Ah, April showers bring May flowers…as well as thoughts about the bushes…and how they need to be trimmed…before swimsuit season.  Thus begins my annual debate:  to razor or to laser or something in between.  To use a terrible pun, I wax nostalgic for the days that I frolicked blissfully unaware of the hair down there because it grew naturally in a nice little triangle that stayed tucked behind the seams of my bikini bottom.  Now, as I try to make my nursed-a-child-for-16-months breasts look bigger and fuller, I have to minimize the triangle that has grown much bigger and fuller over the years.  Curse you Mother Nature!

While shaving works fine for my legs (note:  must shave legs again now that weather is warmer), I find that shaving up into my nether regions yields little red bumps that are worse to conceal than the hairs themselves.  Still, waxing is a more permanent BUT WAY MORE PAINFUL option.  So, this is the year I will attempt contemplate laser hair removal.  It is certainly more permanent, but also more expensive than the shaving or waxing options.  And, since it is more permanent, therein lies the question of how much to take off.  Should I shape it like I do my front yard Boxwoods, or should I take it all off and have my hoo-ha the only Brazilian feature about me?

Then there’s the painless, economical solution that’s served me best over the years:  the boy short.  It comes in many colors, hides imperfections both front and back, and doesn’t involve a stranger seeing my naked body.  While I still have few more weeks to decide, if you see me at the pool this summer in my full coverage swim bottoms remember that some women glow but I say better take cover.

 

How is it that I read at least three interior design blogs a day (thank you Emily Henderson) and yet my house looks like a flea market threw up inside of an IKEA? My neighbor next door is a wonderful interior designer. I don’t know if she has a blog, but I’ve been in her house and it is subtle yet well styled. Sure, I could ask her to just pop over and give me some ideas, but I refuse to not pay professionals for their opinions. I also refuse to hire professionals for ideas I think I can steal glean online. Yet I find it’s as if the professional designers know they can put endless pictures online of beautiful living rooms, sublime master bedrooms, and well-appointed guest bathrooms, and only 1/10^th of 1% of site visitors will actually be able to execute (a.k.a. steal) those ideas in their own homes, which leaves most lookers to eventually break down and hire professional designers after months of saving and lamenting.

My cheapness and impatience define most of my style choices:

The couch I really want is out of stock? Okay, I’ll take the floor model with a discount even though it’s six inches bigger than what I wanted and in a cheap burlap fabric rather than the soft cream velvet. Sure, it sheds on my pants every time I sit on it…but I got it in two days and at such a bargain!

The elite house painters can’t fit me into their schedule until July? Okay, the thrifty painting duo I found on Yelp will have to do. Oh, they painted the kitchen slightly grey rather than simply white? Again, such a bargain – and better grey today than white in five months?!?

I should probably be more patient when it comes to purchasing, but I question whether the waiting for the perfect product will mean the product is actually perfect when I get it. Would I be happier if I waited and found the ideal red and black Persian rug for my living room a year from now than if I just bought a beige clearance rug today that I can enjoy during the (still) chilly months and not panic every time our incontinent dog attempts a sneaky pee within 10 feet of the area?

You get the picture, even if it’s slightly different than what I originally pictured.

I do not wear lipstick. I have not worn lipstick since 2009 when my workout “buddy” (there’s going to be a lot of quotes in this post) told me that you have to be “truly beautiful” to wear red lipstick. I remember it like it was yesterday:

Me to Workout “Buddy” (after doing some torture called “burpees” that my boot camp leader swore was the best workout on the planet): I bought three shades of red lipstick last week, but I don’t think any of them looks good on me.

Workout “Buddy” to Me: Well, I think you have to be truly beautiful to wear red lipstick.

 Me (after waiting for retraction from Workout “Buddy” affirming my not-so-true beauty and getting nothing): Yeah, you’re probably right.

I went home after that grueling workout and even more grueling put down (Honest comment?) and changed my lipstick color from Fire Engine Red to Oreo Cookie Black – not a shade, the real thing.  My whole self-worth was not wrapped up in my buddy’s comments (okay, about 65% of it apparently was because I’m still ranting about it seven years later); rather, I realized that my face was not one that others would see and remark, “Wow, she is beautiful.”

Don’t get me wrong. I have never been one to flaunt my looks. I was no beauty pageant winner, no runway model, not even one to attract an occasional attractive man at the bar.  Yet, in my mind, I was good: thin, nice natural hair color, eyes of relatively equal proportion, no third nipple. But I guess in the back of my mind I was always waiting for that day when I would really come into my own.  That day when I was older and my boobs would blossom (Where are you guys?), my makeup application would be flawless (No more clown blush!), and I would be the “truly beautiful” woman that my awkward teenage self thought I could grow up to be.  After my buddy’s comments I realized that I had grown up but such a day had not come.

And that’s how that story used to end.  But recently, another friend who knew of my lipstick phobia gave me a tube of Dior Addict Lip Glow that, for those of you who have not tried it, is a sheer lip balm that enhances the natural color of your lips.  Or, in other words, it morphs into the unique color that makes your lips “truly beautiful.”

Now, I can’t say I’m ready for the runway, but when I put on the Lip Glow I feel good because I think about my thoughtful and generous friend whose simple gesture reminded me that you don’t have to be “truly beautiful” to wear any color of lipstick.  You just are truly beautiful when you help someone else feel beautiful too.

(No, Dior did not sponsor this post. I should be so lucky.)

Three moves are as good as a fire.  So, after moving six times in fifteen years of marriage, the only 200-pound furnishing still found in my home is my husband.  And my mom’s 1964 Steinway piano…but that’s another story for another time.

Perhaps, my many moves not only indicate a lack of old stuff, but also a lack of stability on my part.  Yet, perhaps, they also show a sense of adventure.  I guess I find packing boxes more fulfilling and less life risking than say mountain climbing or skydiving.  Besides, isn’t the goal of any of those escapades just to end up on a different spot of land than from where you began?  I simply prefer furniture pads to knee pads.

I must also confess that I love the attention of coming and going.  A neighborhood never comes alive more than when someone new arrives or when someone established departs.  During our most recent move from California (also our most frequent move – to and from) we had neighbors coming over saying how much they were going to miss us, and all I could think was I’ve never even seen the inside of your house.  I had one neighbor send us a Christmas card (the first in our three years of knowing one another) two weeks after we’d moved, and I found out I’d been referring to them as the Goldsmith family when they were really the Goldberg family. Clearly, we were very close.  Still, the attention was great, and so were the sticky buns (Thank you Nelson Nielsen family!).

Nevertheless, my wanderlust is waning.  I no longer have the burning (pardon the pun) desire to see if the grass is greener on the other side.  The attention you get with hellos and goodbyes lacks something when compared to the affection that grows over years of sticking around.  I’ve realized it’s time to trade in my moving for a little more meaning…and take up mountain climbing.

This is not a hair blog. Okay, I will speak of my hair often and with impunity – but what middle-aged woman wouldn’t? There are the debates about length, the torments of to-curl-or-not-to-curl, to-straighten-or-not-to-straighten, and the inevitable five-inch long grey hairs that show up on random mornings with me swearing they were not present the night before. How does grey hair grow 100 times faster than brown hair? Perhaps I’m no longer growing brown hair…except for “down there,” and that will be a whole other topic I occasionally reference.

But, I digress. This is not a hair blog. While I have been trying to grow out my bangs for nearly three years now (ever since I cut them in a vain attempt to look younger), Growing Out Bangs is a blog that addresses those tasks in life that seem so simple and so easy to accomplish, yet they take gargantuan amounts of patience and self-control to pull off…or leave on, as the case may be.

This blog will highlight the low-lights of trying new things and failing, or trying old things and forgetting how. May it be edifying, educational, and downright entertaining. Thanks for reading and looking at life from my point of view – through my bangs.