 out of 5 stars.
We took Thor to see Iron Man 3 last night. Now y’all know I am all about the Iron Man. I loved the first, didn’t hate the second, and flipped my wig over The Avengers. I am 100% into all these Marvel character movies because they are good. Iron Man 3 did not disappoint.
I’ll tell you that it didn’t thrill me like The Avengers did, and I’d have cut about 45 minutes out of it–including everything with the kid, which the real critics are raving over as having been some of the best parts of the movie–but I had a solid good time, a lot of laugh-out-loud moments, and found myself rooting for hard and loudly for [I can’t tell you this because it’s a spoiler.]
This is a classic tale of the hero being stripped down to the skin, and forced to rebuild himself to face a new reality. Who is Iron Man without his suit? Who is Iron Man after he’s saved the world from things he didn’t think existed? What happens to Tony Stark’s god complex after he’s met gods? I loved that these were the questions both asked, and answered by the movie. I loved that they actually dealt with what happened in The Avengers and how it affected Tony Stark. It was a lot more than just explosions and quips, and only RDJ could have made it happen. Only the kid who made Less Than Zero could have made this movie work because Tony Stark is what Julian wanted to be.
There is a lot I won’t tell you because it would spoil all the fun, but I will say this: I felt good as a mom and as a girl, watching this movie. I felt like the relationship between Tony and Pepper was a healthy representation of equality in partnership, give and take in partnership, and even though I wouldn’t date a superhero (or live in Gotham City, hello?) I could see why Pepper Potts stuck around long enough to go from suffering Admin, to what really lights up Iron Man’s electro magnet. This wasn’t a movie I walked out of thinking, “Well that was great! If you’re a boy…” I walked out of this movie thinking it was smart, funny, and dead-on when it came to gender equality.
Yes, I know it’s weird to walk out of a superhero movie thinking about things like gender equality, but I always wanted to be a good superhero, and there weren’t a lot of good girl ones. Wonder Woman was awesome, but her costume… Batgirl and Supergirl were sidekicks. And those were the only Underoos available! Boys don’t get it, but it is painful, truly painful to want to be more than just a pair of jiggly boobs, or buttocks, but to be relegated to a star-spangled girdle and go-go boots. No matter how cool Wonder Woman was, she still didn’t have any good weapons because she had nowhere to put them.
Iron Man 3 made me fall in love with the idea of a girl being a superhero again, and the last ten minutes felt like the action-adventure version of the last two minutes of Pretty Woman. I wish I had a little girl to take to this movie. I wish I could take 7 year old ME to see this movie. It would totally make up for how lame Lois Lane was in the Superman movies, and about half the Bond girls ever.
While I was feeling bolstered and delighted by the turns of the story, Thor was howling with delight over the fight scenes. His face was one big ! for the last ten minutes.
I watch NBC’s Fashion Star and I love it. Instead of making designers create couture out of garbage (which is less design, and more DIY crafting IMHO), designers create for actual buyers. Of course it’s scripted and just as fixed as any other TV reality show (AMBER SHOULD NOT HAVE GONE HOME), but the fact that you can buy what’s been bought every week, as soon as the episode ends a) is a clever way to capitalize on marketing, b) is a brilliant way to exploit the fear of not being able to get something that you just saw and you HAVE TO HAVE, and c) feels like The Jetsons, so it is amazing.
I have wanted over half of everything I’ve seen on the show, and last season was distraught because Saks kept buying what I liked best and charging over $200 for every single item. Like I’m going to pay $200 for a shirt? Pfft. I’m still combing Ebay, hoping one of the dresses I wanted will pop up.
I missed out on this shirt when it went up for sale at Macy’s, but lucked out finding it on Ebay. I am in love with it. It’s a half shirt, quarter sweater, quarter mesh sort of thing you’d find at Contempo Casuals circa 1992. In other words 100% perfect for me. It is soft, so soft, well made, well cut, and is also a limited item so I feel kind of special wearing it. I got mine in black.
If I were going to wear shorts like that with my shirt, which I am not because of that recurring nightmare I have about being a Dallas Cowboy Cheerleader, I would want my legs to look as smooth and shiny as possible. To that end, I would use a product I just discovered.
First, let’s talk about what I hate in a lotion/oil: Stickiness, slime-iness, greasiness, grittiness, and skin suffocation. You know what I mean? It’s hot here, and can be humid. If a lotion/oil coats your pores, you can feel like you are suffocating. It’s awful. Also awful is what a weirdo I am about getting my hands dirty. I hate putting lotion in my hands to rub somewhere else, but strangely don’t mind spraying on a lotion (thank you Sunblock Spray!) to rub in. Body Dew works for me on a lot of levels!
I had a Pure Romance party, last weekend, presented by the lovely Sonia Torres Cortes, and I bought the Green Tea flavor of Body Dew. I love it! I am prone to dry skin on my legs–like, flaky skin dry in winter, and just dry in summer. I was skeptical of how well the Dew would work, but after a few days I can’t imagine living without it. My skin looks and feels fantastic. I think this is the best my shins and elbows have felt in years.
It goes on as a light spray (squirt!), and you rub it in. Seconds later, you can dress over it, and it doesn’t stick, pull, or soak through fabric. Nice! And, the green tea scent is fresh and clean, and underwhelming. I’d actually like the scent to be a little stronger.
Go to Sonia’s website, and she can hook you up. She can also get you started with Coochy, which is a shaving conditioner. Something else I was skeptical about because I never believe miracle potions actually are. This was purported to allow you to shave even the bikiniest areas without causing bumps or rashes. So far, so good. It also comes in green tea.
Since we’re talking about unsightly bumps, lets talk about cold sores. The first cold sore I can remember having came in Kindergarten. It was massive, the size of a quarter, and covered half my lower lip, and part of the area between my lip and chin–it was so bad, it left a scar.
My mom treated it with Campho-Phenique, which was the best we could do at the time. The monster returned in First Grade, with such a horrifying vengence, they wouldn’t even photograph me head-on for my class picture. They made me pose in profile.
I end up with a cold sore in left-middle of my bottom lip a few times a year. Now, instead of using the campho, I use Abreva at the first tingle of a blister. It usually takes about 3 days to clear up completely, but the sore never gets much bigger than a pin head, never goes into the gross scab phase, and doesn’t hurt. Abreva is one of the things you can always find in my purse, along with Tei-Fu oil, which is my family’s version of Big Fat Greek Wedding Windex. In fact, I keep a little bottle of that on my desk, too.
That’s it for now! So, start watching Fashion Star (or watching it on DVR, like I do–Express, Macy’s and Saks update their sites on Friday evenings, so you can shop even if you don’t watch the episode), get yourself some Body Dew, and tell the world about Abreva and Tei-Fu. I hope you don’t get cold sores, but if you do, I’m telling you that stuff works.
The Outside Lane 