\n\n I spent the weekend watching a televised conference and being so uplifted! I came away with great tips for life, and I guess I was so energized by it that I was able to complete HALF a novel already this week. It’s going to be done in time to get it out to you for Christmas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I can’t wait.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Remember Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure<\/em>? Be excellent to each other, and party on, dudes. Well, the follow-up was Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey<\/em>, an inferior movie, in my opinion. However, its title perfectly mirrors an experience I had this past month…with fake eyelashes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I wrote it down, so that you can shake your head in a mix of horror and pity. It’s raw, it’s real, and it’s got a lot of jumps in verb tense. (Sorries. Lots of sorries for that.) If you’d like to read it, I included it at the end of this newsletter. If not, just politely look away. Maybe if we pretend it didn’t happen, it really didn’t. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Normally I would only tell my family or friends on Facebook about this embarrassing tale, but I\u2019m on a social media fast, so you\u2019re the lucky (?) recipient of this story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n About a month ago, before the ANWA Conference I attended, I decided I need fake eyelashes.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Not sure why I came to this conclusion, since my normal eyelashes are actually one of the features I am okay with on myself. Eyelashes and ankles! Between? Well\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n Before I let myself give it too much thought, I\u2019d texted my hairstylist and she\u2019d slotted me in for the following morning at nine. No backing out now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I go through the nearly two-hour process (which sucked away nearly a whole morning of writing time\u2014a precious commodity since I have kids at home and mornings are my only chance to write) and come out with these holy cow look at her lashes.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n If I\u2019d been in a movie, they would have needed their own line in the credits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I mean, did I like them? Heck, yeah. They looked amazing. I asked my stylist how much I owed her. When she told me, I kept it together, but inside<\/em> I was falling off the tilted table. H-h-h-how much? And h-h-h-how often do I have to redo this? Oh, twice a month? Oh. Oh\u2026okay.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The things we should research, people! The things!<\/p>\n\n\n\n So, I go through life with these awesome lashes. I don\u2019t have to put on mascara. I don\u2019t really even have to wear other makeup or even really do my hair, since they\u2019re the only noticeable feature on my person. I. Am. LashLady.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Until\u2026they begin to trickle out. My stylist warned me this would happen, which is why a fill is necessary after a couple of weeks. I hemmed and hawed about just caving and getting them filled, but we had a sudden household expense, and I realized that many dollars a month was just stupid when I have a kid in college and another teen about ready to need auto insurance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Not happening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So I allowed lash-attrition (lash-trition?) to occur. After another couple of weeks, only the Truly Glued lashes remained. The brave, the strong, the ones that could have doubled as the legs of a black widow spider\u2014which is basically how my eyes looked now. Like I\u2019d killed a few beetles and done some kind of ritual sacrifice involving my eyelids.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Something had to be done. But not something crazy-expensive, but what?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Walgreens drugstore to the rescue. Turns out they have an enormous selection of false eyelashes and glues\u2014from subtle to LashLady made of \u201cfaux mink\u201d (whatever that is. I grew up in the country with neighbors who raised mink, and I saw very little resemblance.) I choose something middle of the road, and what looks like a durable glue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Maybe my first mistake (besides doing this in the first place) was not <\/em>watching the YouTube how-to videos. Instead, I forged ahead. Who needs how-to videos when you\u2019ve got common sense?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ummm\u2026. Forty-five minutes later, I\u2019m sitting on my countertop in my bathroom (a place I\u2019ve never once sat in eighteen years of owning the house), with little tiny balls of black glue all over my clothes, the countertop, the sink, an unlucky hand-towel, the floor. Some even ventured as far as the tub.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Plus, my top and bottom eyelashes are glued together<\/em>. I can\u2019t separate them. I\u2019ll be blind. Forever. And I\u2019m late to take my daughter to school.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At this point, what could I even do? I peeled them off, but now my eyelids were red and swollen\u2014plus they still had the beetle-legs on them from the earlier stylist lashes. At which point I discovered that my natural <\/em>lashes that had been quite nice were bare stubs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Disgust at my vanity gave me some kind of adrenaline-fueled superpower, because I reapplied glue, reapplied thesticker-lashes, and stomped out of my bathroom, swollen eyelids and all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And they didn\u2019t look too bad. Other than the blobs of grey glue mushing them together in some areas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Let\u2019s just say that today, I\u2019m wearing simple mascara on my formerly quite-nice lashes. They may grow back. Fingers crossed. Something about this feels like one of those fairy tales with an obvious moral. However, shouldn’t I come away from this wiser? <\/p>\n\n\n\n Probably, but the truth is, I’m going to buy another set of the faux mink lashes later today. This will not defeat me.<\/p>\n\n I spent the weekend watching a televised conference and being so uplifted! I came away with great tips for life, and I guess I was so energized by it that I was able to complete HALF a novel already this week. It’s going to be done in time to get it out to you for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"bgseo_title":"","bgseo_description":"","bgseo_robots_index":"","bgseo_robots_follow":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2108","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2OUjT-y0","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.authorjennifergriffith.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2108","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.authorjennifergriffith.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.authorjennifergriffith.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.authorjennifergriffith.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.authorjennifergriffith.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2108"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.authorjennifergriffith.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2108\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2109,"href":"https:\/\/www.authorjennifergriffith.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2108\/revisions\/2109"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.authorjennifergriffith.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2108"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.authorjennifergriffith.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2108"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.authorjennifergriffith.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2108"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n\nThe Great Lash-Tastrophe<\/h2>\n\n\n\n