Facial Toner

"Mary, you are in your early twenties right?"

Surely it doesn't count if you lie to an eight year old. "Yes. Very early twenties."

"Well, how old are you exactly?"

"I am twenty - four."

"Hmm. That means you are turning twenty - five in April."

"......yes....."

"So ACTUALLY, you are in your mid twenties."

*Whimper*

I had a crisis when I turned 18: suddenly I could drink legally and I was supposed to vote. That seemed much too grown up for me, and I spent the morning of my eighteenth birthday in tears. And now, with twenty - five just around the corner, I feel another crisis coming on. A quarter life crisis. Because...I can officially say I am......a quarter CENTURY old.

I know. I know. Twenty - five isn't that aged. But the thing is.....I am noticing some changes that I really don't like.

For one thing, I bought a teeth whitening kit the other day. I am not sure if the current state of my teeth is the product of age or tea, but I will blame the former before I blame the latter because......I can't give up tea.

Then, there is my skin. I have always had nearly perfect skin, without ever having to do anything to warrant that. I washed my face when I remembered. I put on moisturizer if I thought my skin felt dry. But mostly, I did nothing.

Not so anymore. Suddenly I have weird dry patches and weird break out patches and I am completely and utterly obsessed with how clogged my pores feel. What a first world problem to have, am I right? Maybe I should go Africa and get my priorities straight.

But...BUT... this morning I noticed two tiny indentations between my eyebrows that DON'T GO AWAY EVEN WHEN I STOP FURROWING MY EYEBROWS. They are there PERMANENTLY.

So, I went to Kiehl's, mostly because it was the first place I saw when I entered the mall, plus every time I open InStyle, I see a huge spread on them. I was barely inside the store when I was nabbed by an extremely solicitous assistant who seemed completely anxious to know what I needed help with. She ushered me into a chair, and I sobbed out my woeful story.

"Well, your skin doesn't really look that bad. But I will do an analysis anyway." She blotted my face with some weird tester sticks, compared the results to a chart and came back with her diagnosis. "You have completely normal skin, with dry patches on your cheeks."

I could have told her that. "But I want AMAZING skin. I want it to stop getting OLD."

"We can certainly help. Wait one minute."

*A short BBM conversation later:* "Darling. So wonderful to meet you."

I looked up into the face of a perfectly dressed, perfectly coiffed man, outfitted in a WHITE LAB COAT, gazing with concern and oozing helpfulness. "Tell me your story. Leave nothing out." He fixed his eyes on mine like a sympathetic priest during confession, and made small noises of affirmation as I told him the whole history of my skin. As I finished, he gasped just a little.

"What do we hear missing? Hmm? A crucial element." He looked expectantly at the shop assistant.

"Toning. She doesn't tone her skin."

"Precisely. Sweetheart. You MUST tone. Absolutely ESSENTIAL. It must become a daily element of your beauty regimen. This (handing me a bottle filled with amber liquid) is what you need. It has hand - picked calendula petals."

Well, if they are hand-picked.....

"And now. Cleanser. Tell me. What is hardest on your skin? Stress? Fluctuating hormones?"

"Oh hormones, hands down. They rule my life."

"Sweetheart, it happens to ALL of us. This will just save your life. "

He has fluctuating hormones too? Do all men have fluctuating hormones? Or just ones who desire to identify very closely with women?

"And I suspect you might just LOVE this: our Midnight Recovery Concentrate. It works miracles."

"Will it even out my skin tone? And help with my wrinkles? If I don't get something that helps, I will need Botox in my forehead by thirty!"

"Oh darling, we've ALL been there. Pat this on after you cleanse and tone, and then seal it with this moisturizer. Magic. Perfection."

"And you are SURE this will work?"

"We will call you next week to make sure it does. You will have glowing skin in no time."

I grasped the counter full of products as if my life depended on it. Both plastic surgery and a burqa seemed inevitable if I didn't buy ALL of the face-saving products. So, a short credit card swipe later, and I was on my way into Victoria's Secret.

Bad idea. You know what I'm talking about. What woman, ever, in any circumstance, wants to be surrounded by posters of VICTORIA'S SECRET MODELS??

Umm.......

I started contemplating extensive liposuction and a full body lift, along with a potential height increase of at least six inches.

At which point I realized I was starting to let myself be crazy... and that maybe the crazy had started when I so eagerly latched onto facial toner with hand-picked calendula leaves, simply because I have a wrinkle on my forehead and a dry spot on my cheek.

But it is so, so easy. North American culture is hard-wired to make us look in the mirror and hate what we see. Case in point: at my sibling's school about half of the mothers look as if they are psychopathic mass murders. Their faces are so full of Botox that they can't smile or move their eyebrows.

After wandering around small town Greece and France I think I am suffering a culture shock. In both places, I became accustomed to graceful, naturally aged faces. They were beautiful in their expressiveness and in the stories the laugh lines and eye-smile crinkles told.

I didn't really realize how much I liked the look of everyone until I re-entered North America, and was faced on a daily basis with smooth faced, airbrushed perfection. I became acclimatized very quickly and....

ended up with a charming gay man ministering to me in Kiehl's, and a bag full of special liquids meant to halt my intensely speedy aging process.

I am the crazy I don't wish to see in the world. Whoops.

Ash Wednesday. Blrg.

Today is Ash Wednesday. The first day of Lent.

I love Lent. It is such an enriching time full of quite moments of prayer, deep self sacrifice, and epic growths in holiness.

I look forward to it every year.

...................Hmmm......Nope.

Absolutely not.

In no way shape or form is this true.

In fact, I hate Lent and usually begin to dread it the day after Christmas, with ever growing hiccups of despair as the calendar creeps forward to the day when I am supposed to get ashes slapped on my forehead and wear them proudly until I *accidentally* but very vigorously scrub them off.

I suppose it's good that I don't like Lent. I am not sure one is actually supposed to enjoy a season of penance and being better-than-normal. That would kind of defeat the purpose.

The thing about Lent is, that simply as a side effect of "giving something up" or trying to attend Mass more, or adding in a few extra prayers here and there, one pays a little more attention to the spiritual side of one's life. And there is the rub.

I don't know about you, but I usually end up wanting to throw the towel in after about a week. Being extra holy becomes too hard. The deep black crevices in my spiritual life open themselves up and swallow me, leaving me no choice but to acknowledge the inevitability of a disturbingly long time in Purgatorio.

Lent this year promises to be nothing different. In fact, it might promise to be something worse.

Oh yes. Already. Before the close of the first day. Failure.

Instead of "giving something up," I decided I would, for the whole of Lent, work on being nicer and more charitable to everyone around me. Maybe work on Patience a little. I saw visions of myself walking around on a cloud of sweetness and light, spreading joy and happiness with each serene glance and graceful gesture that I bestowed on the minions around me.

I was dressed in flowing white, with perfectly styled hair and glistening skin....

Oh wait. Back to my goodness.

I woke up, dressed NOT in flowing white, with hair that looked as if it was an extra large fur ball regurgitated by an obese cat, and skin that desperately needs professional intervention.

To be fair, looking like that, I didn't really have a choice to be anything more or less than a complete bitch. It took precisely fifteen minutes and twenty five seconds for me to bite off, with rabid glee and complete satisfaction, the heads of every single person around me and possibly make them wish that I had never been born. Or, more terribly, that they had never been born.

And then I decided to go to an Ashram because, really, if one religion doesn't work why not try another? Am I right?

Now, at the close of the day, I have come to a conclusion, because there is no other conclusion - that doesn't inspire utter despair - which I can come to.

To enmesh myself in a cliche: What matters is that I get back up. What matters is that I keep trying. What matters is that I face the reality of myself and know that I tend towards head biting and soul crushing. YES - I will try hard NOT to be that way, HOWEVER... let's be honest - very often I WILL succumb to my true self. Just because I keep tripping, doesn't mean I should stop walking. Even if I fall flat on my face, I should get back up. Who wants to stare at concrete? Or have sidewalk bugs crawl up your nose?

So here I am, trying to be nice, inclined to be mean, full of failure, but intending to keep trying. And I have Forty Days to focus in on that.

Lent was MADE for people like me.

And maybe even for you too ;)

Twenty. Days.

So......According to my last blog post, I posted exactly twenty days ago.

Lame. LAME.

I have excuses, I really do. But is an excuse ever really an excuse? I mean, shouldn't you just be able to suck back excuses, steam roll over them and continue on, life as normal?

Possibly.

But that would make me perfect. That, I am not.

Wait. Scratch that. That is a blatant lie. Everyone who knows me knows of my perfection.

I have no idea what my problem is, then. Perhaps I don't even have a problem.

Anyway. Many things have happened in the last twenty days. I have been to Lourdes again, where it was consistently assumed I was Italian. I was, yet again, and still naked, shoved, into frigid water that almost made my body short circuit but miraculously didn't kill me.

Imagine that. Dying at Lourdes from hypothermia caused by water meant to......heal you. Oh the irony. I probably shouldn't even laugh at that.

But I am.

On my way back from Lourdes, or perhaps it was on the way to Lourdes, I stopped in Toulouse for a few hours and, as is always the case, the area around the train station is remarkably seedy and disgusting.

This was made up for by the fact that I had the interesting experience of passing a brothel, stopping to figure out what it was before actually realizing what it was, peeking through the window, and having my eyeballs scream at me in protest. I proceeded to rinse them with bleach. The pain distracted me from the images imprinted irrevocably on my mind.

I mean seriously. If you work in a brothel shouldn't you be at least passably pretty and show some semblance of muscle tone? Or at the VERY least a disinclination to eat every single item on a buffet table?

Maybe it was a cheap place. I have no idea of these things. Maybe at higher class establishments the girls have to not look like trolls and actually try to fit into something smaller than a circus tent with an addition added on for a particularly busy night.

But enough about brothels.

A few days after Lourdes, I hopped on a plane and flew home to, essentially, get some blood work done and pow-wow with serious faced doctors about various aspects of my body and its oddities. Here I stay for a few months until I go join a convent or something.

I'm sorry. I should stop making that joke. It weirds people out too much. I don't know why. I think I would make an excellent nun. Don't you?

Don't even bother to answer that.

In any case, I am here to tell you that you should expect programming to resume as usual.

Your life will no longer be empty and devoid of joy when you check this corner of the blogosphere and find it unattended to. Yet again.

At least, I hope this is the case. Because really, what can I write about beyond things like my special European import, or the fact that my hair is currently purple and I am currently banned from chocolate?

Maybe you don't even want to know.

I am not sure even I want to know.

A Story Because I Am Lazy

So, having been absent for approximately 2.5 trillion light years, I have something to share with you.

I am entering a convent.

Next month.

Weird, right?

But it is un-avoidable. God has called me, and I must follow.

Or go to hell.

Because that is how it works.

---------------------------------------------------------------

Just kidding.

---------------------------------------------------------------

In other news, a lot a lot has been happening in my life, but instead of telling you about it, you get to read a story because I happen to be lazy. This story can serve a dual purpose by fulfilling my writing club obligation as well as giving you something to read.

A few weeks ago the lovely Meaghen, the fabulous Maja and I all decided that we needed to form a writers club. We would write two pages once a week, share it, and talk about it.

I put writing my story off until it was almost too late to get it done. Typical.

But now that it IS done, you get to see the product of my brains when I start to type without planning and give myself a deadline of one hour.

Lucky, lucky you.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Duck

Warm air pulls her into the store and out of the cold as the sliding glass doors whisper open. Intoxicating smells waft over from the bakery, tempting her with the siren call of fresh, hot carbs.

She slides her coin into the handle of the cart and struggles with the locking mechanism - is it just her, or can no one else get it to work either? - and, after a few tries, yanks the cart free from its brothers. She plops her purse into the space meant for a toddler and rifles through its pockets, trying to find her list. A whispered curse escapes her lips as she digs deeper and deeper into the bowels of her bag, past coins and crumbs and candy wrappers and, amongst all that, still does not find the raggedy bit of paper she needs.

A pause in the frantic search: she stares into space as if trying to backtrack her morning. The list - where has she put it? Methodically she starts unzipping all the pockets of her jacket. Nothing. She digs her hands into the front pockets of her pants. Nadda. And then....a flash of remembrance zipps across her face: she pats her butt and sighs happily. Her slim fingers wriggle themselves inside the back pocket of her jeans and with a squeal of triumph, she reveals her list in all its glory.

She directs the cart towards the back of the store, towards the meat section. Duck. They better have some in. He likes duck. A small moan escapes her at the thought of no duck. Hurriedly she pushes the cart down the long aisle, desperate to discover the trajectory of her evening. It all rests, she feels deep in her soul, on the duck.

At the meat counter she taps the pointed toe of her black boot impatiently. An old lady is talking to the butcher in a wavering high pitched voice about her need for liver. Her doctor, she pipes into the butcher’s face, has told her that she must have liver. The butcher is in no hurry to get rid of her; he nods in sympathetic understanding and chats back to her as he wraps up the quivering red mass for the old woman.

Finally, finally, the old lady meanders off.

She approaches the counter; it feels as if the direction of her future rests on the answer to her question.

“Duck. I need duck for tonight.”

“A whole one? Breasts?”

“Breasts, preferably.”

“No problem. How many?”

“Two, please.”

"Coming right up."

The weight lifts off her shoulders; she stands a little straighter. Her smile goes from merely polite, to fully genuine. They have duck. It is a sign: the evening will be perfect.

With a swirl of brown paper and a length of twine, the butcher hands over her precious package, tells her to have a good day, and turns to his next customer.

The heels of her boots clip clop her to the produce section where she picks over the baby potatoes, trying, it seems, to find some that are all exactly the same size and shape.

That accomplished, she moves over to the assortment of bagged lettuces, examining them as closely as she can without actually tearing the bags open, searching for one with no signs of wilting.

Tomatoes are examined with extra attention spent on the smell, but it is when she gets to the raspberries that things get interesting. Container after container is meticulously examined - each and every one is discarded with a little sniff of disgust. The raspberries must be perfect; most of them are weeping piles of mush.

Looking surreptitiously over her shoulder she starts to shuffle raspberries between containers. The perfect ones go into one container, the ugly ones go into any other of the available containers.

Done with the produce section, she makes her way towards the bakery. Her final stop. If they have some fresh sourdough...MAN...she will have nothing to fear. It’s his favorite bread. Her eyes rest on the round bulbous loaf she is convinced she needs, a happy sigh issues out of her, and with that, all the remaining tension trapped in her body seems to float away.

Lined up at the cash register, she stares smilingly into space as she plans out her afternoon of cooking. Everything will be perfect. This is the start of a new a start. The duck and sourdough serve as confirmation.

I start to scan her items and she cheerily asks how my day is going. Before I can answer, she is distracted by the buzzing of her phone. Her eyes scan the screen of her Blackberry, skipping over the words of the text message.

Her shoulders sag. The ray of light in her face, so vibrantly there a moment ago, scuttles away leaving bleak despair.

“He couldn’t even call.”

“I’m sorry?”

“My husband. I was planning a special dinner. We were going to start over. But he has a meeting. Last minute. You know that means?”

I don’t answer. She isn’t really talking to me anyway.

Her voice drops low as she twists the massive, sparkling diamond on her left hand. “He’s not going to give her up. He’s not.”

She grabs her bag from the place where toddlers sit and walks, as if in a trance, towards the sliding doors of the store.

“Fucking duck.”

Addiction, by Meaghen

In a little town in the south of France that has only two cafes and one good baker, the twilight of evening crept over the rolling farmland, along the D118 highway, and past the Salz before stopping abruptly at the corners of the town square. At the center of the square were two figures, sitting cross-legged and hunched over, a thin mist rising from their mouths into the cold air. As if in surprise, the dark mist hesitated over the two shadowed bodies before continuing its westward course to the Pyrenees.

"It's dark," said Meaghen.

"Why are we sitting in the middle of the town square?" Mary questioned the night.

"Cross-legged, no less?" Meaghen added.

This was just one of the many questions Mary and Meaghen had found themselves asking over the past few weeks, such as,

"Why are we laughing at everything?"

"Why can't we move?"

"Why don't we leave the apartment before 2:30pm?"

"Why am I dizzy?"

"Why am I single?"

"Why do we need ten hours of sleep per night?"

"Why does your nose look so weird?"

The soul-searching had begun after a Sunday spent at the market in Esperaza, where the two girls had gone to Mass, wandered through the farmer's market, bought a couple cookies, were force-fed a shot glass of tea (or water-infused honey), and watched the world pass by while sipping cafe au lait at their local cafe.

It seemed innocent at the time.

And then they woke up. On Tuesday morning.

"What day is it?" queried Mary.

"Is it actually 3pm," Meaghen moaned, "or is my clock wrong?"

"It's morning in Canada...somewhere," Mary justified.

"Lets go for tea."

They walked to the Bio Bakery, where they had already built a reputation for holding inappropriate conversations, eating entire loaves of bread, sneaking extra water for their tea, and shamelessly making fun of the staff, who nevertheless gave them free cookies.

Their waitress was a slight girl of about sixteen or twenty-two, who laughed after everything she said and spent three minutes putting the lid on the tea pot (or as the French would say, the the pot).

"She's totally high," Mary said.

"NO," Meaghen said.

The girl put the lid on the pot.

"She IS," insisted Mary.

"Sh!" shushed Meaghen, motioning that the girl was still standing in front of them.

"Standing in front of me, you mean," corrected Mary.

"Oh, right," acquiesced Meaghen. "I forgot your phobia about sitting with your back to the door."

Mary sipped her tea.

Meaghen sipped her tea.

Mary nibbled a cookie.

Meaghen scarfed a cookie.

Mary started to knead a piece of bread into mush.

Meaghen looked at her in disgust.

And then, simultaneously, the mental pieces fell into place. "The grey stuff," as P.G. Wodehouse might have said, "began to work." The light bulb turned on.

"We're addicted to Crack Rock."

Well, ladies and gentlemen, it's true. Remember that shot glass of tea, that you forgot about because it seemed so innocent at the time? We're pretty sure it had the Crack Rock in it. And that's why two chocolate bars disappeared from our apartment in a matter of days. And why we run into the bathroom when people knock on our door. And why we watched Due Date three times. In a row. And why Mary hasn't posted on her blog in weeks. And why I'm guest posting now. And why this guest post is so strange.

It's the Crack Rock.

A Productive Use of Time

I think it's Meaghen's fault that this blog is so neglected.

(Damn you, Meaghen.)

In Greece I had no one to bounce ideas off of or to calm my nervous psychoses.

But with Meaghen here, I can rationally discuss all manner of things and have no need to encourage my narcissism and put my thoughts out into the ether.

We can sit down over Coffee and explore every possible option for why my period is ten days late, which may or may not include the most logical conclusion: I have been impregnated, simply from a glance, by the searing blue eyes of the charming French-man at the market.

Long meandering discussions are had about Downton Abbey: Is it right to force the kitchen maid to marry the dying soldier, even though she doesn't want to, but by doing so she is helping him die happy?

Meaghen: Absolutely not.

Mary: Absolutely yes.

Meaghen: She doesn't want to. She doesn't love him.

Mary: It doesn't matter. It's only for six hours until he dies and then she can go back to normal life. Besides, he dies happy, and it's no skin off her nose, so what's the big deal?

Besides it's war time. Suck. It. Up.

Meaghen: But it's a lie.

Mary: Sometimes it's good to lie.

Meaghen: Is it, Mary? Is it?

Mary: Yes. But only if you know that God isn't paying attention.

Meaghen:..........

(God: if you are reading this, I don't really believe that.)

Important discussions are had about highly important things such as:

a) How can Meaghen get Josh Groban's attention so that she can tell him how much she wants to have half a dozen of his curly-haired children?

and

b) Is Wentworth Miller REALLY gay?

Answers:

a) Create a Myspace account specifically for posting on Josh Groban's wall. Make completely outrageous statements guaranteed to gain his attention. Once his attention has been caught, insist on meeting him in order to gain his undying love. Success. End of story.

b) After hours of internet research - which was given attention and devotion to the facts that I am quite sure not one of our University papers benefited from - the conclusion is: No. Wentworth Miller has never, not once, confirmed that he is gay. To the contrary, he makes reference to his deep held desire to find a nice girl (Here! over HERE!). His supposed homosexuality is apparently a figment of Perez Hilton's imagination and as such, having found that out, Meaghen and I can now rest easier at night.

....Mostly because......if Josh Groban doesn't work out, Meaghen is making a flying dash into Wentworth Miller's manly, so excessively ripped arms.

I don't know why she gets all of the celebrities and I am stuck offering to become God-Mother of her future children whose faces, I am sure, will be plastered all over the tabloids from the moment they exit the birth canal.

Share just a little, Meaghen.

You wrecked my blog, and now you are trying to decide between two celebrities?

Not. Fair.

And finally: Listen to this song. It will make your world a better, brighter place, and possibly make your having read this blog-post.....NOT a complete waste of time.

Green Knee Socks

A nice walk down the road from us - I am not sure in which direction; when do I ever know where I am? - is a little village called Esperaza.

We first came across it on a Sunday morning when we went to explore the farmer's market. In the middle of what I suppose must be the town square, there were booths peddling everything from Alpaca sweaters, to statues of the Buddha, to home-made fruitcake.

People were dressed in all kinds of terrible clothing - ranging from what looked like burlap sacks, to what could have been the carcass of a dead dog - walking around smoking pot and flipping their deadlocked hair in the wind.

Meaghen and I were thoroughly enchanted. So much character was infused into this town.

We went back during the week, found a Cafe that we liked and decided that Esperaza was worth visiting AT LEAST two days a week. It didn't hurt that, being a cookie monster, Meaghen found a bakery which makes cookies fit to force her into a swoon.

Esperaza's charms grew - the supermarket carried a particularly good kind of smoked salmon, the cafe served a very tasty green-mint tea and produced a lovely cafe au lait, and the way the light filtered through the trees and onto the river was particularly magical.

Slowly, oh so slowly, though, we started to notice things.

Almost every person we saw was either excessively tattooed, or carrying about 10.5 pounds worth of piercings on various parts of their body.

The terrible clothing was not limited to the attendees of the Sunday market: it seemed to be a daily occurrence, and something that did not improve on further viewing.

We decided that Esperaza is possibly the ghetto of the surrounding area. Perhaps it is equivalent to a trailer park. Maybe this is where ex-convicts are condemned to. Possibly it is a hippie commune. Any and all of these options seem feasible.

Beyond that, though, the town has the weird feeling of being a completely alternate universe. You can walk the length of a street and not see one person or moving car, or the hint of movement from any house. This is contrasted with the fact that music is pumped very loudly into all the streets of the town. Speakers mounted on buildings insure that, no matter where you roam, you are inundated with music. Not just any music, mind you, but loud, pounding, club-type music.

There are few things more strange than walking down a completely deserted street in a quaint French town, accompanied by LMFAO's Party Rock Anthem.

Yesterday, having settled in at the cafe, we took a look around and noticed that everyone was shooting back shots or drinking wine. In the morning. Well before lunch-time.

As we tried to figure out if drinking this early on in the day is a French thing, or merely an Esperaza thing, one of the men who had been standing around with his buddies came up, grabbed Meaghen by the shoulder, kissed her on both cheeks, turned to me and did the same, tipped his cap, and then walked off.

We stared at each other, bewildered. The other patrons of the cafe seemed briefly interested, then gave a collective shrug and returned to their alcoholic endeavors.

There was nothing for it, but for us to do the same, except that we were drinking coffee, not Rose.

As I sipped, I watched little kids wander around amongst their madly smoking parents, drinking Coke and yammering away to each other. Old men walked by with baguettes under their arms shouting greetings to anyone they passed. Motorcycles sped by driven by barely pubescent boys.

Perhaps, I thought, I had been judging the town too harshly. It all seemed perfectly normal.

And then she walked by. A beautiful woman. And yet...she wore tight tan pants.....tucked into olive green wool knee socks embroidered with little fairies. That's right. Her socks were pulled up OVER her pants, all the way past her knees.

Weird. So weird.