Contouring a path to enlightenment

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George is finally home. After a week of more physical labor than he’s done in a couple years, he’s a little worse for wear. We’re quite the bedraggled pair – he’s broken physically and I have a cat-claw gash in my eyelid that’s swollen up quite nicely. I was concerned people at Kroger would think we beat on each other, but we couldn’t stay home forever, so I jumped on YouTube for some makeup tips about covering eye-gashes, while George ate Ibuprofen for breakfast and groaned a lot.

I kind of considered myself knowledgeable about makeup — I’ve been wearing it for 35 years — but apparently, makeup of today is about 35 light years ahead of anything I fool with. Also, how much time do these people have? Do they ever actually leave the house? After I watched the third “contouring” video, I decided they either don’t leave the house, or they never sleep, because there’s not enough time in the day to contour, sleep, and leave the house.

Not that kind of Contour.Not that kind of Contour.

George was still trying to get his elbows to bend, so I had a few minutes to attempt some of the “contouring” around my swole-up eye. Unfortunately, all the “dabbing, sponging, and gentle upward strokes,” made the gash bleed, so my contouring efforts were somewhat diminished by hemorrhaging. I decided to use green eye shadow, to “blend” the bruising, and ended up looking like my gall bladder had burst. I was attempting to apply enough blush to draw the eye to my cheekbones, and detract from the general “burst gall bladder” pall I had achieved when George stumbled into the bathroom, in search of a heating pad.

I probably need to preface his remarks with this: He very rarely comments on my looks, other than to tell me I’m beautiful. He’s good like that. He doesn’t say much about my makeup or clothes. I’m not sure he notices much about either one of them most of the time. So when he walked in and said, “Why so serious, Batman?” I was a little taken aback.

“Wow. Well. Just to let you know, this is ‘contouring,’ and you should Google it.”

“We had a Contour once, remember? You hit a deer with it.”

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“It’s not that kind of contour. This is a makeup technique to define and highlight.”

“Well it definitely highlights that knot on your eye.”

“I think you should remember your elbows won’t bend and it will be hard for you to defend yourself.”

“The Contour was purple, too, kind of like that stuff you’re smearing on your cheeks. Those are your cheeks, right? You didn’t contour a chin up there, didja? Where’s the heating pad?”

My answer of, “Probably in the fifth circle of hell, where you belong right now,” was drowned out by his muffled screams of pain, as he attempted to keep being Mr. Hilarious and squat down to retrieve the heating pad from the bottom cabinet at the same time. I felt sorry for him and helped him up anyway.

I ditched the contouring idea altogether, and we finally set off for Kroger with the agreement he wouldn’t mention my eye patch and I wouldn’t make him do anything that required bending his knees or elbows too much.

Getting old is hell, ain’t it?

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