Yellow Mustard Blog

I work from home and this means I don't have to maintain the same dress code or personal hygiene that most other people consider "normal". And lately, showering has been a hurdle for me. So you can imagine how frequently I put on makeup. The problem is, if I stop putting it on, I will forget how I do it. I was never one of those mini-Mary Kay girls, you know, the ones that could curl their eyelashes at 14 months. Makeup has always required a lot of practice for me; I'm just not very good at putting it on or pulling it off.
In addition to that, I also have the manual dexterity of a gimpy manatee...I'm lucky if I can put on some mascara without gouging out my eye.

And it’s not just that I don't know how to actually APPLY the damn stuff. I also have a face that’s well...challenging. Lots of bumps and valleys and nooks and crannies. I also have a naturally "rosy" complexion, which is a nice way of saying I look like a clown...a clown with severe rosacea. My red face only gets worse when I'm drinking. And inevitably a conversation about my face will begin:

Drunken douchebag: Haha! Oh my god, your face is SO red! Are you blushing?
ME: No, we've been over this a million times. I just have a really red compl-
Drunken douchebag: Hahahahaa, you're BLUSHING! You are EMBARRASSED! Why are you blushing, silly? Do you have a cruuuush?
ME: No, I do not have a crush. The doctors say--
Drunken douchebag: You have a crush!! You like to blush!
ME: Stop it.
Drunk douchebag: You and some dude sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I- *CLANK*
ME: Did everyone see that? I smashed him in the face with this frying pan because he wouldn't shut up about my face. And I'll do it again!! Let that be a lesson to ALL OF YOU!
The other guests nod their heads and cower in fear

...oook, so maybe the conversation doesn't always lead to deadly assault with cookware, but you get my point. It's traumatic, having this kind of complexion. To remedy the situation, I bought this special, expensive green foundation. Yes, I know. I didn't misspell. It's bright frickin green. Allegedly, green is supposed to balance out the red in your face. At least that's what make-up experts say. And by experts saying, I mean what I think I read on the side of a bus as it hurtled past me at 65 miles per hour.

Apparently this kind of "opposite color" theory is for all kinds of areas. You're also supposed to put on "yellow" concealer to balance out the "blue" of your under eye circles. Purple tints will balance out a "yellow, sallow complexion". I am not making this stuff up. It’s so obvious. Slap the opposite color on and your gross facial imperfections will disappear!! I really think the whole thing is a big joke cooked up by make up executives, for the purpose of ridiculing me, lowly and incompetent cosmetic user. I can just picture them now, sitting in their impenetrable Fortress of Lip Gloss and coming up with their latest marketing scheme. Pretty soon they'll be telling people like me to just go out and buy big bottles of finger paint and smear them all over my face. And I will. Just to keep that drunk douchebag from making fun of my red face.

Anyway, I got off on a bit of a tangent there, but even if theoretically this green stuff does balance out my complexion, even after applying, I still end up with a red face. The bottle instructs me to spread the goo on my face with a "light touch" and "blend, blend, blend" until it disappears. Now, I'm the kind of person that can melt microwave-safe tupperware or electrocute myself on battery powered devices, so the concept of "light touch" is lost on me. After about 5 minutes of ramming my fingers into my face, my cheeks look redder than when they started. I've even managed to give myself a little brush burn!! Then out of nowhere that drunk douchebag shows up in my bathroom and starts laughing at me. By the time I'm done bludgeoning him with my hair dryer, my face is beet red and I'm drenched in sweat. What a waste of time!!

I just won't ever be able to grasp this whole make up and grooming thing. This is probably why I have trouble making girl friends, because I don't know the finer points of lip liner or bronzer. Or maybe it's because unlike most girls, who are talking about the latest episode of sex and the city, I'm trying to remember all the words to the Transformers theme song. Out loud.