Today's topic, Makeup.  Now, I am finally getting to the core of my existence forget about anything else I say I believe in because makeup is really it. 

I love makeup.  In my family you had to be 12 years old to wear any kind of makeup.  12 is still young but that was the rule in our house.  You could play dress up and put on makeup but you wouldn't be wearing it in public.  Which takes me off topic slightly, to Toddler's in Tiaras or the horrific practice of sexualizing our children. I only see the promos for the show, I don't watch it, the promos are bad enough.  My sister in-law spoke to me about it and said that usually the moms were overweight and unattractive.  I feel that is partly true, one way or another the moms (or dads) are trying to feel good about themselves, get some validation, whatever through their children.  Excuse me, I have to go vomit.  OK, I am back.  Don't do this to your kids, honestly, it can't be healthy for them mentally or emotionally.

Now to more pleasant issues.  Makeup, I love it.  I love to wear it, I love to buy it, I love to look at it, I love to think about how I will put in on.  I always say if I were rich, I wouldn't have a big closet filled with clothes or lots of shoes, jewelry (although, I am not crazy, I would have some).  I would have a room dedicated to my makeup.  With great lighting, mirrors and enough room to put all the different kinds of makeup I want.

  I love eyeshadow, and lipstick the best.  Friends have been astounded at how many lipsticks I have for just work.  I have work lipstick and lipstick for home and abroad.  There is really no difference between them except work lipstick is kept in my work bag and home and abroad isn't, but they are interchangeable.  My eyeshadow collection is huge for one person. I have all kinds of shades some I never wear but can't make myself get rid of.  What if one day I needed that shade emergently, and then had to live with the knowledge of what could have been?

I find it ironic that as much as I love lipstick, I tend to buy the same shade a lot.  The shade is a mauve.  Sometimes a little darker or lighter but I am drawn to one in a store and say to myself you have this one in ten shades.  I usually do.  I like red and pink.  Occasionally, I will wear a coral shade but this is rare since I can't do oranges well.

When I was young I wore the ultra frosted eyeshadow they made in the 70s/80s.  You can still find it but why would you want to?  There is a difference in some shimmer and frosted, trust me!  I remember wearing  frosted peacock blue, and thinking I was HOT.  Remember, I said I love makeup, not that I have always been good with how I apply it.  I am better now at wearing colors to bring out the color of my eyes.  When I was young, my eyes were very blue.  They are still blue, but with more hazel now so I can my my eyes look bluer or greener depending on what shades I use.  Now that I am older I try to have more matte eyeshadow, I still have a bit of shimmer, but frosted eyeshadow makes you look older and I don't need that!

I will tell you the secrets to good makeup application.  Ready, here it is, right now for you.  No games, no tricks, no stalling....OK I was just being funny.  The first secret to good makeup is buy colors that work for your skin tone, in other words if you have a sallow skin tone don't go buying pink shades of foundation hoping to change things, you just wind up looking like your face is one color and the rest of you another which equals bad.  Second secret, blend, blend, blend.  Don't just slap the makeup on, blend it in so it flows from one thing to the next well.  Like your blush shouldn't stick out like to weird flags on your cheeks, it should just subtly be there and you shouldn't have a ring around your face delineating your foundation application.  Third, don't over do it.  Less is more.  OK, those who know me stop laughing,  I am talking about the people who come out looking like clowns.  Calm down, people, calm down.  Fourth,  and I can't stress this enough, please, under no circumstances should you over pluck your eyebrows.  You aren't making your eyes look bigger, you just look permanently surprised, or depending on your style, angry.  The fifth secret is to follow the brow line when shaping your brows.  If need be let things grow in and seek out professional help. Please!!

I was recently, on an elevator with some young women heading into work.  It had been raining and one was discussing with the other the accidents she had seen.  She had seen two.  I looked at her eyebrows and all I could think was, three.  That is right, I am going to hell, but at least my makeup will be on straight.  Or maybe my hell will be never wearing makeup again, or horrors, having to look at bad, bad makeup over and over again.  I need to repent!

Today's topic, Technology.   I am very grateful to live in such a technologically advanced era.  I can't imagine how I would do living before indoor plumbing, washing machines, and phones.  How truly blessed I feel to have the opportunity to use so many advances in my day to day life. 

  Some of the things we may think of as pretty new were actually around a long time before being common place.  There is an old movie, called Made for Each Other with Jimmy Stewart and Carol Lombard and in this film they show a fancy new technology, a fax being sent and received is shown.  The movie was made in 1939.  Some form of fax technology has been around since the mid to late 1900th century.  Ma and Pa Kettle had a series of movies and in one of them they win the house of the future complete with a microwave, this movie was released in 1950.  The microwave ovens have been around since the late 1940s.  I bring this up because at least to me, neither of these were really heard of until much later.  I think I first heard of microwaves in the late 1970s and even baby sat for a family who had one I tried to use it, epic fail.  Fax's, I don't think I was aware of until the mid to late 1980s.

 I remember when HBO was launched the first paid for movie channel.  We didn't have cable, let alone HBO.  The joke was some kid would ask if you had HBO if you said yes then they would say "Ha, you have Hideous Body Odor!"  Thank goodness I was able to answer no so often!  Now there are tons of movie channels to choose from.  I am still to cheap to pay for any that don't come with regular cable. With Netflix, Hulu and Youtube, honestly, who needs movie channels?

One of my favorite things is watching movies that use technology. Sometimes the technology if far advanced from anything we know, so powerful and stunning we are in awe.  But, my favorite is a disaster movie when all the advanced technology is out, destroyed, unusable etc. The only way to save the day is some archaic form of technology like a land line, type writer, or regular TV.   There is always someone who just happens to know how to use the strange device that just happens to be where all the good guys have congregated.  Amazing!   And by using this they are able to out wit the bad guys or overcome what ever obstacle was preventing them from saving the day.

So, Yay!, for such great advances.  Now, to the down side.  When I was young we went on many car trips sometimes with several cars all following along.  If one of the cars needed to stop for any reason they just flashed their brights or if in the lead, pulled off.  Simple, right?  Now we all have cell phones and call back and forth to decide where to pull over, where to eat or use the restroom.  The conversations can be so lengthy, trying to decide.  Just make a decision already!  Don't fight over where we will eat for an hour while everyone gets hungrier and angrier.  That is a recipe for disaster.  Been there and done that as it were.

I still get a little weirded out when I am in public and hear someone seemingly talking to themselves. For a few moments I can't tell if they have blue tooth or are crazy.  I eaves drop slightly on the conversation just until I know.  That way if they are crazy I have time to get out of their I might kill you if the voices tell me to way.

It also cracks me up how dependant we are on the cell phone, I include myself in this category.  I managed to stumble through 30 odd years of life with out a cell phone and now for the last 10-15 years it is a necessity.  I have done a lot of driving by myself all over the country.  My mom will say something like "Keep your cell phone out on the seat just in case."  Like it can stop a bomb, or bullet or prevent a wreck.  Or any one of us children is leaving the house for any reason she finds concerning "Oh, you have your cell phone with you" again like it can deflect bullets or the mugger will run from the phone in your hand.
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 I am making fun of some of the marvels we have available but I so grateful for things like air conditioning, washers and dryers, in door plumbing, LCD TV, DVR, CDs cars, planes, electricity etc the list is almost endless.  Because of the incredible things we can do, I just expect some things to work, in my opinion, better.  I get frustrated when things don't work like they should and when I talk to people who work with the particular piece of technology I am irritated with I tend to say things like "If we can do surgery in utero, put men on the moon, use lasers to improve our vision surely we can do X"  They rarely see it my way.  Just wait until we actually have time machines I will make sure my quirks are accounted for!


ast but for sure not least let me not forget modern dentistry.  I would be almost toothless without all the fillings and caps I have acquired over the years.  My two front teeth would be gone, long gone.  But thanks to modern science I can flash a quasi winning smile at will. 

Today's topic Dreams. Dream fascinate me, I try to remember my own but they are so elusive. I remember snatches of my dreams, for a while at least. I love to interpret dreams, sometimes I get it right.

I told you I remember snatches of dreams and that is true but there are two dreams I had as a child that I still recall pretty well. In one dream I am sitting on my parents bed, getting dressed. In my mind I can see the room, the bed, the bedspread so clearly. The the nylon white ankle socks I am supposed to put on fall off the bed and start rolling away. I try to catch them, but, they roll behind the curtains and when I pull back the curtains to find them they are big. They keep getting bigger and bigger until they are much bigger than me. Then they start rolling toward me chasing me all over the room. That is right, I was being stalked and terrorized by socks. I realize why I had that dream, the reason actually was pretty simple. I hated wearing socks. In Wilmington, NC on a hot summers day nylon socks coupled with shoes would make my feet so hot I could barely think or function. I remember asking my mom if I could wear the shoes without socks but she wouldn't let me. To this day if my feet are too hot I want to jump out of my skin. I think that dream came around the time I had to wear shoes, real shoes not thin sneakers or sandals. but school shoes. The play ground at my elementary school was sand, hot blazing sand. So, that dream was me coping with how big it was to suddenly go from a barefoot, free little girl to a shoe wearing little girl trying to play on a play ground filled with hot blazing sand. I am not sure how the dream ended but I think it ended with the socks shrinking back down and me putting them on.

The second dream was also scary, to me. I think it was a dream about how I could avoid danger or feel strong in my own little world. For those of you who don't know I love the water. My mom tells me she used to throw my in the water at 10 months of age and I would swim back to her (No cracks about my mom throwing me in the water). Sometimes when my sister was in school mom and I would go to the pool together and mom would tread water in the deep end while I jumped from the diving board. She would always be there to pull me out of the water. I remember a little less of second dream. I am at the pool at the apartment complex we lived in. I am standing on the diving board getting ready to jump into the water. Then there is a monster, it was kind of a mix between a what used to be called a brontosaurus, and an octopus it had the head and partial body of a brontosaurus but with tentacle like arms of an octopus. The monster kept grabbing people from the pool area, people I knew and dipping them in the water, head first. I don't think I understood death at that age so it was terrifying to me to see the people being dipped in the water head first. They were scared and screaming. There I stood on the diving board exposed and yet the monster didn't see me. It kept grabbing people and dipping them and I was so scared it would notice me on the diving board and yet it didn't. I was some how safe from the hideous monster. I remember feeling relieved at not being noticed. It is vague but maybe at one point the monster did see me but didn't do anything, I am no sure. I don't remember how it ended but I still remember what the monster looked like and can still see in my minds eye the monster dipping people in the water.

I love to interpret dreams, some times it is very easy to see what someones dreams are about. Both of my younger sisters have had dreams with babies that were very advanced and could do things that a baby shouldn't be able to do. Some negative person always is mean to the baby is some way. I realized that each of them had a new idea for work that people weren't on board for. The "baby" is the idea that they feel is good idea and will work well but there is always someone to be negative about trying something new.

Another one recently was from some who was worried she was too concerned with her looks, particularly her hair. The dream broke down to her being an a plane that was going down and while everyone else is getting ready for a crash, she is packing her suitcase, worrying about where to place her blow dryer. Friends had teased her that she was to into her hair. But, I asked if there was something coming up that she wasn't ready for, a decision unmade or something like that, I can't remember exactly. However, sure enough she had two choices about where she would go next, both were good ,but the time was short, and she couldn't decide. So, there she was in her dream with time running out on a plane about to go down and she is packing. I couldn't help her make a decision but at least I helped her to know she wasn't that vain.

Some of my favorites dreams are my George Clooney dreams. Don't get excited people they aren't dirty dreams. I think I just like his sense of humor and he represents something light and fun in my dreams. My George Clooney dream just always are happy. I wake up in a good mood after them. I think they are just me thinking about enjoying life. Dreams are fantastic. They mean we are working on life’s issues in our sleep.

I once read a book where the author wrote something that for me was profound. Whether it was her original idea or something she read or something famous, I am not sure.  Basicly, the protagonist in the book is warned against trusting dreamers, because they see the world as they would have it not as it really is.  So, let's keep on dreaming , learning about our selves and our world, but keep ourselves grounded and realize that dreams can help us cope but not change the world.   To change the world takes action not dreams. We can dream of a better tomorrow but have to make a plan to make it happen.