There's no place like Sephora...There's no place like Sephora...

Several days ago I went to another big makeup and beauty retail shop that touts itself as a "the store on everyone's lips". I was thinking it would be like another Sephora.

I was sooooo disappointed. Chagrined, really. Crestfallen, if you will.

They had proudly displayed a full array of - are you ready for this? - drugstore makeup!! Now, why would I waste the gas to drive out to this so-called "specialty" beauty store and buy stuff I could buy at Walgreens?! Silly!

Plus none of the workers there seemed even remotely interested in being helpful (it was totally dead in there so they had no excuse) which was highly annoying. They did have a few good non-drugstore brands there, but the mojo there wasn't anything like the energy at Sephora.

But I have to set the emotional and mental stage for you before I tell you about what a relief it was, how absolutely euphoric it felt to set foot today in that mecca, that promised land, that nirvana of nirvanas.

Here's the deal. I've been staying home a lot these days, mostly because:

• work hasn't started up again yet,
• there is a $#!+load of work to be done around here, most of which somehow is stuff only I seem to notice around the house. Curious, that. {*grumble*}
  
• David is working several shifts in a row so I'm on Ben duty (which is sometimes the only fun I'm getting these days), and
• our laundry pile, which I am in charge of, has grown so large I have actually become genuinely afraid of it. I can't put it off any longer. I simply must do it before it gets its own zip code.

Another piece to this puzzle is that I have conscientiously taken off playing the horn since I played my last concert in Breckenridge, and have vowed to myself to wait until Monday to start up again. It was a decision based on the fact that my face had some serious callouses on it by the end of the festival. But the horn is a major expressive outlet for me, and I'm sort of not the same without it. I feel "off" when I've been away from it for too long.

So with all the work that needs to be done around the house swallowing me up and making it very difficult to pry open time for fun, I knew I would explode with household drudgery insanity if I didn't get the hell out for a few hours. I didn't have much time today, because I had to get home for David to be able to bike in to work in the afternoon, but...

I went out to Mayfair, which is hands down the best mall in Milwaukee, and hit my two favorite stores: Sephora, and The Body Shop. I got a shimmery eyeshadow (in Fairy Wings), an eye highlighting pencil, a new lipstick (Beige Star), and some undereye brightener (6am feedings - you do the math) at Sephora, and then got mango and coconut body butters at The Body Shop along with some other skin care products.

I adore retail therapy. After such a disappointing experience with that other beauty store (tsk!), I breathed a contented sigh of relief the moment I walked in. Immediately a Sephora sales associate rushed over to me, headset buzzing (I'm assuming they wear them in case they have...I don't know, a lipstick emergency? A bronzer cleanup on aisle 4?), clad in the uber-chic uniform of a total black outfit and Sephora apron, asking me if I needed any help. I smiled brightly.

"Actually, yes...do you have the Urban Decay line?"

(smiling and rolling her eyes jovially) "Well, of course we do! It's right there (pointing). And our organic skin care regimens are all on the back wall."

I exhaled and felt my entire body relax. Of course they have everything I need! More importantly, they have everything I don't need! I basked in the glow of the bright lights, which somehow, miraculously, don't make you look like the living dead like the ones in so many other stores. (Fluorescent lighting should be outlawed in public places.)

And it was truly an escape into a different world. The lighting, the music, the glamour (yes, that's how they spell it in there - more European or British or something - infinitely more alluring that way, don't you know, dahling). The unspoken but everpresent promise that all of your problems will be solved if you just look gorgeous and smell good...ah yes. I am intimately familiar with such a promise. The efforts of the beauty and fragrance advertising world are not lost on me. Sephora is truly a blissful escape from the sometimes oppressive reality of daily life. Truly, nothing bad can ever happen to you when you're at Sephora.

You go, girl!! To the polls, that is...

Today, August 26th, is the 88th anniversary of women getting the right to vote.

This means that there are women currently on this planet that were alive during a time when it was illegal for them to vote.

This blows my mind.

It boggles me that it hasn't even been 100 years yet that women have had the right to vote.

That's sort of depressing, actually. And inspiring at the same time. I will absolutely be going to the polls this fall! And so should every woman of legal age, no matter who you're voting for.

Put your heart where your brain is

Those of you who've been reading this blog since the Democratic primaries know that I was a huge Hillary supporter from day one. And I still am. I found it near impossible to switch gears to Obama when he won the nomination, and I have been having a devil of a time mustering up enthusiasm for the upcoming fall election because of it.

Which is so odd. I am very much aligned with Obama on pretty much every single issue, and I think he's an amazing man. He is already an incredible role model for the African American population, and that will only be magnified exponentially if he's our next President. I also admire what an airtight campaign he has run and believe that contributed to his huge success. He moved forward with integrity and didn't use the same old "war room" mudslinging tactics that Hillary used, and I think it appealed to the more evolved voter (which is perhaps why he has such a huge young following).

And yet, still, I couldn't get behind him. I think what turned me off, what repelled me so strongly, was all the hype. I have never been one to follow fads or crowds. Call me a "free spirit" if you will, but that's how I've always been. The way he would get crowds all riled up, southern baptist church revival style, without really putting forth any concrete solutions or strategies as to how to fix the issues he got everyone pumped up against/about, really put me off.

Then there's the whole thing about how young he is, and how inexperienced. I have to admit, I was very concerned about that too.

But now that he's announced Biden...I am so relieved. I adore Biden. I have laughed out loud watching him on C-Span, which most of the time is one of the most mindnumbingly boring channels on the planet. When Roberts was getting grilled before his appointment to the Supreme Court, I remember him just getting in the guy's face and telling him off when he was evading questions. I had to admire him. This video personifies what I love about him.

And I think that he complements Obama well. Plus he has loads of foreign policy experience, and he's been around the block. Now that's a team I can get behind. I'm not going to campaign or anything, but now I can go to the polls in November and feel good about who I'm voting for.

For that I am quite relieved.

Sittin' pretty

It's been about a week now that Ben has been consistently sitting up independently of any support! This is exciting for us, of course, because it's a developmental milestone, but he doesn't care about that. For him, it's a whole new perspective. He is now the master of his domain! Well, the master of the 2 foot radius that surrounds him, at least. He can see what he wants and can reach for it.

I love this stage. Because this means now that he can really interact with toys like he hasn't before. I have gotten out the wooden alphabet and number blocks that Dana used as decoration at the Cincinnati baby shower last year and gave to us as a gift. He loves them! What surprises me is just how much fun I'm having, just sitting on the floor playing with him. I build pyramids (both 2d and 3d) with these blocks. He's not really into building or stacking yet, but he very much enjoys knocking over the "buildings" I make. We (okay, I) invented a game, sort of like an improvised version of Jenga, where I see how many blocks I can stack before he knocks them over. I noticed that if you make a small pyramid at the bottom of a single stack (as in, a row of three blocks topped with two blocks, topped with a stack of single blocks) you can get a lot higher than if you just stacked single blocks from the foundation. I assume there's something about the distribution of balance that explains this, but I never took physics, so don't ask me.

We are also getting to the Grabby Stage, sometimes (but not exclusively) accompanied by the Gnawing and Drooling Stage. Anything in his vicinity is fair game. Objects are admired first on their visual appeal, and then appraised as to their gnawability. The evaluation process is fascinating and amusing to watch, except when it's your hair that's being grabbed, pulled, yanked, and eventually masticated and matted down with drool.

But even then it's pretty fun.

The cats love him, but stay a safe distance away from him even when coming close to investigate this strange creature that was smaller than they were when it came home with us 8 months ago and keeps getting bigger and bigger and louder and wetter. We are just loving every single step of this journey called parenthood; it's just such fun and so fascinating.

Changeling returns to Planet Milwaukee

I got so sucked into - and swept up in - mountain life in Breck this summer that I found it very jarring and strange somehow to come back to Wisconsin.

I don't know what it is. Perhaps the perfectly manicured gardens and hanging baskets I got so used to in that affluent ski resort area made the weeds and overgrown gardens in my own yard seem that much more glaring. Or the two-story condo we had to ourselves, complete with balconies off of every room overlooking spacious mountain views, making our tiny 3 bedroom ranch seem rabbit-holish by comparison.

And then there's the humidity. Which I mind far less than I know some people do. What can I say. It does good things for my hair and skin. But it can, in large quantities, make one feel sticky and nasty. There's nothing worse than bumping into a wall on your way down the hall and sticking to it.

But I think the weirdness really comes from having had such a fantastic, restorative and rejuvenating time, and worrying that all the amazing things I got from the change of perspective are somehow attached to the location and will leave me as soon as I move away from them geographically. Having typed that out, it sounds ridiculous, I know. But truly, there's something so powerful about uprooting yourself from your regular habitat and routines and plunking yourself down in an entirely different location for an extended period of time.

Again, perspective.

As I continue to settle in and realize that of course all of the internal change and growth that I experienced this summer is still with me despite the geography of things, I am relaxing a bit. I am still in possession of this very new, fledgling awareness of how my body reacts to certain foods and how clean and wonderful it can feel when I minimize those foods. I still love my new horn and am amazed at how long it took me to come around to the brass horn side of things. (Of course, it didn't help that the first two brass horns I tried weren't good matches for me, but you know.)

Despite the stress of childcare, I had a fantastic summer. This festival is challenging for me, and it was nice to be stretched, to force myself to grow and expand and open up to possibilities I may not have seen if I had just stayed home.

But that's just me. And perhaps it was just this summer. But I do know that I definitely plan to go back to the mountains next summer.

Mountains. Definitely not molehills.

This summer has flown by faster than a greased pig, so much so that I literally haven't had a nanosecond to write about it in here. So here's the Reader's Digest version of things.

Our basement is stabilized - dry and mold-free, and waiting for us to get home next week to choose new carpeting to be installed. Since we are not putting down padding underneath it, we opted for a high quality, thick, high-texture-resiliency type that was within the budget allotted by our insurance. I picked out several neutral (= cat barf camouflaging) colors that I will choose from. (David wanted none of the decision-making with regard to color, so it's all on me. Which is fine.) So that's good.

This is the last week of BMF here in Breckenridge, CO, where I've spent most of July and all of August so far. I can't tell you how much fun I've had, and man, does it make a difference to be at this altitude (9,600 feet elevation) without being pregnant. I had a monster headache the night we arrived, but I popped an Excedrin (gotta love that stuff!) and poof!! Gone. I had a great practice session that night, too. Because our condo is so much closer to the performing arts center than the one I stayed in last year, I've been loving walking to and from rehearsals with my spiffy new lightweight new Thompson Edition case on my back!

It's been a great season: Beethoven's 8th, Pines of Rome, Bernstein "On The Town" and "Fancy Free", Porgy & Bess, an all John Williams concert...and this week, we're doing Corigliano and John Adams!! Does it get any better than this??!! Oh, and for those of you who've known me as a die-hard 8D fan pretty much my whole life, you'd better sit down before you read this...I brought both the Yamadouble and the 8D out this summer, and realized....are you ready for this?...that I prefer my 667D hands down!! Is that a jaw dropper or what?! Listen, nobody was more surprised at this than I was! Since I had just gotten the Yamaha in late March and am required to play a brass horn at work (the 8D is nickel silver and thus has a very different sound that wouldn't blend well at all with the section), I never had the option of choosing before this summer, and I really sat down and compared the two of them. The Yamadouble is so much better in tune, light years easier to play, and the crystalline response and clarity...I just can't get over how much I adore it. It's about time I found a brass horn I liked this much!

Benjamin is doing fabulously, as usual. He sleeps 12 uninterrupted hours at night and still enjoys mid-morning and afternoon naps. (We enjoy his naps too. :D) He is almost ready to sit up on his own; it's a balance thing for him, since his head is so big and he's so lean and long. His legs continue to be strong and hilariously muscular; you should see his little quads and calves! He's not crawling yet, but man does he ever scoot. He can motor around the room on his back, using the back of his head and his legs in this weird crab-like backwards crawl. It's so entertaining. He is no longer breastfeeding, because he also now has two lower teeth which he thought it was uproariously funny to bite me with. (Me: "OWWWWWW!! No bite!!" Ben: "Heee!!" {big grin}) That was the end of nursing for me. Ah well...I can say I breastfed for 7.5 months, and that's pretty good. He's really much more interested in solid foods anyway. Garden Vegetables are his favorite.

This week David's mom is visiting to help take care of Ben and also to have a little vacation; David himself arrives on Thursday morning - yay! - and we drive back to Wisconsin on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday. We'll stop in NE the first night and IA the second. Since we installed a nifty mirror above Ben's car seat, meaning he can see us and communicate with us in transit, he is a champion traveler. It's been a great summer in so many ways, and I'll be very happy to get back to our home, kitties, gardens, and the comfort of everyday Milwaukee life.