We Are Going! Mom Kissed the Toilet Good-bye

 You KNOW when you look like a "mom-mess" when your children see you have a dress on and ask, "Where are we going?" Okay...I slacked it. I'm actually jealous when I see now that our dress codes are so lax, even young mother's and teens go to the market in those flannel PJ bottoms. Many times when my children were growing-up, I would don a lightweight dress, especially in hot weather. Jeans and YES, in-style, polyester pants were way too hot and we never, ever had air-conditioning.

I know this sounds odd, but when I would pull-on a dress, the girls would all quietly go in their bedroom and pick-out a dress and put on socks, shoes, and the dressiest dress or even a real gown from the dress-up trunk and if they could reach, even the lipstick from the top counter. "I'm ready, mom!" Me, "Oh yeah...you are going as fancy lady."

 I have had this LOVE-HATE relationship with make-up. I always either wanted to put too much on when I was young and my dad would admonish me harshly.  I don't even have a substitute word for what he really said. No, can't even think typing "code" characters on the computer would represent his dislike for me + make-up. hahahahah  It was, "Take all that off!" "You look ragged! " or You're not going anywhere like that!" I even got the words that I would eventually hate to hear in my life, and really make my hair stand-up Prairie Chicken style, the dreaded, "You get all dolled-up!" I've got to blog about that another day.

This post needs to have a addition: I never added more make-up later, not ever. Hey, Santa Paula is a really small town and had tattling siblings. So, I spent most of my teenage years without make-up, not even lotion. I write this and I'm thinking of one exception. It's when a fad started the mid -1960's and lipstick for young girls became lighter and lighter, to the point we were actually wearing white lipstick. I guess that's not such a shock these days with the black lipstick I seen the past few years. The white lipstick was eventually banned from my big lips. I didn't realize that the white actually made my lips even larger and big lips were NOT in fashion.

Jeanie and Me, There's The White Lips

However, I managed to get around the white lipstick. I wore zinc oxide and that was easy. Zinc oxide was all over our house because we were "beach people" every summer. I thought the white lipstick or Zinc junk made my tan look darker. I look back and ponder how my eyes were warped. Oh, no. Are my eyes warped by fads every few years? Even now?

Lipstick. I may have been in Levis and a flannel shirt at home, but if my child was in the office and I had to rush to the school, I would pull a bush through my hair. I grab all my home children and say to them,  "You have to GO now!" as in "go to the bathroom" and that was "go" even if they didn't even have to "go." Remember dear, careful parents, because this habit of trying to ward-off detours to gas station bathrooms for  them, helped a bunch of grown kids have little bladders. Sorry.

 "Hurry, we have to leave!" Yes, we are all in the bathroom. I glance in the mirror and I'm probably pregnant and pale, and I pull-out and apply the famous dark, rose lipstick, right as I'm peeing the kids. I check my lips, and think, "Ewww, I've put this lipstick on with a putty-knife." That's when I'd grab some toilet paper and blot my lips, just like I watched my mother blot her lipstick. I didn't know I could've used a tissue and certainly it didn't cross-my-mind that a bunch little eyes were watching my lipstick ritual. Oh yeah, I did it every time.

 My lipstick epiphany occurred when came down the hallway and Larin was shaking her finger at Bree saying, "Yes, we are!" "We're leaving!" "Mom kissed the toilet good-bye."