"Welcome to the Fellowship of Educated Men and Women"

This was written over a few days, so I am sorry if some things are muddled. I am obviously gloriously hypo (this is the mood I get into that pisses Dianthus, one of the moderators on CrazyBoards, for those of you who may lurk there: My p-doc would like to keep me right at this spot forever, but a little more than half the time, I tip into a mixed episode, and there is an argument about whether hypo-manias contribute to kindling. Mixed episodes definitely do. So either my p-doc or Dianthus could have a point

As you can imagine, Harvard graduation is a pretty ritualized and pompous affair. One of the things that is a tradition is that they have a set phrase to confer a degree, en masse, to each particular school. The sentence that conferred my A.B., and all the A.B.s in recent memory (I can't find a start date, but my dad, uncles, and cousins all had the same phrase): "Welcome to the Fellowship of Educated Men and Women." Snotty, no? But once again, I have entered another educational fellowship. Snarf.

Well Friday started off with a bang. I didn't sleep. at. all. Then at 5:45, half an hour before his alarm, DH had a short but violent seizure. I forbade his leaving the house, so he telecommuted. That was good, he was able to get some work done, but also nap a lot. After a seizure, all the energy is just sucked out of him.

I have to "come out" and admit that I am on a spending jag, as if you couldn't tell. The amounts per item have gone up. I really shouldn't seek out and enjoy this kind of "high," but it is really hard to self-report when you feel really good, even if you know that you should be really careful. DH usually says something if he thinks things are getting out of control, and he isn't thrilled with my spending at the moment. I am admittedly a very indulged wife, and I feel less guilty about it than I should, because it makes DH happy to indulge me. I think I am pushing it. I have a bunch of stuff that was "approved" by him still coming, so hopefully, anticipation of those items (BEDDING! WHOOHOOO!) that will help me keep from spending, I hope.

I also have purchased Sister2's birthday present, which was the regular "birthday amount," so while I am early, I thought she would really like what I got her I went to Eni-Thing's Fall Festival, which is like Etsy on wheels. I bought too much. I bought a hooded scarf for Sister2. She lives in Dallas, which gets chilly, but not freezing. She is quite fashionable (she is in the buying dept. for Neiman-Marcus, so duh), and I think she will like it, she likes to be different. I have been good at guessing for her in the past, even though I suck at choosing clothes personally.:



BUT, from the same woman who made the hooded scarf, I bought a gorgeous, unusual scarf, which is very heavy, intricate grey lace on one side, lined with brown silk on the other; there is a slot in the silk through which you slip the other end of the scarf, and you can wear it that way, or pull it through again, so you have more of a tie knot. I wore it Sunday, more on that in a bit. It cost the most I have ever paid for that kind of accessory, like lower end Anthropologie. But so pretty, it would have cost much more at Anthropologie if they sold it. I bought a pad for dollar, so that was okay. I bought a sympathy card for the Kass family, now I have to think of what to write. I think I will get a breast cancer stamp in her honor. There were two other things I really had to combat myself over. One was an Alice painting I knew DH would hate, and would refuse to hang. The other was this purse, which while inexpensive for a purse, was nonetheless too much money. Jen, I think you would like this, the leather is much nicer than the picture looks, and the closure is something like Lucite not cheapo plastic.



I bought a sparkly bracelet and earrings because they were shiiineee. Sometimes I really don't like that organic brain syndromes are so uniform. Shiiineeee. I wore both of them Saturday, and they looked cute with the Calla Lilly pendant that I bought at the OCF. Sorry, I am afraid this picture is huge:



I also bought a necklace I have been coveting, and to which I already have a matching pair of earrings, all by Kerfuffle (can't find a website). I bought the center one; the chain is in three parts, one that is like coins, one that is just chain, and one that is crystals (the crystals are hidden by the far right one. The pendant has a rose, I am very into roses at the moment.




That isn't all. I bought a pair of hairpins, one has the Mad Hatter hat, and the other the Cheshire cat. I mean come on, I HAD to buy them, I'll wear them, as well as my ceramic Alice pendant when we stay at the Jabberwock Inn in Monterey. Hey, in case you didn't know, I made reservations to celebrate our 10th anniversary at the B&B at which we stayed for our honeymoon, and then our first anniversary as well, but more on that later.

Okay, I am editing, and I just read "I HAD to buy them..." I am just scary manic-y right now. I don't get really full blown manias, but I can get mild ones. I am blowing off adrenaline, ugh (blowing out air, kind of like a canine adrenaline shake). BAD.

I am still going. I also bought a pair of little turtle earrings, but I bought them because they were pretty stones that really didn't look much like turtles (if they had been OBVIOUS I wouldn't have liked them).

And Ladies, she also plans expenditures into the future: We celebrate our 10th anniversary July 21, 2011. We had a super short (2 days), but super luxurious honeymoon, and we stayed at the Jabberwock Inn, which fit in with our Mad Hatter's Tea Party wedding theme, perfectly. Then my parents gave us two nights the next year at the same place as a first anniversary gift. Although they had helped pay for the wedding, that was kind of our official wedding gift from them. July seems far off, but I was alarmed to see that July was already filling up; the weekends before and after our anniversary were full. BUT, if I had us stay the night before and the night of our anniversary, we could stay in any room we wanted. Both times we have stayed in the past, we have stayed in the Toves, and of course, I chose that room again.



Here I am in the room's "Secret Garden," on our honeymoon:



Not that I am looking forward to it or anything. Fortunately, it doesn't need to be paid until we check out, and DH wanted to do this too, so we are budgeting for it. We had wanted to go to Hawaii for our 5th, then I had knee surgery instead. We then planned to do it the 10th, but we didn't expect DH to get laid off. We also talked about Australia. Right now, we are shooting for Australia for my 50th birthday. Less than 3 years away. Faint.

Okay, so this weekend was totally a blast. I really had to drag myself out of bed on Saturday morning, because I had just taken a 2 hour nap for all of Friday, and then I got about 5 hours on Saturday morning. I wanted to leave the house to give myself time to get good and lost. DH had set the Nuvi to "gas saving," which meant I took a meandering, hour and 15 minute drive to downtown Oakland. It was interesting, but it took forever. I was still there before check-in started, because I am always early to everything, no matter how lost I get, because I leave so much time to get thoroughly lost. Over-planning. I hate it, but my p-doc doesn't feel it is a pathology. NJ pointed out it is my coping mechanism, and it clearly is. but it is very anxiety inducing, because my mind is always running through contingencies. I catch myself planning magically, sometimes, "If I do this, then that good event will surely follow, so that I can do/have this desired thing." My p-doc says I need to be really mindful of that kind of thinking, using the word "mindful" in a very specific, OCD context.

Augh, tangents much? But this is both my natural style, and exacerbated by the hypo. Anyway, I was early, but the school bookstore was one block over, and I went there to buy our required books. Which we did not touch, the entire weekend. But I know I will use them. I also bought a "Yes on Prop 19" t-shirt in green on black, with a CA bear in silhouette, Fuck Medicann, they really are drumming up fear needlessly, I support the proposition. I was relieved to find out that the position of the school is to support 19. I support Medicann's overall mission, but I think their politics reeks of profit motive. Ha, reek is an apt term for the Cannabis debate.



We checked in starting at about 9:20, and they gave us a binder for class, a DVD, a CD or DVD (don't know which yet), in addition to the temporary student ID, which gave us access to the school and the Student Union. More on the Student Union in a bit. Then they sent us upstairs, to poke around the grow room while they were setting up our classroom. There were plants at all stages of development, including vegetative plants, grown purely for clones, and that never flower because they aren't really allowed to. I noticed they watered the plants less than we had, or at any rate, they let the leaves wilt a bit, which I learned about later.

I won't go into detail, because I really want to, which I know would be deadly. The Saturday syllabus started with politic & history, which I mostly knew. Then legal, with a really good criminal defense attorney. I learned a ton, and most of the people there therefore learned more than they could absorb. I was the only attorney, I found out, so if I was learning stuff, a lot of stuff flew right over peoples' heads (and I could tell from questions, a lot of it did). I asked a question about conspiracy, because apparently, I could be charged with conspiracy for being a member of a collective: I wanted to know what the "act in furtherance" of committing a crime would be, and he said the DA never got further than charges (i.e., they don't meet all the elements for "criminal conspiracy.") it is pure harassment.

I have to remember to email him about Terry Stops.

Then lunch. I ate in the little school cafe, had half a B.L.A.T. sandwich, put the other half in my trunk (it was chilly). Then I went upstairs, and looked over my notes, because I am the nerdiest nerd of the nerdlets. I was told about the student union, but I for some reason didn't head over on Saturday. I was the only person there that "looked over my notes," I was the only one geeky enough to think to do something like that. Law school, it has beaten me into submission. I may have sucked at exams, but boy did I study. I knew I could medicate at the Student Union, but I didn't feel like it, and I was afraid I would get too sleepy, which happened even without pot, just from eating. Some of the people from out of state were totally wowed by the fact that people were openly using. I found out the next day it was something like a "Buyers Club," San Francisco style, which we do not have in the South Bay at. all.

Anyway, then we had a half hour of Civics. A really shitty half hour, where we didn't learn anything remotely having to do with Civics. I have no idea what they think the word "Civics" mean, they seemed to think it had to do with personal conduct. We actually had covered some Civics in the Politics segment, but geez. I actually liked the woman who taught that when she taught a different segment, but that was awful. And I truly adore Civics. I fucking taught Civics. Then for the next three hours, we had horticulture lecture and horticulture lab. I have tons of information from both sessions, but it was VERY dry. That was when it was hard to stay awake.

That was it for the day, and I over-ruled the GPS receiver, and found 880S as fast as I could. It was still heavier traffic than I expected from a Saturday evening, but it was SO much faster. So I had DH reprogram the Nuvi to go "fastest route." I realized that the Prius actually conserved gas better driving the opposite way of the standard engine, so it was actually using less gas to drive on the freeway all the way. Anyway, DH was still feeling wonky from the previous day's seizure, so I just had the other half of my BLAT and some oatmeal (I now always have a pot of steel cut oats in the fridge, since I found that overnight method. I am eating oatmeal 4 or 5 times a week, I figure that can't be that unhealthy. And it is very filling.

I was energized and exhausted at the same time. As little sleep as I have gotten in the previous 72 hours, I am still having trouble settling down. Of course, that is partially my mood, but I also know this feeling from previous activism trainings. God, I love grassroots activism, I had TOTALLY forgotten how amazing it feels.

So I forgot to take pictures of my clothes either day this weekend, and I have pictures of earlier things to post, but that can be a later jumping-off point. Saturday, I wore my new green mandarin-collared 3/4 sleeve cotton under a very simple but very nice black long sleeved cotton sweater, with those rolled sleeve ends and neck. I wore my black boots with the buckles that actually fit my calves, my sparkly bracelet and earrings, and my calla lily pendant. And jeans. Even with a sweater, it was COLD in th classroom, so today I wore a white LL Bean (!!) mandarin color placket front long-sleeved blouse (I was goin' Old Skool Prep). and an ancient Royal Silk raw silk tweedy coat, that is really warm. It got soaked in the rain today, so off to the dry cleaner it goes, bleah. I also wore my new lace and satin scarf/tie. The predominant color in the blazer was brown, and it was nubby, and has flecks of lots of colors, so the scarf looked really nice with it, if I do say so myself. And jeans. Oh, and my brown pull on boots, with the velvet and tweed trim. Earrings, Silver Tudor Roses, Navajo stone inlay and silver pendant necklace, funky geometric charm bracelet. I looked MAH-velous.

So Things I Learned on Day One: Sit at the end of the row, so you don't have to climb over others when you have to pee every 7.5 minutes. Don't sit next to woman from Florida who wants to talk about real estate. Adults are often shitty students.

Oh, and this was interesting: a classmate started making an Admission Against Interest to a a lawyer as all three of us stood around talking about some legal niceties of the size of grows. The lawyer knew I was a lawyer, and gave me a panicked look, and quickly said, "Well, you really shouldn't talk about this type of information in a public place, you need to call me so we can talk confidentially. And the guy said, "Okay," and then continued to make further admissions. The lawyer gave me another look, and I told him I would email my question, and I got the hell out of there.

Sunday started with methods of ingestion, which was AMAZING. I know that sounds insane, but I learned tons of different ways to prepare cannabis for people with different medical prohibitions. People who can't smoke, can't keep food down, allergic to nuts (lots of nuts in pot cooking), tincture, gel caps.... We learned how to make hash a couple of different ways, as well as keef. I mean, it takes some equipment, but not as much as you would think, and even I could construct some of the equipment myself to make keef, and I am a klutz. The drawback, of course, is you need to start out with large quantities of plant material. Sometimes the buds, sometimes the rest of the plant, but a LOT of it. I think if you are an alum, you pretty much have access to any remains of harvests that they don't want to use, on a first come first serve, but there were several cross-communications during the weekend, so I could have misunderstood that.

Then after a 10 minute break, we had "Cooking with Aunt Sandy." More awesomeness. I actually had already signed up for a class of hers in two weeks, I had already heard great things about her not only from Oaksterdam students, but people at dispensaries who sell her stuff. Cannabinoids are fat soluble, so to release them you need to heat them in butter, or really unhealthy vegetable oil (the fattier, the better). She was hilarious, too. She crowed about how fucked up she had gotten some of her customers, and apparently Cannabis is a staple in her home-cooking. For instance, when she makes bread, right before she sets it to rise, she entirely coats it in ground plant matter (it is like flour), then lets it rise. Then serve with cannabutter. We also talked about ratios and dosages. When she makes cannabutter, at the end there is water that has separated from the chilled butter, and she cooks kraft macaroni in it, and makes mac&cheese with cannabutter. The class I am taking I will be learning how to make cannabutter, how to infuse a turkey with butter, and how to make a kick-ass stuffing. FUN! I decided not to enroll in the second part, Advanced Basic, until next year. My take home test from this weekend is due the Monday after that weekend, and I was TIRED after classes each day, so I decided I would do something more fun, but still useful.

I am surprised at how much edibles interested me. I would never ever be able to cook in my kitchen, the health department would have to set the house on fire to help bring it in compliance with health standards. But they *just* are opening a commercial kitchen on the 3rd floor (this is their new building: First floor, admin, second floor, grow room and classroom, third floor commercial kitchen, and either another classroom or another grow room. I am going to guess grow room, they have other classroom options. But that is something I might want to pursue, since I am assuming I would be working in a regulated kitchen, not my own. I want to be involved in a grow, just to go through the paces. I am pretty sure if cloning is as easy as I think, I should learn that.

So after cooking class, we went to lunch at the Student Union. I am not even sure I am going to go into all that was going on, but basically: A room, you need a student ID, or to be accompanied by a student, and pay 5 dollars, to enter. It is pretty big, divided into pool and foosball, a flatscreen with tables to sit at, eat, and watch, more cocktail-y tables for people who wanted to socialize. And of course, there was cannabis. First of all, they sell it there, and at a slight discount with student id (slight, but I am not complaining). Not in huge quantities, just a few strains, some edibles, and they also sell one strain of hash (a pretty good one, though). Because it was very crowded when I got there, I didn't get the whole picture, but later, we ended up having some classes there (more to come), and I saw the layout: Each table has two community bags of bud (I would guess 3 or 4 grams a bag). Also, two grinders, a water pipe, a hand held vaporizer, a pipe, a Volcano vaporizer bag, lighters, ashtrays, and rolling papers. People just leave little piles of roaches and bowls of pot that they decided they didn't want. I bought a little for the novelty of smoking so socially (in a public place), a White Widow (Indica) /Train Wreck (Sativa) hybrid, hybrids work best for me, and this was lighter than the pure indicas which are for heavy pain.

Anyway, I bought a few grams, and went over to one of the shelves they have for you to "work" on assembling whatever method you use. They use guitar picks as a drug tool, it is funny what people end up commandeering as paraphenalia, So just as I was grinding some up, a man next to me said, "Oh, I'm leaving, and I don't want to take that small an amount, you take it. So that was a bowl. I used a water pipe, which I don't like, but the vaporizers were swamped, because everyone wanted to try a Volcano (a super expensive, but highly coveted model; we would love one someday). I borrowed a lighter. I usually only use them for hash, so I was overwhelmed for a second by the sheer quantity of smoke that came up (do you know smoking a joint is better for your lungs than through a water pipe? You filter cancer fighting cannabinoids with the water!

But my instinct when all the smoke started pouring out was to draw too hard, and water flew up the pipe, a bit got into my mouth, and SOME SPILLED ON MY BEAUTIFUL NEW SCARF! I ran to the bathroom and rinsed it, silk is pretty durable, and I just had to pray about the lace, because I couldn't wear a bong-water scented piece of clothing. Fortunately, it came out, because I got it literally within a minute, it didn't really even have time to saturate. So I looked very suave.

There was a member there who was basically strapped to a wheelchair with a plastic molded frame tied to the back of his chair to keep him upright. He is paralyzed from the chest down (motorcycle accident), and his mother picked them up and moved them to California so he could get Medical Cannabis for his pain and neuropathy, not to mention PTSD. So as a thank you to the Oaksterdam community, she makes a lunch every Sunday, to go with whatever sporting event is on the flat screen. Today it was football, and we had wings and potato salad. So I had one more bowl, and then headed back to class. As I was walking back, I passed a horrible accident: I am not sure how the cars ended up in the positions the did, but one was facing in the wrong direction on the one way street, with it's left bumper deep into a parked car's rear driver side, and another car was dragged into it, and slammed a transformer. So all the power went out, and we weren't allowed to go back to our classroom because of fire codes.

So they quickly divided the Student Union in two, and we had class on one side. Our books, the slides, our notebooks, were al in the other building. So we got pads to take notes on. I was annoyed, I don't like notes from one class scattered. So I literally came home and taped the pages rom the pad into my notebook, in order.

It was weird being in class as people passed joints and paraphenalia back and forth in front of you (we couldn't have done this in the classroom building). I couldn't even smell any pot anymore, and we were warned to take a few minutes after class to make sure we hadn't gotten a little high just from being in the room.

The kicker? You want to smoke a cigarette? Outside with you, that's disgusting. :)

So then we had the "science" class, which was a Dr. (he said what field, I have zoned) who is the US specialist on cannabis, used in court, involved in studies in 5 countries, blah di blah. He taught me a lot about how the FDA works, and how that handicaps cannabis. One of the discussions was the LD50 rate: An LD50 is a dose of a medication that would be lethal in 50% of the population. so of course, you want your LD50 to be a huge number, and as he said, "They finally found the lethal dose for a rat was dropping a 25 Kilo bale of pot on it from a height of several feet." I knew this. Then one guy started in on the psychosis/cannabis connection. Cannabis finds schizophrenia and bipolar illness by precipitating first psychoses in people who would almost certainly have had another psychotic within a few years. This consensus is held WIDELY among p-docs, There are lots of reasons they may not want their patient using cannabis, but MJ doesn't create psychoses in an otherwise neurotypical person.

This man insisted that his friends had been very heavy smokers, quit to lower their tolerance (to save money), and then when they started smoking again a few months later, they became psychotic, and it had to be the pot, and his mother was a p-doc in the NV prison system, so she knows. A prison psychiatrist, how prestigious (oh, I am a bitch). So *I* said, "My dad is a psychopharmacologist, and he finds that a lot of his schizophrenic and bipolar patients self medicate with pot. AS WITH ANY PSYCHIATRIC DRUG, stopping and starting it can ruin its effectiveness, or even cause paradoxical reactions. This is not uncommon. The Dr. lecturing agreed with me, but the other guy was like, "Well, that's not what my mother says." I get all snotty and bitchy internally, and want to say things like, "Okay, lets get my Harvard and Yale educated, world renowned research, clinician, and forensic psychiatrist, and have him debate your mom, who works in Nevada's prison system. Please. In the meantime, I'll sell tickets.

After the science discussion, we had a brief fund-raising and advocacy class. My problem is that I only feel comfortable asking for money for a cause face to face with the person, I don't like phone calls or mailings. But I've done it, I'll do it again.

I feel so energized and excited. I feel the way I did after every HIV education training clinic, every political strategy discussion, oh my god, what have I been doing for the last 10 years? Well, 9, to be totally fair.

I am sure there is more, but I am starting to tire, it will take me years to proof this, before I post it. So I am wrapping up.

Lush Lust, Fear of Makeup, and what makes a girly-girl, Part the Second

So while I could rant and rave some more about Lush, I have decided to restrain myself for the moment, and move onto other topics. See, I didn't even link to their site.

As I said earlier, this blog was a response to nakedjen's series on makeup that she wrote to participate in a project by Rabbit Write. It made me think about how makeup has played different roles in my life at different times. In Junior High, it was about rebellion and exploring sexuality. In High School, it was de rigeur, I didn't even think about it. I didn't care if people saw me without makeup, but my routine was to wear it.

In college, I continued to wear it, more or less. I started to suffer my first depression my freshman year of college. Makeup became a little more erratic during those periods. And I went through extremes. At one point, I spent over $100 buying makeup at the Coop, allowing a middle aged, over made-up woman convince me to buy everything from moisturizer to powder, as if it were soup to nuts. I was probably a little hypo manic, but of course, I had no clue about those things in those days. $100 was a lot of money for me. It was technically a month's allowance (although I can genuinely say this was ridiculously low: Even the students receiving full scholarships were given more spending money than that). I worked under the table, because my parents had some arrangement with their taxes to help pay my tuition. But it wasn't much. But usually I just wore eye liner, and mascara, and maybe some blusher. I did that pretty consistently through the age of 25.

Then I got terribly sick, and almost died of a systemic infection while I was teaching at a boarding school, and they wouldn't give me the necessary time off to recover (a long story). I struggled to get through the final semester, one during which I already knew I had been laid off. So I was looking for work, weak from illness, and becoming clinically depressed (I was already under treatment at that point). At that point, I stopped wearing makeup for about three years. I had to start wearing it again when I began working clinics at law school, there is just a certain standard attire that attorneys wear, and you don't want to attract attention to yourself, when your client should be the focus.

In spite of living in San Francisco during law school, a city in which there seems to be an ordinance requiring women to wear lipstick, I never started to wear it. Most women wore it because it was protective against the wind in SF, which chapped their lips. Carmex was another big item, the men tended to use that. But I found I unconsciously chewed lipstick, Carmex, chapstick, whatever, off my lips. So between dampening them and chewing on them, lipstick made it much, much worse. Nonetheless, I am one of those people whose smile splits their lips into a bloody mess during part of every year. The most I wear is a touch of stain (as in, I put on a little lipstick, then blot my lips like crazy so there is no sticky feeling).

It was around this time, that I began to feel a little clownish in makeup. I would see pictures of me, and my cheeks looked insanely red, instead, of highlighted. My eye makeup would smear, and create dark circles of mascara and eyeliner around the rim of my eyes. I also began to rub my eyes more, because of allergies. This meant I was getting makeup in my eyes, and irritating the hell out of them. At this point, I tried switching from Clinique (which was what everyone I knew wore), to Origins, which touted itself has a natural, hypo-allergenic, alternative makeup. But I didn't like their narrow range of colors (this was when they first appeared), and wearing it actually seemed to make things worse.

So I rededicated myself to just doing my eyes, with an occasional touch of blusher for special occasions, although I began to hate it so much, I soon stopped wearing it at all. I began to realize that my two straight sisters, who were very fashion conscious, seemed to have somehow magically acquired make-up skills I had not. I still had the awkward hand of a 13 year-old, whereas makeup enhanced their looks, without being obvious. I have no idea where they learned such things. My mother never wore make-up, and as a rather simple-minded feminist, didn't approve of our wearing it. Don't get me wrong, I am a rabid feminist, but there are some people whose grasp of the movement is so rudimentary, it is almost parochial.

But my sisters had more girlfriends in high school than I did. Our prep school went co-ed 4 years before I began to attend, so girls made up just 20% of the student body. By the time my youngest sisters were attending, it was more like 40%. I enjoyed being in a very "male" school. I wasn't precocious sexually, so while I was interested in boys, I wasn't really interested in sexual relationships. I played Dungeons & Dragons, Ultimate Frisbee, and hung out with the Theater Geeks, who at that point were still largely male. Yet in spite of our shared interest in theater, the guys and I did not swap makeup tips. I had no one who could teach me how to wear it, so I largely imitated what I saw the other teenage girls do. I remember candy flavored Bonne Belle lip gloss, blech. But I used it. And Charlie perfume. It was what everyone else at my school wore. What a cacophony of scents that must have been.

When I went to France at 17, and accidentally stumbled on a French cologne that just smelled amazing on me, Courreges En Bleu (the "in" is a bastardization for Americans), I considered myself kind of avant garde for wearing it. A real French scent! I wore it for years. Anyway, my sisters gave me a few tips about how to do my eyes, and I can now do kind of a "daily wear" look that is acceptable, and a mildly more sophisticated party look.

Wow, this is so not interesting. But I have gone this far.

I continued to wear makeup for work throughout most of my adult life, until I was about 36. At that point, I met DH. He wasn't interested in makeup, and like a lot of guys, insisted I wore it for other women, and not for men. Not that I think his premise was entirely wrong. But I genuinely felt it made me more attractive, period, it wasn't truly directed at either gender. I wore as much makeup for my copious number of gay friends as I did on dates. Although come to think of it, my gay male friends approved of when I put myself together particularly well, and made a big fuss over me. I always was told I looked "amazing" when I dressed for club events. I remember the New Year's before I met DH, I bought a brown velvet short-sleeved, A-line shift. I was at my thinnest ever as an adult (a side effect of Depakote, although it usually makes people gain weight). I had a fresh haircut, from my fabulous stylist, who next I am in Pittsburgh, I should probably go see for old times' sake: he did my hair for my wedding. I actually not only used product on my hair, something I do maybe once ever 6 months, for once it actually came out perfectly. I had some sparkly jewelry, and hair pins. I was one of the few straight people at the New Year's party, but I got a ton of attention.

I met DH two months later. I still did a lot of volunteer work in the GLBT community, especially with syringe exchange and as a youth chaperone for our GLBTQ youth group at the Pittsburgh GLCC. But I wasn't as involved in the social life as I had been. A few months later, I was out of work, but engaged. I started only wearing makeup for special occasions, but I felt less and less skilled at it.

For our wedding, I got a lesson from a makeup artist, who was actually supposed to do my makeup on my wedding day. As usual, the schedule went to hell, so I cancelled, and decided to do it myself by memory. I remember I bought a special foundation that my sister actually made me stop and buy on my way from the red eye between SFO and PIT (with a stopover in Charlotte, ugh). Clarins, of some sort. I have a funny memory, it is kind of steel trap. I remember incidents in my friends lives, and mention them, and they say they had entirely forgotten about that, until I mentioned it.

My wedding was really the last time I wore makeup with any regularity. Over the years, I had accumulated a rather large supply of makeup, and as gross as it is, I didn't know any better, and used it on the occasions I did get dressed up. It looked horrible. Of course. I started working with dogs, the first job where makeup was actually inappropriate. I threw out all of my makeup, and didn't wear any again until my sister's wedding in 2006. My sister, the fashion maven, the good looking one, a VP of Buying at Neiman Marcus. Also, she was getting married in Florence (where she did an exchange year, she is fluent in Italian), and was paying for our hotel, and half our airfare, making it a trip to Europe for what it would have cost to go to a US wedding. It was the first semi-formal evening wedding I had ever been to, as well.

At this point, I was no longer thin. I felt big and coarse. I had a farmer's tan from working in the Sun with dogs. I knew I had no eye for what looked good on me, which is why this very sister flew out to Pittsburgh to go dress shopping for my wedding: she was the only family member who could guess what would flatter me. But that was not an option this time, she was a little busy planning her overseas wedding, and my dress was probably not the highest priority. NakedJen to the rescue! She not only helped me pick out an appropriate dress, she made sure I got shoes that would work with it, and lent me her evening wrap.

I also felt like I had to wear makeup for this. My sister's friends were all very appearance oriented (not that they are jerks to others about it, but it matters to them how they look). I knew people would be wearing designer dresses, and have their hair up, and everything. So I decided I had to get some makeup, and I had to get my nails done. I got acrylics for the first time ever (which was an experiment that lasted three months, what a waste of time). The cool thing is my nails really show up in the pictures of my pointing to features at Stonehenge. That was about the only thing that was cool, although I received lots of compliments. I imitated Sister3's makeup, so I didn't feel too bad. Sister3, Sister2, Sister1, and myself:



So I thought that was the last of the makeup for a while. I threw out a lot of stuff.

But as often happens as bipolar people age, the type of episodes, and the frequency with which I was having them, was increasing. For the first time I started having mixed episodes, which even people who experience psychoses say is the single most miserable type of mood episode to have. I now have those about three times a year, my last really bad one was in May/June. In addition, as I swung towards a mixed episode, I often passed through a period of hypo mania. Sometimes I stop at hypo mania, sometimes I will go on to have a minor mania, but the point is, my illness took a sharp turn in the spring of 2006.

Along with hypo mania (and mania) comes flamboyance, and wasteful spending on things that seem ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY FOR SURVIVAL at the time you buy them. Things like purses, and glass ornaments, and (I admit it) costume jewelry, and shoes. I have been lucky in that I have only gotten myself into financial trouble once, it was from a mix of my mood disorder and hospital bills (this was that awful year, when I was 25), and I pulled myself out of the financial hole bit by bit, and then DH helped me get entirely back on track. At one point, the FDIC wouldn't allow me to have a bank account, because I had bounced so many checks. The symptoms of bipolar illness are not just physical.

During one of the episodes I have had recently, I bought some makeup at Costco: Their Kirkland Brand Borghese Mineral Make Up kit, and mascara. I liked it, but I didn't wear it too often. I wasn't happy with my skin, and while I do believe that the mineral makeup is safer for my skin, I don't believe it has any curative properties, the way many claim it does. Also, I didn't really have any nice eyeliner. I tried the Kirkland version of ProActiv, but while it did work to an extent, it dried out my skin, and I couldn't find the balance between pimply and flaky. I just didn't like to look at my face.

Then, in spite of DH's unemployment (he was unemployed for 10 months, and I only worked for three months of that time, very part-time, earning very little), he told me to go with NakedJen back to the Oregon Country Fair for the second time in a row. The OCF is the best time evah. It is music, and magic, and costumes, and food, and performances, and crafts, and art, and just fun. It has stretched my boundaries both years I have gone. I have come back floating on a cloud both times as well. Last year I went with DH, this year I went on my own, and met NJ and her friend D in Veneta (which I finally learned to pronounce correctly this year).

I had beyond hinted that I wanted to go. I had basically oozed desire to go to the Fair all year long. When he got laid off in October, there was a little voice in the back of my head that said, "Surely he will be working in time for the OCF, right?" Awful of me, but true. When he told me to just go, and not worry about it, I was ecstatic. I was also in the middle of a rather bad episode, that seemed to teeter between hypo mania and a mixed state. I was frenetic, and I wanted to buy things. The Fair is about festive dress, and while I had had some clothes last year, I new I had to add to my "fairy" wardrobe. Fortunately, by sheer happenstance, the best place to go shopping for this kind of thing is vintage and thrift stores, or the monetary damage would have been pretty bad. I shopped and shopped. I started to buy makeup for the fair, as well. Eyeliner, eyeshadow, glitter, mascara. And I began to practice. I decided no one was here to see me, except for DH, and I just told him I was practicing with makeup, and some of it was going to look awful, and I was going to take it off right after I put it on, to try again, so he wouldn't have to suffer through any particular look for long. He was surprised I was so concerned about what he thought. I can be kind of defensive about things I don't feel confident about sometimes (do I really need two "abouts" in that sentence? Hmmm).

So I practiced. Every night. And because I was hypo, I caked it on, and looked like I belonged in the Cirque de Soleil (which by the way, would have been a totally appropriate look for the OCF, but was not what I was after). I wore makeup on the first day of the fair, and I wasn't thrilled with it. But it all melted off my face anyway, in the unbelievable heat and humidity of that day. After that, I stuck to the famous MAC Glitter, spreading it all over my face, hair, overexposed chest, etc. I was complimented all day. I also was wearing my most fun purchase that day, a little bustle over skirt. I had unknowingly brought a black skort, which was just the right length for the bustle. The only picture of me at the Oregon Country Fair:



I came home with a new interest in makeup. I started to wear it just a bit more. Especially eye makeup, but I began to wear a bit of the mineral foundation, it was so light. For going out, I started wearing the very pale pink mineral eye shadow, that just had a glisten to it, and grey and purple eyeliner (not at the same time), to go with my green eyes. I put just a dusting of blush on my cheeks, and what I liked was I could rub off a little, so it blended and lightened, and I didn't feel so clown-like.

I still struggled with certain aspects. But I for some reason kept practicing, even after the fair. And then, just about 8 weeks later, I went to Lush, and started cleaning my skin with their products, and suddenly, my skin is really nice. I can wear foundation or not, it looks good. And I don't feel a little bit phony, the way I always used to, when I was made up, with obvious acne, as if I were somehow pretending it wasn't there (I know, that is definitely a weird train of thought, but remember, I'm nuts).

Because I had not really used makeup so regularly in so long, I had things divided up into ziploc bags: Eye makeup in one, lipsticks and gloss in another, blush in another. It was unwieldy and ugly. And then one day I happened across this at a Goodwill:





What caught my eye (as DC can probably guess) is that it has a very similar logo to It's a Girl Thing's shop sign. But I also loved how feminine it was. And Principessa, it was like a cross between a fairy tale and a trip to Italy. So I bought it, and crossed my fingers that my makeup would fit, because it was kind of petite, not full lunchbox sized. In fact, Principessa is a line of cosmetics, and the box was part of a gift set that had been used up (I research the strangest things). Anyway, here it is, with the makeup put away:



So I am back to wearing makeup again. I still feel like I have a bit of a heavy hand, and tend to wipe a lot of color off my face whenever I put it on. But I don't feel like I am freakish. I am a bit hypo/mixed right now, and I am wondering how long this will last.

But it makes me feel really feminine, in a way it never has in and of itself before now. I still am scared of the Cirque du Soleil look creeping up on me, but I feel better when I am wearing it. Clothes are making me feel more feminine, too. It is funny at 47 I am having this sudden urge to enhance my femininity. Or maybe it is totally not funny, maybe it is to be expected, as one way of confronting the next stage of my life as a woman. I am deep in to peri-menopause. Maybe this is my way of countering aging.

Plus ça change, plus c'est la meme chose....