Chapter 109: In My Head

I woke up this morning around 7:45am. It was about 15 minutes after my alarm went off and, I’m not sure what it was exactly, but I was in a bit of a panic. It seemed like the sun was already up and I just had this feeling as if it were the middle of the day already and I had overslept. Even after seeing the time I still felt kind of frantic. I got up and went to the bathroom and brushed my teeth. In general, first thing I do when I wake up is brush my teeth and leave the rest of the morning grooming routine until. Today, though, after brushing my teeth I decided to try out my new Clean & Clear Morning Burst facial cleanser right off the bat. It is specifically designed to help wake you up and energize your skin for the day, which I thought seemed like a silly claim. I couldn’t possibly imagine how a facial cleanser could help wake you up anymore than anything else you put on your face in the morning and rinse of with water. I must say, though, I stand corrected – Clean & Clear Morning Burst facial cleanser is my new best friend! My skin looked so much better than I have ever seen it and I felt really refreshed and energized, just like the bottle said I would! Not to be a complete commercial or anything, but seriously – Clean & Clear Morning Burst facial cleanser is an AMAZING product and everybody needs to go out and get themselves a bottle! It is so worth it!

After that, I sat down to the computer and ate a bowl of Strawberry Frosted Mini-Wheats, which were more delicious than I had expected. I checked my bank account to see if the extra $100 sign-up bonus had been added to my account yet, and found that it had not. They said it would take 7-10 business days after the initial $100 deposit, and it’s technically only been 5, so it still has time. I was keeping my fingers crossed that this wouldn’t be any indication of how long it was going to take to receive my debit card, though, because I have been pretty anxious to get that. I also checked up on a few items on my newest old obsession, Ebay. I had been bidding on a 120-color MAC eyeshadow palette, which I found I had been outbid on. I have also been watching a couple of items, like that Roberto Cavalli shirt I mentioned recently, as well as a Pop Beauty “Day to Play” eyeshadow palette. Those were both still intact. Like I mentioned previously, I have been holding off on making any purchases on Ebay until I receive my debit card but that hasn’t stopped me from looking a lot. I have been searching every designer in the book, on the prowl for something gorgeous. One thing that came as a bit of a surprise to me, that I found kind of exciting was punching in the name Christian Siriano, winner of a season of Project Runway and, even more, a brilliant designer in his own right. I knew he didn’t do Men’s Clothing but I figured I’d see what he does have to offer. What I found was mainly women’s clothing but Ebay had a tag on the side of the page for makeup. It didn’t have a whole lot of items, but it was enough to intrigue me. Apparently, Christian did a line of makeup for Victoria’s Secret – it was really just a 2 shades of lip-gloss and 3 different eyeshadows. I didn’t pay the lip-gloss much attention because I don’t wear it but I was really impressed with the eyeshadows. The shades were Royalty, which is a deep purple, Gilded, which is a dark gold color with flecks of gold glitter in it, and Sandstorm, which is a peach/bronze type color. They were all really gorgeous looking and come in these really adorable gold boxes with “Christian Siriano for VS Cosmetics” engraved on the top. I liked those quite a bit and I checked the Victoria’s Secret site for them and they seem to be discontinued at this point. Again, though, holding off on any further Ebay purchases until the debit card comes.

Speaking of makeup, though, today I wore my new Marc Ecko t-shirt with the black, gray and blue tree design across the front and decided to be a little experimental with makeup to go along with it. As I discussed in one of my previous blogs, I watched a few makeup tutorials on YouTube and learned a few tricks and tips for making eyes appear larger and brighter. One of those tips was using lighter colors and doing eyeliner thinner on the inside and thicker on the outside of the eye. I also saw this video where this adorable little Asian girl did this really cute thing where she did yellow on the inside of the eye, then went with a light shade of green in the center and a darker green on the outside and I kind of wanted to emulate that look, only not in green and yellow because those colors just aren’t really me. Instead, I did pink on the inside of the eye, a pale purple in the middle and blue on the outside. I thought it looked really good, and my blending skills have improved immensely. Blending was never a strong suit for me, but I have been kind of practicing it a bit lately and have gotten pretty good at it. Makeup is a lot of fun to experiment with and I am enjoying experimenting with it a lot. I feel like, in a lot of ways, I am making an art project out of my look. I love looking at it that way. I find that much more inspiring than, “I like to look pretty,” even though that is true, as well.

Last night my Mom text messaged me saying she hadn’t been feeling well all weekend. I felt really bad for her and questioned whether or not she would be coming home in time to go to work today. Well, this morning that question was answered and it was a big NO. She still wasn’t feeling any better and wound up calling in sick today. I told her to text or call me and let me know if she would be coming home in time to pick me up from work at 6pm. I felt really bad for her, but was also concerned with the fact that calling in today left her with enough issues to get a write up this month. Fortunately, this will be her first write up and she is outside of her 90 days now so her job isn’t in any sort of jeopardy. I just can’t imagine what our lives would be like if she were to lose her job. Like I said, though, that isn’t going to happen. They don’t have grounds for it at this point and she is doing really well there. I still really think that she is going to find a better job sometime soon and things will kind of go back to normal and be a little more like they were back in September, before she lost her old job. They would be better now, though, because I would continue paying an even amount of our rent and bills, which I was not doing before, but we would have considerably less stress about money and would be a little more free to shop and splurge a little bit more often and with much less guilt. I miss those days, but I know that we will get them back sooner than later.

I took a cab to work this morning and, luckily, did not get the same creepy guy from Friday morning. My cab driver was a little older woman who barely said two words to me for the entire ride. I was really grateful for that. When I got to work I was feeling like I was looking pretty good. Surely, this was the result of my skin looking so good, my cool makeup look and my new shirt. Whatever it was, it had me in a really good mood this morning and I was feeling pretty upbeat and not overly tired or irritated. When I got in the systems were down and we weren’t really getting any calls, anyway, so I spent the first little bit of the day shooting the shit with a few of my co-workers, having everyone re-telling the story of my traumatic bee incident last week for those who didn’t get to see it firsthand. It wasn’t long before the systems were restored, though, and everyone went back to actually doing work. I spent a little while reading “How To Make Someone Love You Forever In 90 Minutes Or Less,” which I am nearly done with. I feel like this book has really taught me a lot about body language, more than anything else, and ways to make a connection with strangers. It also kind of taught me a lot of ways to use body language to kind of manipulate a bond with others, which I feel will be a very important tool to use in the future. I am pretty anxious to try some of these tricks out, too. Now I just have to figure out a way to get out and meet some new people.

Inspired by this book, I wrote a couple of new songs at work today. I haven’t done much songwriting lately, but I figured combining “How To Make Someone Love You Forever In 90 Minutes Or Less” with elements of “The Secret” would be a good idea. “The Secret” puts a lot of focus on putting yourself in the situation that you want to be in and really feeling the feelings of being in that situation. For me, there is no better way to put myself into a situation than to write a song about it. The first song I wrote was the better of the two, in my opinion, called “Feel.” It is essentially a song about a person who makes you feel good about yourself and like with them at your side you can do or be anything you ever wanted to. This book said something in the very first chapter that I found very profound, fascinating and true – “We don’t fall in love with the person, we fall in love with the way that they make us feel.” That is something that doesn’t really get talked about very often but that I find to be universally true. It needed a song written about it and I think my song does it a good deal of justice. The other song I wrote was called “The Answer Will Be,” and it is basically a song that has a similar theme to that of Michael Buble’s song “Haven’t Met You Yet.” It is basically a song about a person that I have been dreaming of finding and imagining my life with and such, but who I have yet to find. I felt like this one kind of went astray somewhere in the process and I figure it probably has something to do with the fact that, unlike “Feel,” this wasn’t really focused on feeling the feeling of finding that person I am looking for but about being without that person. I wasn’t putting myself in the situation and feeling the feelings of having what I want – I was only describing the situation I am already in and feeling the feelings that I am trying to not feel anymore. Basically, that song was kind of counter-productive. It’s not a terrible song, overall, but it wasn’t serving the purpose that I had set out for it to.

Aside from that, the workday was kind of a bore. I talked to my Mom sometime mid-day and she told me that I should probably try to arrange for another ride home because she wouldn’t be home by then. Later she said she wouldn’t be home tonight, but would be here in time to take me to work in the morning, since she had to be there at the same time and can’t afford to miss another day. I had my sister pick me up and take me home. We wound up having to give my team lead a ride home, as well, and spent much of the ride home talking about random things, mainly about work and how much I hoped my debit card would be in the mail today. She offered to take me somewhere to grab something for dinner, but I said I would be fine to dig up something here at home, although I wasn’t sure what. I was thinking about ordering dinner from somewhere. I figured it would be okay to splurge since I have extra money and it’s not like I do it every day, (like I used to.) I was feeling really hungry when I got home, but was temporarily sidetracked from that when I checked the mail and found that MY DEBIT CARD FINALLY CAME! I came inside and called to activate the card and was kind of overjoyed with the fact that I now have a working card in my wallet. I was still carrying my debit card from my last bank even though it’s been about 3 years since I’ve used it and a credit card that I had stopped using, (and stopped paying on,) right around that same timeframe. I figured now that I have opened a new bank account that I intend to not have the same troubles with, it was time to get rid of those ones. So, I cut them up into 4 pieces each and put them in a little jewelry box in my bedroom. I am considering possibly trying to figure out a way to use them in some sort of artwork. We’ll see how that goes, though. In the meantime, I am now the proud owner of a brand new debit card and, of course, the first thing I thought of was to go online and make a purchase with it.

I spent pretty much the rest of the evening digging through the darkest depths of the internet for something to spend money on. I had to take an extended break to make myself dinner. I had grilled cheese sandwiches and Stove Top stuffing, which I have dubbed the White Trash Dinner. It even gave me a pretty inspired idea to throw a White Trash Dinner Party and serve a meal of odd combinations of things that are stereotypically White Trash meals like Hamburger Helper or any type of boxed dinner items, really. I could even serve boxed wine! It would be hilarious and a lot of fun, I think. Something to think about, I suppose. I also spent a little time watching “RuPaul’s Drag Race,” which was hilarious tonight. I love that show. Most of the night was spent agonizing over what to spend money on, though. I went through various types of clothes, makeup, music, etc., and couldn’t find anything that I was really over-the-top crazy about. That’s not true, but nothing in a price range that I felt comfortable spending at this point. I kept coming back to makeup more than clothes for some reason when suddenly it hit me – the Christian Siriano eyeshadows! I went to look at them again and fell in love with them all over again. I bought all three shades for just a smidge under $30, which is a really good price compared to a lot of other makeup. Plus, it was Christian Siriano’s first foray into the world of cosmetics and the colors he came up with were pretty gorgeous, so I figured it would be a good idea to give them a try. So, I finally found something to purchase and I was really excited about it. I am also contemplating spending a little more money on the Project Runway Season 4 DVD, the season Christian won, because I have never watched a single episode of the show but absolutely love Christian Siriano, so I figured his season would be a good introduction to the show for me. They have them pretty cheap on Ebay, so I may wind up picking that up once I have made a deposit into the bank account. I am pretty excited to receive my Christian Siriano eyeshadows, though. They are pretty gorgeous. For now, though, it is 1am and I simply must be getting to sleep. I am coming really close to nodding off as I write this right now.

One last thing before I go, though. Something else that happened this evening was that the Jason Derulo album leaked to the internet finally. Back in December when I was sitting by the radio for a few days trying to win tickets to meet Adam Lambert, I fell in love with this song I kept hearing all the time, "Whatcha Say" by Jason Derulo and have been anxiously awaiting his album ever since. Well, that album has finally come and I am not let down in the slightest. It isn't my favorite album I've heard so far this year, (that would probably be Katharine McPhee's "Unbroken" or the Alphabeat record, "The Spell," ) but it is a very impressive debut record and I love the sound he works with - it is good old R&B, but with a considerably more pop edge than you get out of most young R&B singers these days. The whole album kind of teeters on the edges of R&B, dance and guitar-based pop. It is a really great record, although I am a tad disappointed with the fact that it is only 10 tracks, (although, so is the Alphabeat album.) Every one of those 10 tracks are awesome, though. My favorites would be "Ridin' Solo," "The Sky's The Limit," "What If," "Love Hangover," "Encore" and, my personal favorite and second single off of the album, "In My Head," which is a song kind of playing out the scenario of what it would be like if a girl were with him instead of the guy she's actually with. It is an awesome song. I love it. I need to go to bed pretty much immediately, though. I am nodding off rapidly.