Making Up is Hard to Do

My first attempt at wearing makeup was for my seventh-grade school picture. I was veeeery heavy-handed with the eyeliner on my lower lids, crazy underaged hooker-style. And unfortunately I was so intent on (poorly) applying my cosmetics that I totally neglected my hair and didn't notice it sticking up, so the resulting photo was pretty much just me looking like a hot mess. (In a magenta-and-teal silk shirt ... aw yeah.)

At the time, though, I was proud of my mad makeup skillz. From that moment on, I was hooked on the stuff. If it made my lips look plumper, my eyes look bigger, my lashes look fuller, or my cheekbones look more sculpted, I snatched it up and slathered it on. I did eventually get better at the application - so much that I became the go-to girl for special occasion makeovers. When I got older, I even sold Mary Kay for a while. And at any given time, you could find at least ten bazillion different beauty products in my makeup bag.*

*Ten bazillion is a rough estimation.

I'm sure my love of makeup is partially due to the fact that I'm the offspring of a woman who is always, I repeat always, in full cosmetic regalia. My mom won't go to the mailbox without her makeup on. It drives me nuts to go shopping with her because after she looks around for a parking space, she sits there for twenty extra minutes while she meticulously lines her lips, fills them in with lipstick, blots, and glosses. And for a long time, I was like that too. Catch me at the store sans face paint? Never. At least not in those days.

But now, I'm au natural more often than not. It isn't that I don't love beauty products - I do. I just don't love my beauty products. Why? Because they look like this. Behold, my actual makeup. My foundation, complete with smudgy mirror and ripped-in-half, why-do-I-even-still-bother-to-use-it sponge:

My eyeliner, broken down to the last nubby bit and missing the smudgy part at the end:

And my eye shadow, which is pretty much obliterated:

It is NO FUN to make yourself up when your cosmetics look like something you picked out of someone's trash, y'all. And why, you ask, does my makeup look like this?

My boys. My rotten, stinking, sticky-fingered boys.

You see, my bathroom is laid out in such a way that there's pretty much only one place I can keep my makeup, and that's in a drawer they can reach. One of their favorite pastimes is going in there while Curtis is on the toilet and "giving him a haircut" with my eyelash curler. That obviously involves rummaging through my makeup drawer (while their father, oblivious in a way that only fathers can be, plays with his iPhone and procrasti-poops until his legs fall asleep). It never fails: I think they're all just back there playing or something and the next thing I know, I'm washing concealer out of my blush brush (the single remaining brush from my now-lost set, that is).

It isn't easy to do a good job applying makeup when every-damn-thing in the drawer is coated with a dusting of crushed black eyeshadow. I literally have to wipe down each thing before I use it, so that I don't end up with shadowy smudges all over my face. Sometimes I get so frustrated and I'm all ...

... in like a really shrieky voice.

I've got to come up with a better solution for storage. And, like, $500 for all new makeup. And maybe some other things for the kids to do during Daddy's toilet time.

Eh. Looks like I'll be using my crappy, crumbly cosmetics for a while.