Diane Mierzwik

January 31, 2010

I spent the weekend at the San Diego State University Writers Conference. I drove in Friday night, just in time to pick up my registration packet, peer into the no-host bar mixer and head up to my room to hide out.

I tried to get a good night’s sleep, but tried is the verb in that sentence, not get.

On Saturday morning I awoke before daylight, and since I’m used to staying in hotels where if you don’t get in the shower before everyone else, you get to take a cold shower, I jumped in the shower.

With my wet hair wrapped in a towel and deodorant dutifully applied, I proceeded to put in my contacts. I precariously balanced my right contact on the tip of my index finger, squirt in a few drops of solution to grease the process a bit then noticed how along one fourth of the contact, where the shape should have been a soup bowl, not a salad bowl, there was a row of fork tips.

And I thought my eyes hurt the day before because I had been staring at the computer for so long. Huh!

No worries, I was at a writing conference. Perhaps the writing gods were sending me a message. I’d look more writerly in glasses.

But to put on my eye makeup with no contacts meant I had to lean in very close to the mirror. Messy mascara above and below previously mentioned glasses might give me more of the nutty professor look rather than the scholarly serious writer look I was going for.

So close to the mirror, I realized it had been awhile since I’d plucked my eyebrows, and there was one particularly noticeable strand a bit too close to the delicate arch of my left eyebrow. Kinda like a misplaced comma.

Of course, I hadn’t packed tweezers. No amount of staring at the bottom of my quart size travel bag from Southwest was going to make a pair of tweezers appear. I’m no criss angel. You can tell by looking at my poorly tweezed eyebrows. 

Sure, I thought about going down to that handy dandy convenience store located in the hotel lobby. You know the one, not the  Quikymart, more like the Take-you-to-the-cleaners-because-you-pack-so bad mart. But, I think buying a pair of tweezers when you have a perfectly good pair in your other travel bag, in your medicine cabinet at home, in your car (just not the car you drove here) and in your desk drawer at work, is like having an affair. Who needs another man when you have perfectly good one at home?

So I pushed on my glasses. I tried them high on my nose. I tried them low on my nose. Then I found that just right spot – the rims hit just right where the stray eyebrow hair was and hid it.

I almost took my eyeliner pencil and marked the spot so I could remind myself where exactly my glasses should sit when I met with all those important editors and agents for the day, but instead I just pressed the glasses to my nose until an indentation cradled each of the nose pieces and there was no hope of them getting out of the creases.

Then I swiped on some lipstick, without checking my upper lip too closely, I had enough on my face two worry about, and faced the day.

As soon as I got home tonight, I plucked away. I still haven’t de-moustached. I don’t think the lighting should be too severe tomorrow. Besides a little fuzz above the lips hides all those pursing-my-lips-too-much wrinkles.

This week I will pay more attention to my beauty routines, really!