A sweet friend told me the other day that my skin was looking fantastic. Who doesn't like to receive a compliment like that out of the blue? Since this sweetie is in the market for some new skincare ideas, I have a little secret to share.
This summer my skin decided to switch sides and start batting for the other team, if that sports analogy makes any sense. I've been breaking out on my forehead, my neck, my chin: it has been a regular solar system on my face lately. Since I'm obnoxiously pale, this will not fly.
I blame it on the weather first and foremost, as well as trying out some new products. I thought that I'd try the yes-to-carrots line since I had heard some good things about them and they're au natural. I really wanted so much to like them! I tried so hard because they make such adorable products with amazing phrases and clever directions on the bottles. It was not meant to be because my skin freaked out on me.
It has literally taken months to get my nice skin back and I'm still working on it. I got my first facial (love) and got some good tips from the esthetician and I've added toning and moisturizing to my cleansing. I never knew I actually had dry skin...whoops. During my facial they used a fantastic machine by Clarisonic (from the makers of the sonicare toothbrush). The Clarisonic machines get regular cleansers deeper into your pores (6X better make-up removal) and it feels lovely!
Luckily, there are a few versions that you can get at Sephora and you can use any cleanser with the Clarisonic.
Obviously, I rushed directly to Sephora and got the Mia in a bright sunshiny yellow, because washing your face should be fun when you have to do it so much.
It was $149, but they just reduced the price to $119. That might seem like a lot of mulah, but it is so worth it! My face is softer, has a more even tone, and it has cleared up a ton of the smaller bumps, as well as a lot of blackheads (arch nemesis). I'm not even using it every day and I've noticed a huge difference and I'm only using Cetaphil. It's waterproof so I can use it in the shower, which is my favorite place to wash my face.
The absolute best part is that I didn't have any menstrual breakouts on my face this cycle, which is normally the worst time for my face. My body did compensate with some zits on my ear and right under my hairline, but there were no landing pads on my face, so I'll take it.
Come to think of it, I can't think of any new breakouts on my face since I've been using it almost daily.
Well, it felt good to get all that Austen-ranting off of my chest, but it you don't care two winks about my dearest Jane, then we've also been up to some Summer DIY.
I know that I've shown you my Laundry Closet before and some of the organization I've gotten up to, but we made a new and fabulous addition that I think you'll like.
Because our "twins" are front loaders having them on the ground was no bueno! Mr. S is 6'5" so if it was hurting my back, you know it was hurting his to have to bend down to switch laundry. For some reason our house is set up with the washing attachments on the right and the doors to our appliances were opening into the middle. Since this closet sits on a hallway it took up a lot of space and to switch the laundry because we'd have to go around the doors.
Pedestals for front-loaders are almost the price of new appliances: atleast, $200 for each one. I'm sorry, but we are not made of money. So...off to the internet I went!
A lot of the laundry raisers with tutorials online are not very attractive, to be quite honest. I know it's just going to be put in a closet, but I still want it to look somewhat professional. It wasn't looking good until I found this tutorial from the author of Show and Tell.
My handsome honey got to work and it took him 2 weekends and about $150 for all the supplies. I helped by painting it. We also flipped the sides they were on.
The lettering and clothespins are brought to you by my fancy splurge for this project: a Silhouette Vinyl/Paper cutter. I'm so in love with this machine and I've gone a little label-crazy in other parts of the house. The baskets are from Crate and Barrel (online only).
Most of the credit does go to Mr. S because he did all the heavy lifting with the help of his dad.
I also chopped off my hair today. It was down to below my chest and it
was just getting in the way of everyone in the house. S would even get
stuck in it while getting out of bed in the morning and that is not a
peaceful way for me to wake up.
Over the summer, I was staying with my bestie and we finished off a bottle or two of wine while watching the BBC version of Pride and Prejudice. Needless to say, it was a fantastic evening. Her flatmate, a self-described viking, asked me: "What's deal was with chicks and this movie?" He just didn't get it. My answer was less than stellar--deer in the headlights comes to mind. I was drunk and it never occurs to me that everyone isn't Apeshit for Austen like I am. To me it hardly bears explaining, it just is, like breathing: obviously.
I devoted the majority of my studies to Romantic Literature. Austen falls right before this genre started, but a lot of teachers still include her. I avoided Dickens in college (mistake) and took every class that offered any of Austen's books. Since everyone in my classes was also into Austen (especially my All Austen class), I only ran into one person in college (also a guy) who wasn't into Austen. How my professor, Prof. Peter Graham, who has written TEXTBOOKS on Austen didn't fly across the room to throttle this gentleman in the face...I've never quite known except that he is a gentleman of Austenesque standing. Long story short, it is very rare that I find someone who doesn't get "it" since most of my peer group waxes euphoric about Jane. I guess I shouldn't be surpirsed, the Bronte sisters really didn't like Jane Austen. I like both Austen and the Brontes, so I'm excited to read an Austen Spin-off where Lord Byron turned her into a vampire and Charlotte Bronte is her vampire archenemy through the ages. (Are you really surprised that storyline exists with all the spin-offs and vampire books popping up? There is a market for everyone.)
Anyway: So, what is the deal with chicks and this lady, Jane Austen?
Allow me to break down what I think attracts women to Pride and Prejudice and then Austen in general.
Since Pride and Prejudice is the most universally popular/viewed/read for school it only makes sense that there are a lot of different types of P&P fans. Is P&P my favorite? No. That distinction goes to Persuasion, Austen's last book. However, there is a lot of great character development and gooshy love-stuff in there. In fact, P&P was what originally did "it" for me. I read Sense and Sensibility in high school and loved it (I'm a bit of an Eleanor), but it wasn't until I watched P&P on my freshmen exam sickbed that I really got "it."
So what's the deal?
Yum...Darcy--The Darcy groupies are probably the classic example of the followers of P&P. This has everything to do with the BBC mini-series and Colin Firth. I'll admit it: Darcy will always be Colin Firth in my mind, even when I'm re-reading the book. I've never met a lady that didn't love a tall, dark, and handsome, brooding sort of guy. It's the mystery and the knight in shining armor bullshit. Austen's world is stocked full with social boundaries: not touching, dressing from head to toe, and all out sexual repression. So when Darcy takes a dip in the lake on his way back to Pemberley, all the while fighting with the inner turmoil over Elizabeth's rejection and chastisement...well, it's basically wet, t-shirt Regency porn. True story.
Pair Darcy with his foil Wickham and girls go nuts. We all have that guy in our past who is our Wickham, the one we thought was great or "the one" and it turns out that he was a dead-beat. So we love to watch Lizzy figure out Wickham isn't all he's cracked up to be, because we feel vindicated.
The Crazy Mother-- If you made Mrs. Bennet a religious zealot and gave my mother a lace cap they would be the same person. "Why aren't you maried yet?" or "Why aren't you better at x, y, z" are pretty much my daily bread and butter. Austen is in true form in P&P with relate-able characters, which brings me to number four:
Relate-able characters--Most women can sympathize with at least one of the Bennet sisters. My Austen prof actually wrote a book comparing the Bennet sisters to Darwin's theories about birth order in the animal kingdom. Brilliant.
Jane: pretty, shy, gets walked over
Elizabeth: considered pretty (but she's no Jane), witty, bookish, daring, and honorable
Mary: homely, misunderstood, blacksheep
Kitty: always outdone by her younger sister
Lydia-rude, impulsive, notorious flirt
The language can be a little obtuse at first, especially if it's your first time reading literature from this period, but as you become more accustomed to the syntax, the language becomes a main point of attraction. Especially the absolutely biting, subtle, and polite way the characters tell each other off. Lady Catherine's visit to Elizabeth at Longbourn is probably my favorite example. It's delightful because if I ever said this to another woman, they probably wouldn't even understand what it meant. Oh it's so delicious!
The costumes are fantastic in the movies and the descriptions are very detailed in the books. You can tell a lot about a person in Austen's world by how they dress as well as their titles. A knowledge of the history of social titles and dress can explain a lot about personalities in the books.
Austen is nothing without her social commentary. She is a subtle wit who takes to task society, women's issues, the education system, and the social ladder. She was a huge champion of education and sense for women. In fact, she was so biting that her sister destroyed a fair chunk of her correspondence after Jane's death to cover up some of the things she said about people. I really wish Cassandra hadn't done that, but I guess she had as much prophetic understanding as her namesake.
Austen also bears the attraction that she died very early. I'd love to see what she would have written if her career had continued, yet at the same time I don't because I fear it might not have been as good. She was a formula writer, which might sound boring, but even though you always know the book is going to end with a wedding, each time you read her novels you're always in agony about whether they really are going to get together in the end. She's very good at delayed gratification in multiple ways, again, it's the sex or lack there of.
Even though she might be "old hat" in a modern world, it is her nuances and woman's intuition about people and situations that continues to draw modern readers to her novels, as well as, her extremely detailed characters that continue to hold our interest and parallel people we know. She reinforces that even 200 years ago, individuals were still yearning for the same things: Love, Happiness, and Social Justice.
Don't you love how this started as a blog post and ended with a conclusion paragraph? Psh, you don't want to read those college essays. 2 years later I still haven't brought myself to read the solid, gold crap I turned in for my seminar class.
Isn't it funny how your life gets in the way of your blog about your life?
I've been doing a heap ton of projects and "fun" reading this summer that the relevancy of updating my blog has completely slipped my mind...and I feel bad to have to go back a few months to go over it all. So in my guilt, I just don't post or I half write posts and never publish them. For instance, I have a magnum opus locked in my arsenal from an occasion where a viking asked me why girls love Pride and Prejudice. Really, it should probably be turned into an article or a formal essay, but I might just pull out the stops for you all. Really, it's amazingly nerdy.
While I've been whiling away the remnants of my summer and being blissfully ignorant of my blog, I was suddenly blindsided by a request that I update my blog...from someone I would not in a million years have thought knew my blog existed. Every time this happens, I'm always taken aback and very grateful, but always guilty that my blog is lacking so much of its "muchness."
So my wonderful friends, a brilliant idea popped into my head...concerning facebook. I'm sure a lot of you are like me and live on the FB most of the time. I have a few friends who can't figure out how to comment using blogger (tutorial needed?) and will tell me something on facebook. Many folks may not have me in a blog-feed so they aren't aware that I've updated.
There are so many reasons and they all boil down to "I need a page to be able to have another way to communicate with people because I really have no idea who really reads this or cares and I just need to know someone cares...damn it"
So...go add Ms. Domestique on facebook (two of you already jumped the gun on that--Thank you!).
I'm really looking forward to being able to link to post on there without everyone I knew in highschool stalking me (pseudonyms are fantastic things), being able to conduct polls/gauge how the website is functioning, and you won't miss posts. I've changed the homepage of Ms. Domestique to only show one post at a time since I tend to, shall we say, ramble and that makes me have to scroll to find my favorite blogs at the bottom. Since I also tend to post a lot all at once, with only one post showing something is going to fall through the cracks. I know, I need a posting schedule, but sometimes you can't control when the muse descends.
So please do me the honor, nay the condescension of your "like" on Facebook and I will try to be more interesting.
