Long time gone

Oh dearie! It has been two weeks since my last post and I must vent! I have just taken a breath after two weeks of running around like a mad chook. I have had my daughter finishing her HSC, her grad dinner, massive orders to fill, and a couple of markets, one in Brisbane and another at Byron, and began building a big shed to put all of our crap into.

Next week it is a trip to Melbourne, then a market, then Oprah in Sydney and then another market....and I don't seem to be able to keep up the stock! Woe is me!

But enough of this whinging. Let me tell you a little story of my daughter's Grad Ball, and I hope that it will be a warning bell for all of you that may stray down the path of narcissism (like Meg in the chapter Vanity Fair).

I made a booking months ago for hair and makeup at the hairdressers for the big night. I had been up until after 3.00am in the morning completing orders, so my looks were pretty jaded. Admitedly, I am getting a bit long in the tooth, but I thought that with the help of professionals I might, just might, pass muster.

To cut a long story short, the picture I showed the hairdresser, was like showing a colour blind person a green number on a red field. She just didn't see the same image that I did. The soft curls around my face turned into a severe concoction that made me look like a Greek grandmother. "Aaargh, just call me Nonna!" I screamed silently in my head at my reflection in the mirror. My eyes were crazy mad with disappointment and horror  as I looked at the hairdresser and murmured, "Lovely."

Half a kilo of pins, (meaning the beginning of a migraine from the pain of them sticking into my scalp) were just not enough to keep my steel wire hair in position, and within thirty minutes, it was springing sady awry.

But alas, more was to come. The special pampering of having my makeup done for me was going to turn into a horror show, one that I am constantly reliving , and trying to forget it ever happened. The make-up girl looked like she had taste, but looks can be deceiving. She began by preparing my skin and matching my skin tones. "Fine", thinks I, "she must know what she is doing. I will just close my eyes for a minute, and relax....enjoy the process and the pampering. Be a princess."

I opened my eyes and nearly had a coronary. She had painted me orange! I had become an Ooompa Loompa! But there was more. The preparation she had put on my skin had acted like a wrinkle maker. I looked like Brad Pitt in Benjamin Button. Wrinkles I did not possess had appeared and I had turned into a 70 year old Ooompa Loompa. In an attempt to give me smokey smudged and sexy eyes, this artiste of the make-up brush had given me two eyes that looked like I had gone ten rounds with Mike Tyson. She had disregarded all rules for close set eyes and put dark brown eyeshadow on the inner lids to make me look like a geriatric,  gangster Oompa Loompa. Oh the humanity! Teamed with the Nonna hair....well I tell you duckies, it wasn't pretty!
 

I looked at myself in utter despair. Where was the princess? I asserted myself and told her that I was going home to take my makeup off, pointed out all of the horrors, and she amazingly didn't see them. However, I know they were there, as my daughter was sitting in the next chair and attests to all of my descriptions. In fact, she finds it quite funny, and one week later is still dissolving into fits of laughter at the state of my face.

  

 Eventually, the girl removed some of the make-up, and I finished off the process at home. I felt awful all night. My hair was falling down, I felt dowdy and old and haggard and frumpy and ugly. I know it was my daughter's night, but I don't get out much and I really wanted to enjoy it. And the moral of the story. I suppose, don't put your vanity into the hands of a twenty year old who has a penchant for orange makeup and dark brown eyeshadow.