January 15, 2007

Good morning and happy 2007 to you and yours.

We had a beautiful Christmas here in Jolly 'Ole
England. Christmas Eve, we lunched with Santa at The
Queens Hotel, the venerable and fussy hotel in town.
It was quite festive with Christmas crackers and paper
crowns. Later that afternoon we went to church and
the Brits confused us once again. They were all in
jeans. Now. What was THAT all about? Cheltenham is
much dressier than I can usually manage and then when
I do dress up, everyone is in jeans? Christmas day
was divine. We spent the entire day in pajamas and
only got dressed when it was time to visit friends for
drinks and dessert. It was a peaceful day. New Years
Eve was difficult for all of us and was easily our
toughest day in terms of homesickness. We spent the
early evening at the most tedious dinner party, which
ended up being a blessing in disguise: we were all
thrilled to come home, get comfy and ring in the New
Year by watching 2006's Most Annoying People on t.v.
How Kate Moss's emaciated and rotten toothed boyfriend
could have annoyed more people than George Bush in
2006 is beyond me.

So. The new year, coupled with the fact that I am
staring a milestone birthday in the face, has meant
that I have been doing alot of searching. Not much
soul searching, mostly just wrinkle searching. When I
turned 30 I swore that I'd take really good care of
myself so that I'd look fab when I turned 40. It
turns out, however, that I spent a good deal of my
30's changing diapers and driving to basketball games
and somehow missed my opportunity to find that perfect
moisturizer. Damn. Now I stare into the mirror and
wonder when all those lines showed up.

So, after one particularly good long look in the
mirror, I discovered what appeared to be the start of
a fairly healthy mustache. I was mortified! OMIGOD!
When did THIS get here? So I march myself down to
Boots and spend some time in the women's facial hair
removal section (That there were so many products to
choose from, gave me assurance that I am not alone).
Waxing is not for me. Not because I couldn't handle
the pain (which I probably couldn't) but because my
plucked eyebrows grow back at unprecedented speeds and
thought of starting a five o'clock shadow scares me.
What if, God forbid, I should get food poisoning and
need to be hospitalized? What if I didn't have access
to a beauty specialist? I could be laying there,
sicker than a dog, growing a mustache and looking like
Rip Taylor. No. No. There had to be another option.
I found it: Simple. Just exfoliate it off.

I go home, read the instructions. The instructions
say to start in a clockwise motion with this emery
board thing and then work into a counter clockwise
motion. Already I'm lost. Do they mean clockwise
when I look in the mirror or when I look down? So, as
is my nature, I think to myself, 'How hard can it be?'
and ditch the instructions altogether. I guess that
was a big mistake because I ended up looking like
someone who just had the great idea to rub off a
mustache! I looked TERRIBLE! It reminded me of how
my friend, Kurt, looked when he fell down and scraped
his upper lip the night before he graduated from
college. But without the broken tooth. There really
is no way to cover up what looks to be a SEVERELY wind
chapped upper lip, so instead of worrying about beauty
(it is only skin deep, I remind you) I have now been
able to focus on more meaningful ways to better
myself, like throwing my shoulders back, lifting my
head up high and walking down the street pretending
that I do not have what looks to be a communicable
disease on my upper lip. That builds character.


Love,

T-Ann