Tag Archives: insecurity

The Skin I’m In

So here is another post that falls into the category of ‘most selfish lady alive wastes your time talking about her skin care regime while millions, prob billions, of people suffer with real problems all over the world’.  **SIGH**

The thing is, I am kinda freaking out and have been really distracted for days by a decision I made earlier this week. Let me take you back a couple of weeks…let’s say to The day after my birthday. I took my youngest son to a party for one of his friends.  It was a kid/grown up situation and I love those. I love connecting with new people in a non networking setting. I will always come to your party. Please invite me.

Anyways, when I arrived the hostess told me that her sister and her sister’s six grown children and even some grandchildren were all there. Right away I was thrilled because as a member of six kid family it is so much fun to compare notes about things like giant sock piles and washroom schedules and general chaos. I love when I can make an instant connection with people and I totally did. These folks were LOVELY, and I would love to dive into that more, but right now I am seriously running the risk of straying way off topic, so let me make a potentially long story short (haha, let me try at least)

***UPDATE***This is the longest blog post I have ever written.

I met a beautiful woman who I assumed was one of the six kids but nope, she was their MOTHER. Their insanely youthful, hot mother. So I immediately asked her what her secret was and she told me that she uses a certain skin care line, which I immediately wanted. And lucky me because this stunning woman actually sells these products which are only available through a direct sales situation. She told me about every product she uses and one by one I was sold.  Hook. Line. Sinker.  The enzyme peel. The hydration mist. The serum. The moisturizer. The multi-step cleansing system.

So, I got my hands on a catalog and guess what? All of the products that I just had to have cost a whopping $530.90.  Can I just say that this is more than double the monthly income of a person living in Nepal. It is $200 more than the average Turk makes in a month. I could go on. You get my point. Who in their right mind spends that kind of money on Skin care? Not me.  That would just straight up be fucking stupid.

So I went back to the catalog, I spent hours reading online reviews of the various products, I narrowed my wish list down considerably to only two products worth $79.00. I emailed Mrs. Perfect Dewy Glowing Skin with a great personality to boot (hereafter, Mrs. PDGS with GP), and told her what I wanted. She responded with great news. A March Madness Sale.  This opened a whole new world of opportunity up for me. Two of the products I had taken off my list were dramatically reduced. I needed them. What a crazy insane deal!!!! All of that Hyaluronic Acid and peptides and mist could actually be mine for less than half price!! I could achieve the results of cosmetic injections without actually getting needles stuck into my face! WHAT.

And since I was saving so much on those products I could throw in a few of the others right?  And then… another miracle. Mrs. PDGS with GP offered to place my order with hers for an additional 20% off!! WHAT. Sign. me. up.

So I went back to my original wish list. I ordered it all, all 12 products (I currently use 2. Ain’t nobody got time for that (12! Gah), but that is a different issue all together). $226.00 later (Seriously awesome deal btw)  I am sitting here freaking out. Because right at this moment in our lives spending that kind of money on beauty products is not responsible – not that it is at any other time ( you know, unless it is 20X points day at Shoppers or something).

Because I know my husband is going to be really pissed off and there is going to be an argument. Because it is a slow time for him with his work and we are trying to be really careful so we don’t accumulate debt.  I don’t want to contribute to his stress. Sincerely. So I regret that this is coming.

I know it is being delivered to me today or tomorrow and I know that when it arrives it is time to face the music. I’ll have to listen to myself explain my own frivolity. I haven’t paid for the stuff yet. Because Mrs. PDGS with GP very kindly extended her own discount to me, I have to pay her in cash, but not until I receive the order.

I have been scheming. How can I sneak the cash out of our accounts, that are all joint, without my husband noticing? There is no way to do that, and furthermore, I don’t actually want to do that. I don’t ever want to be sneaky in any way in my marriage or work or friendships or life in general.

In case it sounds like my husband is some kind of controlling dick, that is not true. I am totally scapegoating him here.  It is my own music I have to face. My own weakness. My own vanity.  My own selfishness. My own weakness. Did I already say that one?

The fact is, I am all out of cleanser, 2 days away from needing moisturizer and I use fairly decent products so I would have spent at least half that amount anyways and not had this insane guilt going on.

Look, if all of the product claims are true I will write a follow-up blog and prob start selling them myself, and everyone who knows me will ask if I have had work done and when strangers find out my age they will want to know my secret and my life will be forever changed and I will be so happy that I will have to change the tagline of my blog to something else.

But seriously, when have beauty product claims ever been true? (Tell, me, I need that product).  Prob what happened is that someone totally recruited Mrs. PDGS and GP because she is gorgeous and has perfect skin and they knew that her very own face was worth a million bucks. Prob I am a huge sucker.  Def I am a huge sucker.

I am disappointed in myself. Disappointed because I want to just love the skin I am in and shine from the inside. Disappointed because I spent so much time this week fretting about this. I should have just cancelled my order and I can’t pin down why I didn’t. Is it because I am holding out hope that it works or because I don’t want to feel like an idiot calling this lady to cancel?  Either way it involves me caring about what other people think in a way that I don’t like. It involves me caring what I think in a way I don’t like.

I should have taken that $226 bucks and mailed it to a random person in Nepal or bought food for the food bank or given it to a group sponsoring refugees or bought a teenage girl from a low-income family a prom dress or put it into an RESP or RRSP  or  bought 100 strangers a coffee or…

God I suck. I am going to go read the fine print now and see what the return policy is on all of this stuff.

 

 

 

All That We Need

So when my sister asked me at dinner last night how I spent my birthday, I told her all of the truth.

Spectacular breakfast in bed. I mean really. The door burst open and a pile of balloons filled the room. There was a tray with a beautiful hydrangea, and this cupcake…it had candles, it had a sparkler, it had a giant swirly pile of icing, it was elaborate. The boys were singing.  I am so truly blessed.

Then we went to tour the Princess Margaret Home Lottery Grand Prize Showhome to decide if we wanted to buy a ticket.  The best part about having a ticket is daydreaming that you live in the house and knowing that you just might be able to. It is a spectacular house. I mean, any 3.7 million dollar home is going to be. This particular one was not for us. It had a mini hockey rink in the basement – come off it!! I might be the only Canadian, besides my kids, that don’t even know the rules of the game. Plus, the decor was not to my taste. There were these giant gold statues that looked like Oscar’s doing yoga poses. There were so many useless rooms. It totally grossed our younger son out. He is 9. He said “I think we should leave. This is making me SICK”. Sick because of the excess. Sick because this house was the smallest house in a subdivision. Row upon row of 8, 10, 12 thousand square foot homes. (How come there are so many super rich people? Where did they come from? What are they doing for a living?)

We were just in Mexico where we visited a 2 room school house that would have easily fit in master bathroom of this house. Where we met a family of 17 lovely happy people that live together in small apartment without hot water or an indoor toilet. Where our kids finally realized that all the times we have said “you don’t know how lucky you are!!” it was a real thing that we weren’t making up.

We all agreed that this was not the neighbourhood for us and that we are not the kind of family that wants to live in a mansion. We bought a ticket anyways, because, well, charity. We can just sell the house if we win.

Anyways, all if this is totally beside the point of what I am writing about. Because after telling her all that junk, I told her I started a blog and that I did it because I think I am having a midlife crisis, or maybe just a plain old garden variety crisis. Because I there are things I need (or maybe just want) to change and I need the accountability. Because maybe other people are going through it and this will help us all. Because I have things to say and why not say them to the entire world wide web?

Of course my sister demanded to see it right away and to my horror my mother read over her shoulder. Didn’t think that possibility through when I published the post. They both audibly gasped at the same time. I think it was during the part when I say I was doing drugs. My mother peaced out right then and walked away (So, that is a good sign right?) but my sister read on. At the end she said, it is relatable, but I really think you have much more to say. Then she pointed at my left boob and said “that is the bigger one right?”

Right. And also… I do have more to say. But I am going from the outside in with this. It is a bit safer and maybe easier for me to start on the surface and peel back the layers. Not to diminish the surface…there is a lot that starts there. Body image stuff. Self esteem stuff. How we present ourselves to the world. I, like most people, have a lot of insecurities tied to how I look and how I want to look.

Not 20 minutes ago I impulse bought a product that promises (I know it is a lie, but I can’t stop hoping) to diminish the look of my pores. I have ridiculous gaping craterish pores on my face, and have battled acne on and off since puberty. I always kinda worried about these pores of mine and secretly hoped I was the only one who noticed, but 20 years ago I met a tourist in Toronto (who was here from what country in Africa I can’t recall but one where they do not hold back what they are thinking and tell you what they observe in a really benign and non judgy way) and he studied my face for a while and kindly said “you have very large pores”.  So there you have it. I legit have crazy ass pores. What I wish, and what I hope for, is that I can come to a place where I don’t fucking care. Caring about my pores is not knowing how lucky I am. It is living in a beautiful house but wanting to win a sickening mansion, while 17 lovely people are perfectly happy to sleep three to a hammock and go outside to use the toilet.

Look. Do me a favour. Next time you see me please don’t stare at my pores –  or my boobs for that matter. Just gaze over my shoulder or something.