What’s a BIGGER news story than Ebola?

*Updated with proof-of-humiliation link at bottom*

Let me tell you, friends, at age 37 my vanity still runs rampant. I like to have my face on. I do my makeup every morning before taking my son to 7:30 preschool. I’m so vain, I probably think this blog post is about me.

Perhaps the Lord thought I needed a lesson in this matter. I don’t know. But I can really think of NO other reason that a news van would pull up in front of my house at 6:30 on a damp fall Thursday night when I was out with my kids (and their friends who were sleeping over – we’re off school today) when I had my hair in a messy bun, had not even ONCE had lipstick on that day, and for some reason my trusty eyeliner that stays on really well? Had been down around my chin for some time.

I mean, I will tell you, I AM NEVER outside playing with the kids at 6:30 on a weeknight, much less a slightly chilly, wet weeknight. So I guess it was fate when the news van with a statuesque reporter and bearded hipster camera man pulled up to the ONE house where someone was actually OUTSIDE in the city of Dayton.

The reporter explained to me that the City of Dayton had announced it didn’t have much salt for the coming winter and basically we are going to be trapped in our homes all winter and may have to eat each other to survive (maybe I made up that last part.) I declined to be interviewed because I LOOKED A MESS!!!! I explained to her that me not having my makeup and hair done was a MUCH bigger crisis than the whole SALTGATE but she begged and blinked her Barbie-like eyes and while I was thinking “I wonder if those eyelashes are real?” I accidentally said YES.

And then the cheers of four excited children erupted. Joshua and Sophie and their friends Chris and Chloe where FREAKING OUT behind me. So, so excited that OH MY GOSH THE NEWS! IS HERE! IN OUR YARD! WE ARE GOING TO BE ON TV!

SO I answered questions about SALTGATE. Then I pushed Jonah on the swing so they could take footage while the kids acted like circus performers behind me. And then Miss Ohio Reporter 2014 and LEGO Hipster Camera Guy left. And the kids still jumped around hysterically for another 10 minutes about their IMPENDING FAME while I commiserated with a party of one about my impending SHAME. Sigh.

Of course we let them stay up until 10 to watch the news…which started out with “Well Ebola was in Ohio, but first, THE  BIG STORY!”

SALTGATE was the BIG STORY.

WE were the BIG STORY.

My makeup-less face on a brutally large screen was THE BIG STORY.

But in our house, the real big story was four crazy, excited, adorable, cartwheel-turning, ninja-moving kids who were acting like crazy people on camera, and who had like the BEST NIGHT EVER. Bobby and I DIED laughing at their antics, and they were FLYING HIGH after we watched it.

So, I guess my embarrassment was worth it.

BUT.

I’m thinking about getting eyeliner permanently tattooed on my face. That’s probably necessary, right??

(When I first posted this the link to this stellar piece of journalism was not online, but now, here it is, for your viewing pleasure: riiiight here).