My Lips are Sealed

I'm trying to remember the last time I wore lipstick. For the record, I haven't abandoned it altogether and I do look forward to my late 70's when I can slather it on and not really get all caught up in accuracy. I like make-up. I like eyeliner and mascara and a little dot of cover-up here and there and maybe even a dash of powder on my nose. I don't do blush anymore, which is actually a good thing because I'm not really sure I ever got that right. I studied pictures of Sheena Easton and Pat Benatar, even those girls from Heart, and I just could not get my results to match. It always looked to me like my face was on fire or that an embarrassing moment had struck me in all the wrong places. The giant blush brush was sort of fun, but hard to control. Basically the whole side of my face got hit and then there'd be a mad dash with a washcloth for corrections. I was trained by my mom and sister. They did try to help. Cheek, cheek, forehead, chin, a little on the nose. I was more like cheek, ear, fumble the brush, bangs, other cheek, too much nose, why chin, I've got a game, can we order pizza afterward? I don't know why everyone wants cheeks so rosey anyway. I've discovered shoving your face in the freezer for a few seconds can get you there in a pinch. You can also get there with a pinch. Lipstick is supposed to bring even more color to your face. I find it attracts too much attention. Case in point: my confirmation ceremony in 8th grade. Never mind I just got new glasses, still had braces and was wearing a powder blue t-shirt that matched a lengthy Little House on the Prairie skirt. My hair was out to here and my boobs were not. Such a pretty girl...let's get some color on those lips. That'll help. The only part about wearing lipstick I ever enjoyed was the part where you clamp your lips down on a tissue or toilet paper or a notecard. You smear the lipstick on, then you scale back on your initial commitment with a few smacks. I did a lot of smacking and then I would just wipe it all off with the tissue and be totally satisfied that my lips looked redder. I guess I'm more of a lip "tinter." This is much better if you think about crime scenes. No one's ever gonna find me because I left traces of a Lancome gift with purchase sample from Elder Beerman in Jackson, MI circa 1997 on a half empty wine glass or on a few cigarette butts outside a window... I don't wear it much anymore because I think it would be weird to all of a sudden start up again. People would notice. I suspect even strangers would raise an eyebrow. I'd walk into the post office and I think the woman behind the counter would think I was making fun of her. I'd feel sort of clown-y. Plus I hate the taste and how after a couple of hours it's sort of crumbly on your lips. It's like glue-sticking what's in the crayon sharpener to your mouth. When it gets like that, you have to re-apply. Which would mean I'd need a mirror. And a tissue or a piece of paper or a junk mail envelope. And someone to tell me it looks good. Women who can re-apply without a mirror and simply fold in their lips and pop them out again amaze me. They're all set. They can even answer a cell phone and push the baby at the same time they're doing it. I would be covered in red. It's just not my style. I'm more of a chapstick person. I can put it on without a mirror (well, not cherry) and probably while parallel parking. Plus, if you put chapstick on a pig, it's still a pig, but it's not worried about looking like a ho...

Scattered Pictures

I am equipped to take a picture of anything at any time. I used to rely on my photographic memory, but now I have a little thing called a cell phone. This means I can drink more, remember less and be reminded later of all things that are probably best forgotten. I can also document any wrong-doing, compare strange babies and see the inside of my pocket at random intervals throughout the day. I can snap indiscretions. I can capture joy. I can take pictures of my breakfast. I remember when cameras were special. Back in the day when they were huge and heavy and you had to put film in them and once you closed the back you didn't dare open it again till all the pictures were taken. People who had cameras were good at taking pictures. It was their craft. Others respected it because camera people had special powers. They could make a bulky box with a roll of plastic in it freeze a moment and preserve a memory. They knew how to frame it up, not to face the sun, whether or not to use a flash, how to hold 'er steady and just the right moment to press (and hold) the button. The results were crisp and seemingly real. The smiles fresh, the colors like fruit you could almost taste. A picture was a special thing. You'd wait a few days for it. And it always came with 11 or 23 or 35 others you could flip through, careful not to get fingerprints on the faces. Sometimes the pictures would be a mix across several months because you just didn't take pictures that often. You took four or five at confirmation, then your family went to Albuquerque and then you graduated. All on one roll. You'd pick out the three best ones and find good frames for them. You'd take your time undoing the frames, pulling out the fake pictures of a fake family celebrating fake times so you could make it real. Then you'd hang one on your dorm room wall (following strict regulations regarding holes vs. double-sided mounting tape) and prop one up on a shelf and tuck one in the corner of your loft and voila! You've got pictures. The ones without frames would get tacked to a bulletin board or pressed into an album or left loose in a drawer. Now my unframed photos are in my cell phone, on my hard drive and littered across cyberspace. I've gone through at least three digital cameras since they were introduced and all of them have literally hundreds of pictures hanging out inside them that I haven't looked at in years. I have folders upon folders of pictures on my laptop as well as on my iMac as well as on my 360G external flash drive. I have pictures I took with a set of digital binoculars at a Tiger game. 57 pictures of Tigers at bat, Tigers in the field, the umpire's butt (heh-heh), the scoreboard (it was 2-0 in the 3rd), what the hell am I gonna do with them? Well, I'll tell you what I'm not gonna do with 'em. Delete. Those pictures are just like the ones in the drawer. You never throw them out. You don't know why. But you gotta hang onto them. Even the bad ones. I should take a lesson from my Dad. He started scanning all the family photos a few years ago and now he has them all saved and organized by the instant they were captured on film. He even identified people in the pics (I think he made up some names). But I'm too lazy and I don't have nearly the breadth of photos he has. And mine lack historical significance. Unless you think a drive-by shot of the hotdog statue in front of that hotdog place on the Cape means something. He was putting ketchup on his own head! I guess I think the camera is kind of taken for granted nowadays. If you wanted to, you could take a picture of every second of your life and skip journaling altogether. (Please don't do that.) A picture is worth 1000 words, they say. I guess they haven't seen the inside of my pocket.