Shameless Self(ie) Promotion

Today's prompt for REVERB14 is:

Please post your favorite picture of yourself from 2014, self-portrait or otherwise!

Winner, winner, chicken dinner!

So the picture above is my favorite because of what it represents, more than the picture itself.  This was taken at Brookgreen Gardens on my trip to the beach with my mom.  We had such a fun time and it was fantastically grand to be able to escape from the routine of normal life for a few days.  On this particular day, I got to be surrounded by art and nature and spent hours walking around the grounds shooting the breeze with Mom.  

My mom lives less than an hour away from me and I usually see her at least once a month, but some days I feel...homesick for her.  

Don't get me wrong, I spent a good portion of my life trying to avoid her...sorry Mom...  I think everybody gets real stupid in their teens and early 20s.  No matter how old you get, you're always gonna be a kid in Mom's eyes and when you are on the fringe of adulthood, you kind of get your knickers in a bunch over it.  If you're smart, you eventually realize (if you had a good Mom like me anyway) that Mom was right about a lot of things, and some days all you want is for her to treat you like a kid again and have everything be OK, even if it's only for a little while.

It was nice to get to escape daily life and run away with her to the beach Thelma and Louise style...minus the whole cliff at the end thing...and to do whatever came into our minds to do.  I think we both wished we could have had another day...or month or two...at the beach just doing our thing.

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I have to confess that the first time I looked at the prompt for Reverb14 today, I apparently didn't look very closely and I thought it said the picture had to be a selfie...I had just woken up and still had zombie brain...don't judge me too harshly for my inability to understand words first thing in the morning...  

So I smoothed down my crazy hair, made sure I didn't have any eyeball boogers and snapped a couple pictures...the best of which was this one:

Who is that sexy gal?

I was feeling really amazed at how great I looked first thing in the morning...like a darn movie star I am!  Then I realized my phone had a feature called "Beauty Face" on it...which automatically photo shops you into a better person.  At first I thought it just made the camera focus on your face...in fact, I only understood what it did after I turned the feature up all the way and it basically photo-shopped my eyebrows out of existence...which, for the record is not a good look for me...  So, for posterity's sake, I turned the feature off and snapped another:

Still better than I thought it was gonna be...

I kind of think my face could look like the first picture if I understood how makeup worked...but since I don't, I'm stuck with the second one...meh, whatever, I don't have to look at it...

Actually, I am wearing some mascara and possibly a little bit of eye shadow in those pictures, residual from yesterday, which was my 11th anniversary (Happy Anniversary to us...eleven whole years of managing not to murder each other...in my eyes the whole 'not murdering each other' thing is the secret to a successful marriage)...  Like I said I don't really understand how to do the makeup thing, but I will occasionally (once a year) pull it out and try...  Mascara, eye shadow, lip gloss...that's the extent of my effort.  I also take that special occasion to blow dry my hair...  I just don't normally take the time to do that stuff.

The older I get, and perhaps the more I learn to accept myself, the more I think about taking the time to learn all that girly stuff.  Not for vanity's sake...not really...I like the lines around my eyes and the other weird little nuances that time and living have added...

More for the fact that I finally feel like I can.  

Sometimes, when I'm at my little sister Gretchen's house, I go into her bathroom and look at all the cool girly stuff she has.   And when I see all those beauty products and what she can do with them, I think it's only right for her to highlight her glorious features...to be proud of her beauty.  It only recently occurred to me that I should be proud of my own.

I mean, I might not win any contests, but I have yet to make anybody's eyes bleed...

I've never really thought of myself as pretty...it's still not the first thing that comes to mind if I were going to describe the good things about myself.  I'd tell you I am funny and smart and a hard worker...and probably a thousand other things before it would ever cross my mind to say 'pretty'.  

But, in my way, I am pretty.  

Beautiful.  Glorious.  Breathtaking.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, right?  So maybe I see myself in a different light these days, but for whatever reason, I'm starting to see it.  And I kind of want to celebrate that achievement...with makeup... 

So maybe I quit waiting for a special occasion to highlight my own glorious features...and remember that I can celebrate myself any time I feel like it.