Sorry for getting Usher stuck in your head. It's a catchy tune.
I've been thinking about some things lately and I decided some confessions are in order. And to be very honest, I hope some of you are brave and kind enough to let me know I'm not alone in all of this. Or just break it to me gently that I am, in fact, crazy. Either way.
I am 28 years old, and almost halfway to 29. Most days I have my ish mostly together, but there are some days that make me wonder if I even know how to be a proper adult. I feel like at some point, all of the other adults got together and had a meeting where they were given the rules and told all the tricks and secrets about being an adult, and somehow I didn't get that meeting invite, or even the follow-up notes on what I'd missed. There are several things that I feel like I should have learned or figured out by 28 that I'm just clueless about. So here are my confessions.
1. I don't have a skincare routine. On a good night, I remember to take off my makeup and properly wash my face before I go to bed. Other nights, I simply "wash" my face with a wet washcloth and don't even bother trying to remove my mascara. I moisturize when my face is dry. I try to put on sunscreen if I know I'll be outside (even in the winter and on cloudy days, because skin cancer is no joke). I know this is plain wrong, so can someone please tell me what I should be doing??
2. I also don't know how to properly apply makeup. I mean, I know the basics and I know what goes where, but I don't know how to contour my face or do even a decent smokey eye. I just started getting semi-confident with eyeliner about 2 years ago. My daily basics are a light foundation and/or concealer, powder, blush (if I remember), and mascara. If I'm feeling fancy, I'll add eyeshadow and eyeliner. Lipstick is hit or miss. I own some, but I usually feel like a clown if I wear it. I'm more or a Chapstick or gloss gal. I've tried YouTube tutorials and taking tips from my friends, but I seem to always end up looking like a drag queen. Any advice here?
3. I rarely groom my eyebrows. Now this is something I know I should do, but I'll admit that I'm just lazy. My Mom would never let me touch them growing up for fear that is over-pluck and have scary, pencil-thin brows. Her's are light but full, a la Brooke Shields. I'm blonde, so mine are lighter as well. I don't really have a natural arch, but I also don't rock a Frida Kahlo unibrow. I try to maintain the strays when I notice them getting out of control, but they aren't too bad. I tend to do serious work on them about every 3 months or so, or for important events where I know I'll be having my picture taken a lot (like weddings and such). Mostly I just wait until one of my cosmetically-inclined friends sees me and takes the matter into their own hands.
4. I'm terrible at fancy cooking. B and I recently got a subscription to Plated. They send you a recipe and all of the ingredients for a fancy meal, and all you have to do is whip it up. We cooked our first 2 meals this weekend and they were quite good! However, I did have to Google "mince" because I had no idea what degree of chopping that meant. Turns out I did know, but I just didn't know that I knew. I also have an issue with touching things that are mushy or have a weird texture. Chopping tomatoes makes me uncomfortable and I just can't bear to touch raw meat. (Thankfully B is a vegetarian, so the meat thing is never an issue.) Judge away, but will someone please teach me how to cook??
(Tempe with some fancy slaw.)
(Some kind of fancy pan-fried corn cakes with mushrooms and tomato and avocado salad.)
5. I am terrible with removing stains from our laundry. Most of our stains are food-related. My Mom taught me the importance of pretreating stains to keep them from setting in, and she is some sort of stain removal wizard. (My Dad is a mechanic, so he often comes home with serious black grease and oil stains, and she makes them disappear like magic.) She's tried to teach me her magic, but I can't ever seem to duplicate the results. My 2 biggest struggles are makeup (I dropped a glob of foundation on a white shirt recently and cannot get it out) and oil (specifically EVOL that B has gotten on a few items of clothing while cooking/eating). Can anyone give me tips?? Teach me your ways, oh domestic goddesses!
6. I cannot like salad, no matter how hard I try. I hate lettuce and I feel like I'm eating leaves. (Yes, I know that's basically what lettuce is, but I feel like I just walked up to a tree and started picking and eating leaves.) I've even tried fancy salads with all sorts of different greens, but I can't like it. It's probably a texture thing. I don't like touching or eating weird textures. Yes, I know I'm picky. People tell me that I should try dressings because that will make the salad tasty and desirable, and if you know me, you know how much I love ranch dressing. My problem is, I have to drown a salad in ranch to even be able to get it down without gagging or grimacing. To me, drowning a healthy meal in ranch defeats the purpose of said healthy meal. I might as well skip all of those benefits and calories all together. And believe me, I've tried so hard to like or even tolerate salad. I want to like it, but I just can't. Can someone teach me how to do this?? (Likely no, but it's worth a shot.)
7. I can't manage to wake up without hitting the snooze button at least 5 times. Or 10, let's just be honest. Since the iPhone has a preset snooze time of 9 minutes, I end up setting 2 alarms every morning so that I get about 5 minutes between them. B wakes up as soon as his alarm goes off and has never hit snooze. He's just ip and ready to start his day, which is pure insanity to me. The man doesn't even drink coffee. He's just naturally perky in the mornings. I AM NOT. My snooze button habit drives him bonkers. On some mornings when I go to work before him, he's been known to get up and go sleep in the guest room as soon as my first alarm goes off, and that gives him another 30 or so minutes of uninterrupted sleep. (For those of you that just read that and think that I'm totally rude for that, just know that I keep my alarm on the quietest setting possible -- one notch above silent -- and I only wake up earlier than him a maximum of 2 days a week.) I also can't wake up early without an alarm (unless I have to pee). On the weekends when we have no plans, B naturally wakes up around 8am or even before. He has learned and is kind enough not to disturb me. I need my beauty rest. (Remember me telling you that I don't understand makeup? That's part of why I need so much beauty rest. I cannot magically transform this face to look gorgeous. Lord knows what I'd look like without beauty rest. With the amount I get on lucky weekends, you'd think I'd be as flawless as Beyoncé.) Part of my struggles with waking up stem from the fact that I don't sleep well and have occasional insomnia. I've always been a night owl. I can't just wake up with the first chirp of my alarm and be ready to face the day. I love my sleep and I love my bed, and I really have to adjust to the idea of waking up and starting my day. Do you want to know the real reason why Sleeping Beauty was always my favorite princess? It wasn't because of her gorgeous blond locks or because Prince Charming literally found her and they lived happily ever after. It's because that bitch got to sleep uninterrupted for so damn long! (We won't get into the story's morbid truths or the rape undertones or or creepy part of the story really are. Let's just think about how wonderful the sleep part is.) You early risers, can you teach me how you do it?? Can you train me to become a morning person??
That's a whole lot of confessions for one post, so I'll save some of the others for a later time.
Oh wise readers, will you please share your wisdom with me? Will you also share your confessions with me? It's cathartic to get it all out there, I promise.
Love,
A
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