We lied.

This Living Out Loud Thing was a new concept for me, a girl full of secrets, ashamed of being poor as a kid, with a checkered background, too much imagination. You just want to be so normal when you've had a crazy life. When I first met Mr. X, he lied about his age. It was the beginning, you know, of lies and secrets and all of it.

Lying is so powerful, it's so easy, you can slip into it easy as that. Trim a few years off your age, add a few dollar signs to your income, say you're not married.

He did. And then I did, too.

He made it so easy. I don't blame him. I need to tell you that when you're hiding from yourself, you say the untruths. You lie. It takes no encouragement. Finding a willing partner just adds fuel to the fire.

I'm walking a fine line these days, Living Out Loud is so much easier and harder than I expected. Someone emails me, and instead of telling them some bullshit story about... my hair? I tell them, no uncertainty, about the day when I was 13 and alone with angst, painting in my bedroom. Calling in to a radio station, it's a story that involves teenage awkwardness and joy division. Painful honesty. Or I tell ya'll what it feels like every day to be more divorced by the minute. I stop lying about my age, the smoking, and yeah I got four cats what of it? I write in curse words and talk about my love affair with wine, which some of ya'll think is addiction, but I know it's sadness and boredom because to live out loud is to say "I self-medicate, I eat, I drink wine. I am alive." I am not an addict, but I do love a good hearty cabernet with my whine. You can have a love affair with anything.

Hard-won truth.

I do not know who I married. He hid himself from me, the woman who slept beside him for a decade. When a man leaves his wife with no explanation, some bullshit, 'I need to get my creativity back,' it strips you of your value. Because he's saying "Anything would be better than you. You suck the life out of me. I want anything that isn't this." Well, fuck you. I want something better, too.

Advice: Men, if you leave your wives, tell them it was for another woman, a man, a career, a dream. Give a reason. We can explain away a reason, a woman, "Oh, he must like dark-haired women, flat chested, he's gay, God only knows. But he wanted this one other thing..." because lying to me, leaving me like this, made me question every goddamn thing about myself. It stole my self-esteem. And I am well and very pissed off about it.

Living Out Loud is hard. But it's worth it, because if you stop lying ("He left." Do you know how hard it is to say those words? To admit failure? To be flawed?) you can sigh, you can shrug, you can know that one true thing is good enough, that you're honest and it's enough. You have four cats. You drink wine. You fail and pick up the pieces. You love with abandon, honest love. You're hurt, but you're not bitter. Bitter implies a life without truth, and you live out loud. It's harder and yet easier than you ever imagined.

You keep on keeping on.

 

What cosmetics should be used by every woman

Not all girls like to wear makeup - lipstick, foundation, mascara and blush. A few years ago, naturalness became fashionable, so many people prefer to do without makeup or make minimal adjustments to their appearance. However, there are categories of cosmetics that will benefit every woman. These products help maintain a healthy and neat appearance.

Care creams - for women of any age.

Cosmetologists recommend using such products after 25 years. This is the age when the first wrinkles begin to appear, and they won't disappear without proper care. Select a quality line of products can be found on the Internet. The various sites offer a variety of creams that are easy to order from China at an affordable price. By the way, news about Aliexpress I read here. If you go from your computer and not your phone, a preview will be available on this page.

When choosing a cream, it is important to consider the type of skin. Only then be able to buy a product that will be truly effective. Also remember that creams are divided into day and night. Therefore, each of them should be used at a different time.

Hygienic lipstick and lip balms

What cosmetics you should use

These products are indispensable in cold and windy weather. In winter, chapped lips suffer greatly from frosty, cracked lips and a nasty, transparent exfoliation. To avoid such problems, it's enough to use a lip balm. It or hygienic lipstick should be applied just before leaving the house. True, keep in mind that a decorative covering (for example, gloss) over it will be already problematic.

Hair products

This is an absolutely special area of cosmetics, which includes numerous preparations. The most famous of them are masks and balms. The task of such compositions is to make the hair strong, shiny and healthy.

What cosmetics for women to use

Apply cosmetic products, first of all, is worth to those who suffer from dandruff, split ends and similar problems. However, it is recommended to use masks and balms to prevent these problems for all women. So you can avoid many problems with hair in the future.

Have I been bullied online?

No, but have seen it happen, in a way, when a group of rabid fangirls decided to gang up on someone who voiced a small word of dissent about their favorite author. Can you say hyenas in pursuit?

TMI authors/posts?
You have the right to express yourself. If you feel comfortable talking about intimate details–go for it. You risk the chance of making people who read it uncomfortable, and perhaps making them feel like you’re advertising your sex life to make a buck or two, but that’s your choice.

My choice is to read it or not.

 

This just in! It's still hot!

Ah, yes. The second A/C repairman did arrive yesterday, he was not the least bit kissable but at that point, neither was I. Well, not unless you find copious sweat attractive, in which case... come to mama! I got all you need!

Anyway, Mr. FixIt #2 scurried up to the roof, pounded around a bit, then told me to turn on the air.

I did as requested, then walked back outside to get a status report, only to find the repairman packing up.

I sat on the front step, under the terribly misguided assumption that:

A: He was actually here to FIX the air.
B: He would pack up, return and give me an update on the repair status. Possibly come inside and check said air repair status.
C: And also actually FIX the air.

Silly me! As I sat on the step and waited for him to pack up, he got into the van and drove away. Without saying anything. I tried to chase after him, but it was then over 100 degrees outside and the thermometer inside had peaked at the end of the dial, the cats were lifeless, I was dripping sweat, and only hot air was pouring out of the air vents in my house. Plus, let's face it ya'll, I have the body of a writer. Marathon sprints are beyond me.

After several calls to the A/C company that were "accidentally disconnected" on their end, I called the household insurance company and had what can only be described as a Blanche DuBois moment, more reminiscent of the end of the movie, when she's crazy as a bedbug. It didn't take too much incoherent babbling to get the name of a new A/C place, and an assurance from Large Insurance Corp. that they'd fax an emergency work order to A/C Company #2 on the condition that please, ma'am, please stop crying!

Ya'll know. Blanche scares folks.

After all the phone calling, I went to Home Depot with half of Los Angeles and searched for a fan large enough to propel a small aircraft. I SCORED. The new industrial fan scared all the cats at first, but by 3 a.m. they were splayed out in front of it, ears blown back, looking like they were in a G-force WIND TUNNEL. I love my cats so much ... even though we had a touch-and-go situation with a small fur tornado, which I was able to conquer with my knowledge gleaned from hours of Storm Stories. Thank God for teevee. Saved my life.

The new A/C guy -- my third! -- is coming today between 1-4 p.m. There's no way for me to miss more work, and still no way for me to let the cats die. So missing work it is! These cats will thank me when we're all well and back to normal, but living in the storage shed. Plus, we have our industrial fan now. The storage shed will be remarkably well ventilated! I keep telling Roy in my most philisophical voice, "This sweat, too, shall pass." He stares at me with deep understanding. He knows I've lost my damn mind. I think he just meowed at me. It sounded sort of like... Blanche?

Addendum #1 Ya'll know. Pardon all the whining! It's not like I'm dead, just sweaty and that's a pretty regular occurrance. I'm totally fine. Maybe even losing weight! Just sweating! And so easy!

Addendum #2 I do feel bad for the cats, though. And also... um, I feel sort of bad for my neighbors, who have probably decided they live next door to a flesh-eating zombie of the night who was just this morning -- at 4 a.m. -- tying up her tomatoes with leftover bits of Noro and some Red Heart, muttering all the while about how scientific she was, what with her scientific experiment to see if the tomato branches tied with Noro would produce more fruit than those tied with Red Heart. Hi ya'll! Blanche here! Don't mind me! Yarn and tomato experiments! Wanna come over? 

 

Retracting a previous statement

Hey, you know those last two posts? Yeah, I wrote them ahead of time and set them to post in the future. Anyway, remember when I said camping was simplistic? Well, I take it back. While you guys were responding to my posted-from-the-future entries, Jason, Shorty & I were camping in the wilderness, where Mother Nature was being told by yours truly to suck it, as it started raining the precise moment we started to set up our tent, and it stopped for only one day before capping off our much-looked-forward-to-for-MONTHS camping trip by pouring as we took down everything.

There’s nothing like damp sleeping bags, jeans soaked so thoroughly you have to use one hand to hold them up while you stuff sopping heaps of canvas into bags, sitting on a towel on the drive home (while suffering from an out-of-nowhere sinus infection), and having to set up your tent again at home to dry that makes you want to kill everyone in the universe.

But, in trying to see the silver lining (in the miserable, constant rain clouds), we took total advantage of the 24 hours of sunshine to go on plenty of hikes, enjoy a walk into town for ice cream (while Shorty hovered behind us as people walked by, ever the scaredy-dog), and even eat dinner at our favorite outdoor eatery. (They didn’t allow pets, but we ordered our food to go and ate our burgers around the corner on a park bench, while Shorty sniffed our cheese curds cautiously but behaved marvelously well by not begging or mauling us as we half-expected.)

In fact, the highlight of the weekend was Shorty. He is the quintessential camping dog. He hardly barked, only whined if we were out of his sight, and generally experienced doggie heaven for 3 days. (Sunshine! Squirrels to chase! Outdoors! Walks! Sleeping with the humans!) We brought along a portable crate for him to sleep in, but he was being so cute we let him up on our air mattress with us, where he promptly curled up at our feet in a tight ball and resumed snoring. He didn’t move at all during the night and so, the next evening as soon as we got into the tent, we let him clamber up to the head of the mattress, where he tucked himself into another impossibly teeny ball of toasted-just-right-like-a-marshmallow-colored-fur between our two pillows and was asleep, instantly.