That time I tried to perfect the smoky eye and raged at Adele

Was going to a mom party where we get all glitzed out and fight over cookbooks. Thank you, girlfrann Joy. So of course I decided to bust out the smoky eye. And by that I mean I took 40 minutes total to research smoky eye shadow on Pinterest using my particular eye shadow palette, tailored to my particular eye color. Then another 20 to follow along and another 20 to correct my mistakes so that I didn't look like a wax figure in Madame Tussauds. Thanks all-girls high school, thanks for skipping over that whole chapter where you're supposed to master eyeliner applications that don't look like electrocardiograms on the ol' eyelid. Memorizing the epilogue to the Tales of Canterbury was clutch, though.  You just can't imagine how often I quote Chaucer on the daily, while applying eye primer.

After I finally got the special effects where I wanted 'em, I snapchatted smoky eye game on fleek because social media rules.

Drove to mom party. En route, Adele's new song "When We Were Young" cues on FM dial and let me state for the record that that song is a nuclear weapon. One moment, you're just riding in the car to your mom party looking shnazz and the next moment, Adele is hefting onto your lap all the anguish and catharses that everyone who has ever fell in love has ever experienced including all the characters alive and dead on Grey's Anatomy and suddenly the 4.5 hours you spent on your eye shadow is blobbing off into rivers and snowdrifts and you are looking for the windshield wipers for your eyes because you are about to arrive to the mom party looking like you spent the last 3 nights in the poky.

And isn't it ironic that Adele, whose smoky eye game is on a whole 'nother level, whose eyelashes are the same ones used for centuries to paint Italian frescoes, and who sings everything with the most perfectly breathy brassy ache, just became a mother herself. Of all people, you'd think she'd be more respectful of the smoky eye perfected for the mom party. I can't help feeling she knew I could have had it all. Instead I was rolling in the deep. Of the feels and black eyeliner.

***

This was the only picture I took, screenshotted from my snapchat. Oh there's a barfy sentence if you want.

The gal in the foreground is my optometrist. She's a total babe and might be single. Apply within. 

Loved how Christa looked with her big pink prezzie. 

Thank you for wonderful book party memories, Joy. "Calhoun Rocks!"

That time we flew across the country to stare at Legos

I do so love a good vacation review, complete with field notes from pros who've masterminded a trip for a family of seventeen to see Paris on $4/day. Santé! How I plan vacations: 1. Overhear my husband buying a plane ticket for his parents to Los Angeles. 2. Get psyched when he says we can buy ones, too. 3. Sweat bullets that we won't be able to make rent on account of our bicoastal lifestyle. 4. Remind self that we don't have a lifestyle. 5. Pack cute outfits for kids that are not climate-appropriate for destination. 6. Look through TripAdvisor the night before we go to LegoLand and laugh at all the cranky people on the internet.

How I prepare my kids for the vacation of their young lives:

How I vacation with my wonderful, ridiculous family for a week in SoCal:

Tidepools in San Pedro

Marine Mammal Care Center - San Pedro (adorable!)

Korean Bell of Friendship - Fort MacArthur

Santa Monica Pier mall

(skeptical Baby Girl)

Our AirBnB in Vista - amazing hosts - highly recommend if you want the rec, let me know

Our mecca: LegoLand

Thanks, California

Discontentment: a play in three parts

The week was going to be impossible to enjoy I decided on Sunday, which is a wonderful parliamentary way to outlaw contentment in one's heart for a full week. Contentment was banished, by law and edict of Sunday's decision. An unwelcome denizen, cast out with the chicken bones and fanny packs with broken zippers. You know the basic plotline of this play.

I, playing a starring role as the Obliger, is huffing as she obliges every appointment and preordained meeting and every other Thing To Which She Said Yes, rueing the day she ever learned to say yes so well.  The other supporting roles are played by the usual suspects, a rotation of students and colleagues and one husband who falls very sick toward Act III and two children who don't understand why certain things set the Obliger off, I mean, Seriously, Mom, what is one rotting french fry wedged behind a carseat among friends?

The action comes to a climax when the inevitable meltdown transpires, the actress is centerstage facing the audience, whilst she furiously scrubs dishes and carries on in a monologue WHO CAN LIVE THIS WAY? that is probably a little too Medea and is not recommended for a younger audience. The denouement is only possible with reconciliation, to her husband, her children and to herself.

***

The stage is the place where dramatic irony is at its most delicious. The audience knows something is happening in tandem but the actors don't. In this play, there is no dramatic irony. There is action taking place in tandem, but it is not known by the audience or the actor. Because God does not demand an intermission. He bids, provides, loves, delights in us. He does it all, onstage and offstage, in spite of our parliamentary banishment of contentment. In spite of our prideful self-reliance, He is still so good. All last week, I know that I was constantly noticing beauty around me. The perfect Bob Ross leafscape in living color. The gymnast bouncing so perfectly on the trampoline at my kids' lesson. It wasn't aggressive, just whispers of beauty that blessed me in spite of my pouty comportment. Notice how I just used the word comportment. That's just a symptom of how pouty I was--I started bandying about words that should only be used to refer to royals. I will never be royal, but I am surely loved by the King of Kings who says godliness and contentment are uber beneficial. (1 Tim 6:6).