Christmas? How did it creep up on me? I know how: I’m having so much fun in my work that I don’t notice the days flying by. I meant to give you a few suggestions on what to buy people for Christmas, but I just never got around to it, and you are finished shopping by now, aren’t you? So let me tell you what I’ve been up to.
I have one tip for you from my work this year with Earth911. Don’t trash your
Christmas tree, recycle it. using this community-specific online
network that was founded by the late Chris Warner to make recycling easy and practical. Fourteen years later, Earth 911
is the best online source for an eco-friendly holiday with local
information on recycling everything from Christmas trees to old
electronics.
No excuses. They will tell you how and where to do it. Just go there and search for your zip code and Christmas tree. Next year we will have user-generated information evaluating all these sites, too.
Now let me tell you what I gave myself for Christmas this year, also because of my work. . I’m writing –don’t lauigh– a beauty blog for RealSelf, a site that evaluates anti-aging treatments. What works, what’s a scam, etc. It’s a consumer site. I love the idea of it.
And I know you don’t think of me as lazy, but for the past ten years, since my husband died, I’ve been too lazy to wear makeup. It didn’t matter while I wore glasses, because the glasses WERE my makeup. But then I had cataract surgery and they replaced the lenses in my eyes. No more glasses. (Buppy conveniently ate them the first time I went to dinner without them). Bionic eyes.
So I decided to get permanent makeup, which seemed ideal for a lazy person.
I started with my eyebrows, which had become non-existent, or at least invisible under my glasses. I figured if I had eyebrows, they would function on my face like glasses. They actually do. But this wasn’t simple.
In case you didn’t know it, permanent makeup is tattooing. Yes, you lay on a table while a tattoo artist sticks needles in your eyebrows for two hours. That was not fun. But those came out great. And the person I chose was an expert in blood-borne bacteria, which means she didn’t get me infected. So I moved on to my lips.
Anatomy fans, the lips are a muscle! I didn’t know that until after I lay there for another two hours while she stuck needles in my lips. When I got up, I looked like a cross between a Ubangi (those Africans you saw in National Geographic who put plates in their lips to stretch them out) and Julia Roberts. Only now, three days later, do I look near normal. And I have to go back in a month for another application, because lips do not take color easily.
This cost a total of $750 for both procedures, about the cost of a pair of my Euro-glasses when I used to wear them. This is not the first time I have been tattooed, because a Maori tattoo artist inscribed a symbol for the beginning and end of the universe on my ankle in New Zealand five years ago. Don’t ask.
The jury’s still out on whether the lips are worth it, because the swelling has still not gone down. So I’m making all my public appearances at Christmas parties looking like I’ve taken a beating. And you know me: I have no shame. I wouldn’t think of missing a party because of a "procedure."
So that’s what I’ve been up to. Is this the strangest Christmas letter you have ever received? One personal note: my daughters have forbidden me to write about them, so I can only tell you that they are happy and healthy in Half Moon Bay, living their non-transparent lives. Me and the dogs? We’re all over the web, and Buppy has his own blog. If you have a minute over the holidays, check him out.
May you all have a happy and healthy holiday and a happy new year.
