Beggar’s Night and a Brow Wax, Woo-hoo!

Tonight we had a great time as usual at Emily’s house for Beggar’s Night! Well, everyone but Sophie that is. She had to pull a few Diva tricks and act like she HATED wearing her chicken costume and HATED being in her stroller and ya da ya da, but we still managed to have fun! Since she was such a grump, this is the best picture I got of her last night in her chicken suit:

Sophie chicken -none too pleased

I promise you, she was totally adorable! But you’ll have to take my word for it! Joshua and Kate, however were ALL SMILES:

the hulk and snow white!

Sammy was the Poisoned Apple to Kate’s Snow White, and he was the most scrumptious apple ever!! I wanted to eat him up!

this poison apple looks awful sweet to me

Ok, now on to the stuff you REALLY care about!! MY EYEBROWS!!

Well, I am pleased to announce that it hardly hurt at all! Seriously! It was NOTHING! I got all worked up over nothing, basically. So, I am dumb. But we all knew that already, so let’s move on and see thems BROWS, mmkay??? Here is the new, improved version:

new brow

You can see the before picture here. No more hairs underneath where they should be and no more creeping towards the middle! Yay! And here’s my new haircut:

new haircut and got my eyebrows waxed

Take a good look, as it will never look like that again, ’cause I CANNOT flatiron it like that. But I am VERY happy with the cut! Now everyone in the Dayton area, go visit my stylist Janelle and tell her I sent you! She is awesome! She totally kicked booty on the brow wax!

I have lots more great photos of Beggar’s Night that I’ll share on my Weekly Winners post this week. Have a great weekend!

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God Bless My Virgin Eyebrows

Tomorrow I am going to do something that I’ve said on many occasions that I would never do unless it was absolutely necessary.

I’m going to get my eyebrows waxed.

That’s right, I’m *cough* 31 years old and I’ve never had my eyebrows waxed. I’ve never even plucked or tweezed a single hair. Why? Because up until now, my eyebrows have been perfect specimens. (Are you buying that?? Cause it is not true.) The truth is, I am a major wimp. MAJOR. Low pain tolerance, scared of everything, just plain wimpy. So, I declared that I would never pluck, tweeze, or wax the ol’ brows until they became the ol’ BROW, singular. Even though my hairdresser tried to get me to let her wax them every time I got a haircut. I would not bow to the peer pressure.

Then last week, I looked in the mirror, and I saw this:
eyebrow.jpg

Those extra hairs sprouting out there towards the middle are NEW, and I don’t like them. And now, since I’m the editor at Blissful Style, and I have a reputation to uphold, and I need to at least fake like I’m fashionable, and since I have no desire to look like the Wolfman, I’M GETTING THESE BABIES RIPPED OFF!

And I’m TERRIFIED!! Seriously, are any of you available at 12:45 tomorrow to be there and hold my hand (AND/OR administer me an epidural?? Cause I really want one!) Emily won’t do it since she already blew off work yesterday. Talk about a fair-weather cousin. Sheesh.

While I am there, I am also going to get my hair cut, because I haven’t gotten it cut since, um, July, and as you can see in this picture, the too-long-too-thick-out-of-shape MOP look isn’t really working for me. (Although I think the goofy face really is.)
sillyjenny.jpg

So there you have the “Before” pictures. As soon as the bleeding stops, the swelling goes down, and the stitches come out, I’ll be sure and post the “After” pics!

Pray for me!

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Stressing Out(age)

stressed.jpg
Photo by Rick on Flickr

So, in case you didn’t read this post, or this one, or this one, let me just recap and tell you that after Hurricane Ike wreaked havoc on Texas, he did something unprecedented for a Hurricane – he came up to the Midwest and gave Ohio the finger for having the audacity to think we didn’t need to worry about him. So, after a few hours of 45-70 MPH winds on Sunday September14th, many people in our state were left without power and with a lot more tree branches in their yard than on their trees.

By some miracle, we only lost power at my house for a few seconds. My brother and his family, who live about 5 blocks away from me, went TEN DAYS without power. TEN DAYS!! We live in the middle of a city, a pretty good-sized city. We don’t live in the boonies or have a power company with one worker. We live in a large city with it’s own power company, but the outage was so massive, that today, ELEVEN DAYS later, over 4,000 households are still without power. In 2008. And we didn’t even have a real hurricane.

Ridiculous.

But now I am getting ahead of myself. What I really want to tell you about happened this past Monday, eight days after The Big-Ass Windstorm of 2008. The kids and I were at my parents’ house in the afternoon and returned home about five o’clock. I had dinner in the crock pot, and we were having a really nice day.

Until I flipped the living room light switch and nothing happened. I flipped it again. Nothing. I flipped the switch in the dining room. Just an empty “click”.

“Oh crap.” I said quietly.

Then I FREAKED. I just about totally lost it. How could this be? Eight days when we have power and no one else does and NOW we don’t have any?? My fragile psyche couldn’t take it!

All our phones are electric, so I grabbed my cell phone and went on the back porch to call Bobby. The reason I went on the back porch? Because even though we live in the middle of a big city, our cell phones don’t work very well in the house. Don’t get me started. Thanks, AT&T! While I was out back, my neighbor walked into his driveway.

“What’s going on with the power?” I asked, trying to play it cool.

“A transformer blew down the road. I think we’re in for it now. I don’t think we’re going to have it back for quite a while.”

(My neighbor is a know-it-all and a Negative Nelly. This did not help my rising panic.)

I went back inside, where Sophie was pushing the power button on the TV over and over and OVER again and fussing at it. I am sure she would have been cussing at it if she could talk/knew any curse words. She then toddled angrily over to me and shoved the remote in my hand.

“Wasssh a shooow!” she demanded. (She can say that! Which is weird cause I rarely ever *ahem* let her watch tv.)

“We gotta get outta here!” I practically screamed.

“I don’t want the lights to be off!” Joshua wailed.

I called my parents and told them what was happening, and they invited us back over to their house. As quickly as I could I threw some PJs and diapers into my purse. I grabbed the kids’ movies and I took our dinner out of the crock pot (it was done thank goodness!) and put it in a Rubbermaid. I then proceeded in my panic to lose my cell phone and my keys. Joshua kept fussing about the lights and I barked at him to be QUIET while I got ready to go. I finally found everything and got the kids in the car.

I called Bobby again on the way to my folks house. “I’m not emotionally prepared for a power outage!” I half-sobbed. He wasn’t really as panicked as I was which irritated me. I mean, OBVIOUSLY we were now going to the bottom of the power-outage list and certainly our power was going to be out for at least eight days like everyone else’s! Even Negative Neighbor said so! Didn’t he understand? THIS WAS AN EMERGENCY!!!!!

We got to my parents’ and had dinner. After dinner my brother and I had a couple of phone conversations, trying to figure out what to do with all the food in my freezer, half of which was HIS – we’d been keeping it for days since they were still without power. Finally I got it worked out with my BFF that after Bobby got home, one of us would bring all the food to her house and put it in HER freezer.

I called Bobby again. He was working late which didn’t do much for my panic. I wished he was there with me so we could make a plan. We needed a PLAN! I got a little teary-eyed talking to him when I said, “We don’t even have anything we can eat for breakfast without electricity. One of us is going to have to go out and get some Pop Tarts or something.”

Yes, that’s right, I was crying over our lack of Pop Tarts.

I am not the most emotionally stable peach in the patch.

But anyhoo. After dinner, my mom and I took the kids outside to play. They were super-cute and had a lot of fun. But it was getting late, and Sophie was tired, so we wandered in the house about 7:15. My other brother, the one who doesn’t live a few blocks away, called to say that after eight days, they had JUST gotten power back. I was happy for them but miserable for myself.

“You know,” said my dad, “if you want to know if you have power back, just call your house and see if your machine picks up. If it does then you’re in business.”

I was sure it was hopeless, but I picked up my cell phone and pressed the speed-dial number for home. I listened to the rings – how many rings before our machine picks up? – I couldn’t remember. But then, the most beautiful computerized voice I’ve ever heard said, “Hello. We are unavailable to take your call…”

“It picked up!” I screamed joyfully.

My parents celebrated with me while I called my hubby, my brother, and my BFF and told them the emergency food-saving efforts for the night were canceled. We had ELECTRICITY!

I really couldn’t believe it. I was sooo suuure we were gonna be out for days like everyone else.

I got Sophie in her PJs and got all our stuff together so we could go home. As my dad walked us out to the car, he patted my shoulder. “Relaaaax, girl.” he said.

“Maybe in a few hours,” I said. (What I wanted to say was “Whatever, Dad, you know I’m JUST LIKE YOU.” [Like the old anti-drug commercial from the 80’s, “I learned it by watching you!])

Hopefully Dad, I will learn to chill out like you have by the time I get to be old like you are. 🙂

When we arrived home, the lights were on, Bobby was there, and everything was ALL GOOD. And, happily, I was finally able to calm down (after eating three XL Hershey bars and drinking six Mountain Dews).

Hmm. I MIGHT need to start drinking.

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