Mary Kay, Meet Rose's 'Stache

Mary Kay, meet Rose's 'stache. Rose's 'stache, meet Mary Kay.

It is a Saturday night, and for reasons I cannot get into, I was introduced to the memory of Mary Kay today. I have never known much about Mary Kay (the makeup icon). The friends I have who use Mary Kay make up, look great. Their skin is smooth, rosy, lovely. Their hands are smooth. Crow's feet? Forget about it. Eyes and lips and cheeks are very lucky body parts when one uses Mary Kay stuff.

And then there is me. Many moons ago, make up was important to me. I would never leave the house without having make up on. You would never catch me at Wal Mart, for example, buying toilet paper without lip color and maybe a smudge of blush. And then, the kids came....

It would not be unusual for me to shop at Wal Mart in my pajamas. It is all about time management: get the toilet paper and cat food, buy the glitter for the school project due tomorrow morning and get back home. That is/was the drill. If someone sees me without makeup, in my pajamas buying cat food and glitter at 12:30 a.m.? Well, that is their problem.

And here we are, two kids later. No more glitter to buy for school projects. I am working on my own school projects, and, hopefully no graduate course will expect a project that requires glitter or paint or play dough.

But, uh, what the heck? Make up? I don't even know if I would know for sure how to find the make up aisle at Walmart were I in need of buying new blush or whatever the heck! I wear make up when I have have lunch with friends, volunteer, meet with clients. I never wear make up when I am cleaning someone's dirty old house, and I clean a lot.

I know. It's kinda gross to be honest. It doesn't help that I am no longer married, and have no real, concrete interest in finding Mr. 'Right', right now. Maybe later. But, here I sit, a book on my coffee table, the face of Mary Kay staring at me from the book cover. She is sending me messages: "Rose, darlin, the brows, the 'stache, darlin, it's time, time to get things spruced up, baby..."

I have this fancy mirror I bought a while ago that lights up. Considering I am nearly blind (not really) and cannot see my face very well without glasses, I got this fancy shmancy mirror which magnifies a bunch and lights up to reveal every imperfection on one's face. Naturally, I never use it. But, I dusted it off and light it up. Oh. My. God.

I have a 'stache. I have bushy brows, Walter Cronkite-like. I am saggin and puffy and droopy here and there and everywhere. Oh, no amount of magic potion can fix this mess!

But I am not gonna fold. I raid my daughter's cache of makeup. I find 4 pairs of tweezers, of varying points. I find a kind of razor thing to trim runaway hairs. After about an hour of work, my bushy Cronkite brows have been replaced with a fairly uniform brow line, all just in time to reveal the puffy eye lids. But, that is another blog post.

And so, here I sit. Mary Kay staring at me, Oprah on the TV in the background, Cinnamon, the dog crashed next to me on the couch.

Maybe it IS time to care a little about how that mug looks? I dunno. I can't fix it all tonight, that is for damn sure. I wish I had one of those vacuum things you can buy to shrink a bag of sweaters so that they are as thin as a piece of beef jerky and stack neatly on a shelf.... I would like one of THOSE things, to suck out the fat and cynicism that have settled here and there...

But, Mary Kay says I don't need that. I just need some of her magic potion.

I can't afford it. Pricey. Suzie Orman orders me from the TV screen to "Live Below Your Means, People!" Ok! I heard you! My God,you have an annoying voice! I fell asleep the other night with the TV on and her commercials (The OWN network has like 3 commercials they play 24/7) was on, yelling at me, and making its way into bizarro dreams...

And so, compromise. Mary Kay, Suzie Orman, Dr. Oz, Laura Berman (the sex therapist) and Dr. Phil all weigh in on how to fix my sorry ass life....

And, guess what? I gotta half dozen potties for them to clean tomorrow, 'kay? Kay. Night nite.