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Last month I bought a Groupon for a steal on the already ridiculously affordable and awesome ELF cosmetics line.  My products arrived a few days ago, and this is my review.

 

Normally, I don’t buy mineral makeup.  I haven’t ever been happy with mineral foundations, I really dislike loose eyeshadows, and I had no idea that lipstick or lipgloss came in mineral styles.  When I bought the Groupon, I didn’t realize it was only for the mineral line, or I probably would have let it pass, but this way I got to try something new.

 

I bought 3 lipsticks (Rosy Raisin, Ripe Rose, and Rich Raspberry), 2 lipglosses (Wild, and Daring), a mineral blush (Bliss), a lipliner (Peachy), and a Kabuki face brush.

 

Honestly, I was really disappointed with the lipstick.  They are thick and heavy, and go on like pancake.  I feel like I am wearing my Granny’s Avon lipstick paste from 1973.  The colors are not true to the photos online (or to the flash photo I took), and look very similar on.  I’m going to give them further tries and see if they grow on me, but right now…enh.

 

Reserving judgment on the brush, which is a stiffer bristle than I had expected, but seems like I could like it.

 

The lipliner seems like great quality, but I chose poorly with the color.  Again, it wasn’t really true to what was shown.

 

However, the blush and the lipglosses are the usal ELF sort of fantastic!  I love these lipglosses!  I love them so much!  And the blush was the perfect shade for me.  It doesn’t take much to brighten up your whole face.

 

Buying makeup online is tricky anyway.  I’m glad I had the Groupon, or I would be very sad about the wasted money.  As it was, I ended up paying just what I would have spent on the products I like so well, so it’s a wash.

 

 

Outside of the clearly obvious benefits of motherhood, for me the most interesting thing about being a parent is watching a human being develop.  Thor’s growth and maturation process are fascinating to me, and I love when I get some insight as to what is actually going on inside his head.

 

We discussed and decided to have him tested for the Gifted & Talented program.  If he is GT, that should help alleviate the boredom issues we’re already seeing.  If he isn’t, eh, less homework.  I talked to him about it briefly, just to let him know that a test was coming up.  Apparently, they started the test yesterday.

 

I was talking to him before bed, last night, and he volunteered, “I got to go take a really cool test today.”  And from there, our conversation went something like this:

 

Me:  Oh, yeah?

T:  Yeah!  And it was really easy, but had a couple of hard questions.  I didn’t know how to do the hard questions, but I just thought about them and figured it out, and I got the right answers.  I did it.

Me:  Wow!  Tell me about the test.

T:  *hands a’flapping*  You know, it was…it was WAY more awesome than 1st Grade.  It had all kinds of cool questions about what belongs where, or what goes into what, or families and groups, and patterns.  I had to look at a picture, then fill in a circle with the right answer, and I got them all right.

Me:  Sounds like a good test.  How do you know you got all the answers right?

T:  Well, Mama, there was only one right answer for the questions, and that’s the one I picked. 

Me:  Did the teacher tell you they were the right answers?

T:  Mama.  I just know.  There was only one answer that was right for every one, and I just picked the right answer every time.  It was easy.

 

(So you know what I’m thinking, right?  “Oh, God, please don’t let this be overconfidence talking.  Because if this kid is 100% sure he got every answer right, and he thinks the right answers were clear as day and he is wrong?  That’s a whole other problem!”)

 

Me:  Okay.  Well, can you tell me more about it?

T:  It was awesome!  It was like a motorcycle and a car crashed into each other, only they both had shields up so they just bumped into each other and blew backwards and no one got hurt, but there was an awesome crash.  Like that!

Me:  Indeed!

 

I guess we’ll know results sometime in the nebulous future.  Meanwhile, I believe Thor is an above average thinker.  I am very pleased with his ability to reason, his level of curiousity about the universe (“Mama, can you tell me everything there is to know about particles?”  “Daddy, can you tell me everything there is to know about engines?”  “Grandma, can you tell me everything there is to know about fielding [in baseball.]” –All recent questions.) and the way he puts the diverse information together to make sense of it all. 

 

It does nag at me to think that a standardized test is about to categorize him as “gifted & talented” or “exceedingly average”, and will sort him through the system and base his future opportunities on how well he sorted dolphins from dogs in various swimming situations.  But at least he thought the test was fun.  As I recall, I walked out of my first GT test (at his age, even) thinking, “Well that was a big waste of my time.”

A few weeks ago, I uploaded this picture to my Facebook account.

 

 

My son had brought home his Scholastic Book Club order form–you know, the one marketed to First Graders–and this image caught my eye because:

1. It was the biggest picture on the page

2. It was a pretty color

3. Ms. Clam lost her pearl–I can’t even type that without snickering like Beavis

 

 

Clams do not produce pearls. Oysters produce pearls. However, if you are a friend of Beavis and have access to the Urban Dictionary, you likely know that some specific varieties of clam do indeed house pearls. I am a friend to Beavis, and I do have access to the Urban Dictionary, so I clearly had to buy this book.

 

 

In the between time of turning in my order form and getting my grubby little paws on the glossy, slick paperback, I had almost convinced myself that I was just being a dirty-minded gutter rat. It was just a sweet picture book aimed at early readers, and maybe the author just thought “clam” would be easier to read than “oyster.” After all, reviewers at Amazon had said this:

• The illustrations are colorful, whimsical and drawn with so much humorous detail that kids will enjoy repeatedly exploring them.

• This stands out as a lighthearted approach to a very real fear that most children have – fear of the dark.

• I am very excited over the prospect of reading it to my regular story time crowds.

• “The Pout-Pout in the Big-Big Dark” is funny and sweet and a great Read-Aloud and I don’t know why it hasn’t received more press and more reviews here at Amazon and elsewhere.

• The story itself is nice. It’s about friendship, encouragement, and conquering your fears with the help of a friend.

 

 

Surely, I was just reading into the text, and surely it was just my dirty mind sullying something so innocent.

 

 

When Thor brought the book home, I couldn’t wait to read it. And, halfway through the book I was laughing so hard I couldn’t make out the text for the tears in my eyes. It was like the Little Mermaid meets Sex and the City, with men who couldn’t find “pearls” and the women who had to instruct them along the “bottom”, over “slopes” and into “trenches”, guiding them through their fears of the “big big dark” until the “pearl” was found, and everyone could exclaim their happiness and share kisses, and Mr. Fish could take Ms. Clam’s pearl in his mouth and swim it back up into place—I’m not making this up! I could hear Samantha Jones reading this book to children as an instructional tome. This has to be in the next SATC movie, where Samantha is babysitting for Charlotte’s children and takes it upon herself to teach them about their feminine playgrounds. Actually, I think I’ve read less graphic work from Anais Nin.

 

 

The Amazon site describes the book with these words: “Very young children will swim along with Mr. Fish as he journeys deep into the ocean to new and mysterious places. They will discover, as Mr. Fish does, the power of friendship to light the way through the big-big dark.”

 

 

I studied Chaucer and Spenser. I know all about metaphor. My hat is off to the author, Deborah Diesen. The only thing lacking in this rollicking, rhyming study of anatomy, the “elusive” female O, and a Freudian fear of vagina dentata is a couplet introducing dental dams.

 

 

Anyway, the only way to do the book justice was to read it aloud myself. Which I have done. You can watch it at this link. I will warn you that I’ve been told it might be NSFW.

 

I can’t wait to add my own review to the book on Amazon’s website.!

Who knew?

So here’s the deal: Shortly, personal or family/life related blogs will be posted over here, and informative, business related blogs will be posted on my website. We’ll see what happens going forward. I don’t know. I am notoriously fickle about applications.

But, I don’t have the blogging capabilities I want with the website, and I do with WP.

As much as I hate to keep bouncing around the web, I’ve come to a point where I feel like I need to consolidate all my stuff. I mean, I have the WWK project in it’s own growing home, I have this blog that I’d like to see go somewhere, and a book to flog. Emily turned me on to this website builder (www.webs.com) and it offers me every functionality I’ve been looking for, with all the user friendliness I require.

You’ll still be able to subscribe, or get The Outside Lane in your RSS feeds, and you’ll still be able to access all the content here. I’ll just be updating on my new website going forward.

So… The Outside Lane is going to park it here for a while. I hope you’ll come along for the ride.