I am always on the lookout for fantastic people, places and things to share with you and in my travels and my day to day I come across a lot! “Ooooh! Sparkly things!….” Sound familiar? Yeah.
So, when I decided to bring on a couple more guest bloggers to share their bright and shiny corners of the world with you I had my work cut out for me.
My goal is to highlight lovely things that have “Curly Girl” written all over them. Delights of design, decoration, story telling, and just plain things and people we love!
I hope you enjoy them as much as I do and welcome them here with open arms
I would like to introduce you to one of the funniest, most down to earth women I know…that I have never actually met in real life. I discovered Beckey through her husband, who is one of the geniuses that worked tirelessly on the first 8 years of the Curly Girl website (and set up this blog for me so it is virtually Leigh-proof). She has a blog that manages to be real, hip, touching and hilarious all at the same time. It's like managing to be sexy and funny. At the same time. Very rare and pretty much impossible to fake.
When I was younger, my cousin Katie (who is 5 years older than me, rendering her automatically extremely cool) used to have her high school friends over to the house when we were visiting. They were all hair, and makeup and Bon Jovi and gossip…and not having a sister of my own, were a window into a version of Sweet Valley High that I had no other access to. At some point I would get busted following them around and Katie would yell: “LEIGH! Stop staring! It's ruuuuude. And close your mouth. Gross.”
If I ever saw Beckey Brumfield in real life, I think I would get yelled at for staring. Even so, she has graciously agreed to write a little column here for you and me. Just periodic stories from that sweet spot that she so effortlessly manages to capture. Please welcome her!
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NAIR
I always had a unibrow. My junior high yearbook photo was a terrifying snapshot of adolescent horror. Scrunchie and permed hair aside, I had a nasty unibrow and the makings of a faint mustache. All the boys in my class were envious. If I would have known mustaches were making such a comeback then, I might have become the very first hipster.
I can’t find a photo.
DARN.
When I was about 12, I remember going to Target with my mom. Going to Target with my mom is always exciting because my mom shops Target like it's her job. She is a Target ninja. It's an impressive greatness that I can only hope to aspire to one day.
As soon as we’d walk in the door, she shove her cart directly over to the snack corner, and buy a popcorn and a Coke. Because you need your energy to shop all 42 isles of Target, she’d say. I’d get a blue Icee and we’d both snack on popcorn and cheers our sugary drinks together. I’d awkwardly hint at needing a box of Always with dry-weave overnight maximum absorbency for heavy flow pads while she would be comparing prices on generic shampoo.
I remember going down the razor isle, and I saw a pink bottle of Nair that promised to remove hair without pain or using a razor. I immediately thought that I would use it on my face to get rid of my mustache and unibrow. I begged my mom to buy it, and she did, under one condition: that I would only use it on my legs.
I agreed.
Later that day, I ran up to my bathroom and slapped that stuff all over my face. I dotted it above my lip, around my eyebrows, inside my nose. I even noticed a rogue chin hair, so I slapped it over there too. No stone unturned.
I waited the allotted time.
Tick tock.
I reorganized the bathroom cabinets.
Because idle hands are the devil’s playground.
Plus this was before the advent of iPhones and I forgot to bring my copy of Seventeen Magazine into the bathroom. There was no way that I would be stepping foot outside of the bathroom until all my Nair was cleaned off. I couldn’t let my mom know that I was Naring my face.
Time was up, I washed my face.
The cool water felt nice…because my face WAS ON FIRE!
It burned so bad. I figured it was just part of the process, a little burning is a small price to pay for velvety smooth, hair-free skin.
Apparently the burning did not come standard. That special sensation was reserved just for me (it probably had something to do with the fact that I used it on my face, even though it was formulated for legs). I dried off my face and looked in the mirror and saw that I was red, blotchy and blistering!!
My upper lip was a red hot mess, and around my eyebrows there were blisters.
My mom knocked on the door and asked why I was in there so long.
“Ugh…I’m pooping!” I lied.
“Okay, well you need to come down for dinner.”
CRAP.
I grabbed a bottle of CoverGirl foundation and rubbed in into my face in it. I smeared it around, but no matter how much I used, the blisters and redness would not budge.
I patted my face down with powder.
My face took on a cakey appearance, like when you smear a cake with frosting and then dust it in cocoa powder. My face looked like that, except minus the sweetness and the celebration, because the pink blisters managed to surface through the CoverGirl. They gently rose out of the powder and began to meekly ooze clear puss.
I patted my skin and decided it was time to leave the bathroom.
I went downstairs.
My mom saw me, and exclaimed, “WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED TO YOU?!”
I shrugged my shoulders and looked at the ground.
I’m pretty sure my mom realized that I used the Nair on my face. She’s one smart cookie. But she never asked me any more questions about it.
And that was fine. Because my face was punishment enough.
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Beckey Brumfield
is a mom of three small children, which means she's tired most days and her diet is mainly comprised of abandoned peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and the broken gold fish crackers that no one wants.
Her special skills include run-on sentences, picking her child's boogers, and over-sharing.
Although it doesn't seem like it, Beckey actually has a degree in English/Writing from Biola University, but most of the time she has no idea how to write, because she never really paid attention in class.
She has no formal training in motherhood, but is figuring that out one day at a time.
Beckey also writes for her website at http://hippobrigade.com
