We had a perfectly lovely Thanksgiving holiday. The Coach, the pups and I arrived in GA the Thursday prior to Turkey Day. Our family: Lolo Lindsay, Lindsay’s beau Mike, his daughter Lillian, Lolo’s dog Max, (Nathan couldn’t attend this year) Coach’s dad and his wife Judy all arrived on Tuesday and were able to stay until Saturday. Thank goodness there isn’t one ounce of drama in our family, because we only had fun.
After we picked the fam up at the airport, we stopped at Buccee’s for shits, giggles, and a sandwich. Linds got a group selfie and this weird guy throwing his hands up photobombed us: THREE TIMES!
I wanted to holler at him that I’d just met my long lost family after looking for them for 20 years and he ruined our pic, instead I just stood there with my face squished up, thinking he’d leave.
Cue the Thanksgiving montage:
Me Not Talk Pretty
On Saturday evening, before the last of our family departed we stopped at a little restaurant on the way to the airport; it’s in a small town, near our home that we frequent. As I was walking through the parking lot, I caught the eye of a woman also coming in; she looked at me in surprise:
Suzanne?
Heather?
It was a friend I went to high school with and I’d not seen her in person since maybe 1988 when I styled her hair for her (first) wedding. Years ago, we were Facebook friends, but she was always on and off the FB depending on her mood. The last time I’d been in contact with her, she’d moved from where we grew up on the East Coast, to a town about 40 minutes north of us on the West Coast of Florida.
You know when you run into someone and you’re not in your own town, your own element, it’s always more surprising. Right?
What popped out of my mouth?
Oh My gosh! Hey!
Wait, WHERE AM I?
She was with three other people, so that makes FOUR people who thought I’d lost my marbles and all sense of geography.
I’m such an idiot.
Turns out that she and her husband had just purchased a home in the area, which is pretty cool and more proof that I’m a trend setter.
I told them what ‘hood we purchased our home in.
Heather pointed to the woman with her and said: This is my realtor.
Me: Oh, cool. My Aunt is my realtor. (immediately thinking: WHO CARES?)
Heather’s Realtor: Oh, nice. What is her name?
Me: Oh, you wouldn’t know her, she’s mostly retired, but does stuff for family and friends. (Why did I bring this up to begin with?)
I revisited that conversation no less than forty times in the next 24 hours.
I almost look normal. Right?
Could you spend five days with six visiting family members?
Do you think I’ll ever get over asking those people WHERE AM I?
When I hinted last week at my need to share about my eyebrows, I was pleasantly surprised by how many of you were eager to discuss. (Nicole, I actually belly laughed at your comment) So, I figured that was all I needed to actually write the post.
Let’s Start with My Eyebrow Horror Story.
Picture this: Suz’s first day of 10th grade. I’m about 4’10 and I weigh no more than 80lbs. Awkward turtle with zero wardrobe compared to my peers. My brother Mark tells me as I’m getting ready that I need to clean up my unibrow. (I didn’t have a unibrow, but there were some stray hairs) He handed me a disposable razor and said: Here, use this to clean it up.
I took one swipe down the not.so.middle of my brows which took out the stray hairs and a good portion of my right eyebrow.
IF I COULD TURN BACK TIME.
What a way to start my not.gonna.be.awkward.this.year at school. My friends with straight brothers had no idea the fun I went through with him giving me terrible perms and bad eyebrow advise. I wish there was photographic evidence because I was something to behold for the first few weeks of my sophomore year; I did not have school pics that year.
EVIDENCE OF EYEBROWS A FEW YEARS AFTER RAZOR-GATE
My glamour shot photo from Beauty School. Can you even see my eyebrows with all that eyeshadow? No.you.can’t.
Through the years I did light plucking to keep my brows at bay without making any real damage. I did a lot of careless things as a young woman, but thank goodness I never over-plucked. For a time in my 30’s/40’s I would get my brows waxed just to keep them clean. When I was coming up on fifty I realized that waxing was overkill because my brows didn’t grow that much and all they required was light plucking on my part; no razors thank you very much.
It was shortly after turning fifty when I noticed in photos, I appeared to have little to NO brows. But when I looked in the mirror, it seemed like they were there, as they have always been. But obviously they, unlike my thighs and demeanor were thinning and getting lighter.
I would use tinted gels if we were going out for a special occasion and there would be photographic evidence. I’ve also been taking hair/nail vitamins for quite a while without much fanfare. Recently I invested in Revitalash. I honestly can’t say anything good or bad because I took my NEXT STEP before really giving that a chance.
Taking The Microblading Plunge
I’d been contemplating having Microblading for over a year, and the nail in the eyebrow coffin was when I saw my bestie Kelly a few months ago and she had this done without conferring with me. She lives on the East Coast, so occasionally she does things without letting me know, but still…
Her brows looked great. I did some research and found someone in my area who has been doing it a long time and had over 500 great reviews.
I made my appointment for Microblading and mentally prepared myself for this because the title of this procedure has BLADE in it. Did you notice that part?
Really though, my blade lady numbed the area and I felt nothing. Zilch. Zero pain. She drew the outline of my soon-to-be brows after measuring my crooked ass face. Woo. It looked like a LOT was going to be filled in, but I suppose when I didn’t have much to start with anything looked like a lot.
She made tiny little cuts along the drawn out areas and filled them in with ink. I was told to not have any caffeine, wine, vitamins, etc prior to this; you know, anything good that thinned out my blood. She was actually having a hard time filling in my left brow more than my right and she said that was common; that is the side where our heart is and there is more blood flow. And we all know how EXTRA LARGE my heart is. ♥️
She told me when all is said and done to not get them wet for 3-5 days. Me: Is it three? or is it five? I went with five. Which meant I couldn’t sweat, which meant I couldn’t work-out or walk to the mailbox because each of those activities involve me sweating.
Just before my procedure and right after. I hope you know how much I despise taking photos of myself, especially sans makeup; I did this for you.
What I didn’t fully understand prior was that you go through a few ugly phases while healing and you don’t get the full color/look until six weeks later when you have a touch up appointment.
The first few days I couldn’t pass a mirror without surprising myself. They seemed SO dark, so BIG, so Groucho Marx. Even the Coach kept staring at them…he said he wasn’t, but I know he was.
Do you ever watch The Walking Dead? You know, with all the zombies. Sometimes they’ll be walking around willy nilly and a body part (fingers, leg, arm) just falls off, but they keep going. Well, there were a few days where I would walk by the mirror, take a glance and see part of my brow just hanging there, willy nilly. For real. They were scabbing up and falling off. It was SO hard to not just rip off the dangling bits, but I didn’t want to ruin all that I’d gone through. Within 12 days, they looked pretty normal and I’d gotten used to them. Although, the left one does need more fill-in than the right one; I have an appointment in October to have them touched up.
The procedure is supposed to last 12-24 months depending on your skin type, how much you sweat, etc…so I’m guessing mine will last 4 months. KIDDING, I’d better get two years out of these brows. I was in her chair for just over two hours, but part of that was us talking about it and the numbing part. Overall it was an easy procedure and depending on how long it lasts, I’d probably do it again.
BeforeJust after20 days post-Side eye
My hair also got a little attention between the ‘just after and 20 days’. After my upcoming touch up, I believe my brows will be a little bit darker, but not by much.
I never in my life imagined that I would give my eyebrows a second thought. What a time to be alive.
Do you think I’m crazy? Don’t answer that.
Have you been microbladed? Were you taught to over-pluck your eyebrows and are now eyebrow bald?
I’m dreading that because sports bras are now my life and my preference.
Can we ban underwires for eternity?
***
As I’m writing this there is a set of cardinals frolicking in and around the oak tree outside my office window. Chatting, eating worms. (better not be my butterfly caterpillars!)
One morning, a few weeks ago I was out walking the yard with the dogs while sipping a cup of coffee; the sun had come up and was kind of blinding me as I looked towards the back of our property.
Up in a cypress tree, there was a LOT of chirping and movement; I could see the outline of about 25-30 birds.
Since the sun was in my eyes, at first I couldn’t tell what flavor they were.
Said tree minus birds and blinding sun because I didn’t have my phone on me.
It took me a minute or two and I realized they were ALL cardinals. A whole conclave of them congregating before they started their day.
swoon
I always have several around the yard, but I’ve never seen this many at once.
You know how people like to say that Cardinals represent your loved ones who’ve passed?
Well, that morning a large portion of my Ancestry DNA was visiting me; the whole fam-damily.
*I looked it up after first writing this today and a group of Cardinals is referred to as a college, conclave, radiance or Vatican; when I first wrote this I referred to them as a SLEW of cardinals. I’m so slewpid.*
***
I refer to my critters as ‘pumpkin’ and ‘pumpkin pie’ way too much.
Max, Callie, newly eclosed butterflies.
My mom used to refer to me as her pumpkin when I was a kid; I never got it.
Apparently, now, I’ve GOT IT.
My other overused love phrases are sweetheart, boo-bear, sugar britches, sweet cheeks,
After doing my spellcheck on this post, I realized it’s all over the place directionally, but I’m gonna leave it as is.
Unless you live under a rock, you’ve heard about the 23 & me or the Ancestry.com DNA tests. It’s pretty interesting, isn’t it? A lot of us are connected to people that we don’t know and probably won’t ever know. The girls and I did the ancestry.com DNA tests back in 2018. The Coach decided to NOT do it because the government will have too much information and could frame him for a crime one day. I’m kind of kidding, but kind of not kidding. I was secretly hoping to find an unknown biological sister or brother out there, but damnit to heck, my parents apparently weren’t out there willy nilly having children and not claiming them. Thoughtless. I could use a Sister or Brother.
If you’re new here, you don’t know that I had a brother; Mark. He passed away in 1990 at the age of 25 ( I was 21) from AIDS. You know, before the Medical community could even try to remedy the disease as people were just losing their shit if they thought you might have AIDS and that you could catch it by being in the same room with someone with AIDS. It was horrible for Mark; he’d barely begun his life and it was taken from him.
Suz and Mark at our Dad’s 2nd wedding. Don’t we look thrilled?
So, it would have been nice to have another sibling (I’d prefer a cure) to help with those years of Marks illness, then to have a sibling two years later when my dad suddenly became sick and died within 11 days from cancer or to have one help with the trauma/drama after my father died because of his very new third wife who turned out to be a liar, coke abuser, and just all-around bad person. (I should write a post about accidentally seeing her on Maury Povich spewing lies)
Mark and Dad; approx 1988-89
That was a long way to get around that I wish I had another sibling.
I digress….the point of this post is that, well, I can’t really mention any names to go with the point of this post. Hmmmm….here goes: Someone that I know very well, has found out in the last few years that he/she has a 1/2 sibling. There won’t be anything to come of it, because this half sibling’s Mother’s dying wish was for him to never know his biological father because he was raised by a man who wants to only be known as his father. Get it? But now, since the DNA websites are all the rage, there is another family member that has popped up. A 1st cousin for someone that I might be very close with. This cousin has contacted several members of someone’s family and we pretty much know it to be 100% true, but the biological parent refuses to take the DNA test. (ass!) By the way, both of these people have popped up in Lolo and Lindsay’s DNA as matches.
The Coach and I were discussing how frustrating it must be, to not know your family history. Good, bad or otherwise; my childhood was far from ideal, more dysfunction than function, but at least I know why I am who I am. Do you remember the old saying: You take the good, you take the bad, you take them both and there you have the facts of life, the facts of life. Wait, that’s not what I meant, but that was a great show. {Tootie!}
I suppose you never know what something like that really feels like (not knowing your history) if it’s not your story. I can empathize a lot of feelings, but not that one. On the other hand, shared DNA does not always mean family. Sometimes I wish we’d adopted and added to our family when the girls were younger; that way they would have more siblings and we could be a part of a good adoption story. Like a Two-Fer. Please don’t advise that it’s not too late, because it is. We’re completely spoiled with our freedom of travel now that the kids have flown the nest.
Reading this again, I should divulge that I had a step-sister for many years; her Mom and my Dad were married (the second marriage where Mark and I are so ecstatic up there) for 9 years. She and I are not real close, but we do talk on the phone on occasion and via Facebook; she’s had a train wreck type of life And blames our childhood on her bad decisions. Ummmmm….we lived in the same house girlie for many of our years. She actually appreciates when I give her good advice even though I’m pretty harsh with the truth. She wouldn’t be the one I would call if I needed sisterly advice or help take care of a family member. Luckily for me, I have several friends whom I consider soul sisters; for that, I am blessed. Have any of you taken the test and found some new leaves nuts in your family tree? Was anyone able to follow my rambling mind today?
Busy Bee Suz 