Chapter 259: Teenage Dream

I am going to try to keep this really short tonight. Why is that? Well, it is not even 10pm yet and I am exhausted. I actually have been all day. You see, the story of today has to begin a little earlier than most of my blogs – it begins last night. You see, as I mentioned while ending last night’s blog, my intention was to go to the Ulta website and do a little shopping with the Ulta gift card that I got from my Mom for my birthday. It was around 11-11:15pm when I finished the blog and I pretty much immediately headed to the website and was sifting through all kinds of stuff. I eventually settled on the Stila Pro Artist Palette, which was on sale for only $19.99. I have developed a bit of an obsession with Stila Cosmetics as of late, honestly – both Stila and Urban Decay have become my obsessions lately. I have given up on my MAC dreams, for the moment, because I can’t afford it half the time and don’t get to the stuffy gross mall where the only MAC store in town is located. Of course, that may change at some point this weekend because my sister and her girlfriend didn’t get me a birthday gift and said that they would take me to the MAC store to pick out something else for myself. So, hopefully I’ll get to do that this weekend, because that would be awesome! Anyway, so I was pretty well done with my shopping around on the Ulta site by just before midnight. I went into the bathroom to do my evening skincare routine, which took about 15 minutes, and had my head on a pillow by 12:15am. I was kind of dicking around on my phone for a while and listening to a shuffle of all four Hannah Montana soundtracks in bed. Unfortunately, that dicking around with my phone lasted until around 1am – not a good thing at all. So, I put my phone down and closed my eyes to try to fall asleep. My mind was kind of all over the place and sleep was clearly not coming anytime soon. Still, I stayed in bed and waited for it. Finally, around 1:50am, I decided to get out of bed long enough to go to the bathroom and smoke a cigarette. By this time it was just after 2am when I got back into bed. It was a little while longer, but not too long, before I actually fell asleep. So, when my alarm went off at 6am, I wasn’t quite ready to get out of bed.

My alarm clock and my phone are about five minutes apart for some reason so when the first one went off I turned it off and laid my head back down. Next thing I knew, it was 7:03am. This is an entire hour later than I usually get up in order to be to work by 8:30am, but now I had to be to work by 8am. I kind of flipped out. So, I did things a little differently than I normally would this morning. In general, when I first wake up I do my morning skincare routine and brush my teeth, then I have coffee, cigarettes and breakfast before heading back into the bathroom to get dressed and do hair and makeup. Because of the time restraints, I switched it up a bit today. I did a bit of prioritizing and decided that, as fucked up as it may sound, I would rather go to work hungry than go to work without makeup. So, as soon as I got out of bed, I grabbed my clothes for the day, went into the bathroom and did my normal skincare routine and brushed my teeth, then immediately got dressed and did my hair and makeup. I really rushed through it this morning, doing my go-to makeup look when I am in a rush, the single shadow Taylor Momsen-inspired look using Gilded Fierce from Christian Siriano for VS Makeup. It is a gorgeous black shadow with lots of gold glitter in it. I also lined my eyes with my Urban Decay Heavy Metal Glitter Liner, in Midnight Cowboy, which is a gorgeous gold glitter color. It was REALLY much more of an evening look but I liked it, anyway. Plus, like I said, it is my quickest, easiest makeup look and I was in a rush. Fortunately, I finished with all of this by 7:35am, so I had time to eat a bowl of cereal and smoke a cigarette or two before it was time to leave for work. I still hadn’t had any caffeine, so I filled my workplace approved spill-proof cup with coffee and rushed out the door.

When I arrived at work, I was seriously out of it. I gulped down my coffee as quickly as I could stand, with some sort of hopes that drinking it faster would cause the caffeine to kick in immediately. Unfortunately, that didn’t work out very well and I basically wound up feeling exhausted all day long. It was kind of interesting because it seemed like everybody at work was in that same place today. It seemed like everybody I talked to had a rough night last night in one way or another and was feeling the effects of it today. It was one of those days that I really had to push myself through. I spent most of the day being quiet and just reading the current book in the Gossip Girl series that I am reading – “Because I’m Worth It.” It is the first of the series that I hadn’t read before. I like it a lot. It is crazy how different the show is from the book series. The characters are completely different and things that wound up being long-term storylines on the show are barely even blips on the radar in the books. The best example of this is the character Chuck Bass, who is one of the main characters on the TV show and one of the series’ biggest draws. In the books, Chuck Bass is a completely one-sided character, nothing more than a complete sleaze ball, and he is very rarely featured in the books. I just think it’s really interesting, the differences between the book and the television series. Fortunately, there was no real drama to speak of at work today, although everybody did seem pretty annoyed with everybody else. Like I said before, though, nobody seemed overly annoyed with me so I don’t really care.

I got a text from my Mom pretty early in the day telling me that the package that was waiting for me at the office from UPS yesterday, the surprising and wonderful gift from my surprising and wonderful friend, Kelly, was from Urban Decay. I felt a little flash of concern and guilt over hearing this because I knew that, whatever it was, if it came from Urban Decay it probably cost her a pretty penny. I am still slightly conflicted on this matter, honestly. I mean, I know that she wouldn’t have bought it and sent it to me if she couldn’t afford it or didn’t actually want to but I still can’t help but feel bad. Still, when I got home and opened the package, I was absolutely thrilled with what I got! It was the brand-spanking new Urban Decay Vegan palette, which they created to celebrate the 30th anniversary of PETA, which is pretty cool. Urban Decay have long prided themselves on being a company that has never done animal testing, and they offer a pretty wide variety of vegan products, (although I’m not entirely sure what makes one eye shadow any more vegan than the rest of them.) So, this palette includes six of Urban Decays vegan eye shadows, including some really gorgeous colors that I am already coming up with all kinds of ideas for using! Actually, as soon as I opened up the palette and got a look at all of the included colors, I immediately came up with the look that I am going to do tomorrow. I won’t spoil it here but I’m pretty sure you can count on seeing pictures of the look on Facebook or Twitter, or maybe even on here, tomorrow. Like I said before, I am completely thrilled with this gift and couldn’t possibly feel more grateful for it. It was really an amazing gesture from my friend Kelly and I couldn’t even begin to explain how much it meant to receive this gift for my birthday this year, when I was feeling so bad about my birthday.

So, I baked up a couple of those Tombstone pizzas for dinner tonight and sat down with my Mom to watch “Big Brother” and eat. After that, we watched yesterday’s episode of “The View,” which featured two women who I found really inspiring. These two women were on opposite ends of the age spectrum but I really found myself incredibly inspired by both of them. The first woman was 18-year old singer/actress, and now fashion designer, Selena Gomez. I just feel like she is such a great example for young girls nowadays because, unlike many of her contemporaries, she has remained nothing less than classy in every move she has made in her career. Plus, she has just launched a clothing line called Dream Out Loud, which is exclusive to K-Mart and features extremely affordable, and extremely adorable, items of clothing that are not only fashionable but also completely appropriate for girls ranging from their teens to their twenties. I just feel like she is, like another favorite artist of mine, Taylor Swift, doing everything right. She has managed to become a huge star and yet remain accessible and relatable to fans of all ages. I adore her. The second woman who inspired me so greatly this evening was 89-year old singer/dancer/actress/living legend, Carl Channing. Carol was on “The View” yesterday to promote a new album she has recorded but, even more, was there to discuss a great passion of hers – her charity work in trying to save the arts programs in public schools across the country. This is a cause that is very near to my heart, as well. Unfortunately, I didn’t take advantage of the arts programs that were available in my school days and I really do feel like I really wasted a lot of my school years because of it. I mean, I was a complete fuck up in school but part of me really thinks that things would have gone very differently for me in school had I actually gotten involved in arts programs. I also am a very firm believer in the importance of cultivating artists in their formative years, like middle school and high school. It is hard to imagine a world where the arts have died out and, particularly in this fame-obsessed world, I think it is really important to help kids develop the skills necessary to move forward in a life that they will feel happy with and passionate about. I also believe that had I been involved in the arts programs when I was in school the natural talents that I have would have been honed much better and I would be in a better position now to be pursuing my destiny. I just feel like school-aged kids should have the option to take part in these things, and that will simply not be the case if these programs are removed from schools. It is a very important issue, as far as I am concerned, and I am really glad to see public figures like Carol Channing and Barry Manilow, (who has been a very outspoken supporter of keeping the arts in schools over the years,) speaking out about the topic and doing what they are able to do to help. It is inspiring and makes me really wonder what I could possibly do to help out in the position that I am in now.

Anyway, it is now 11:15pm, and this blog has wound up much longer than intended, so I should be getting to bed. Oh… I forgot to follow up on something mentioned earlier in this post, though – I had mentioned earlier that I ordered the Stila Pro Artist Palette on Ulta’s website last night. What I failed to mention, though, was the fact that while I was at work today I received an email advising me that the order had been cancelled because the item I had selected was no long available or out of stock or something like that. So, I said, “fuck it,” and have decided that I will be going down to the Ulta store this weekend. There is a different palette from Stila, The Backstage Palette, which just came out, that I actually like a lot better. It is $28, instead of the $19.99 that the other one was, but if I go pick it up in the store I won’t have to factor in shipping and it will still manage to be covered by my gift card. So, I will likely wind up doing that this weekend. I will just have to make sure not to wander around the store too much and just run grab exactly what I need. Anyway, it is late and I need to go to bed. Goodnight.