Make-up Mishaps

A few weeks ago, we found ourselves spending the midnight hours of a Sunday/Monday in the emergency room of All Children's Hospital with our fragile, sick little Miss M.

She'd been coughing and sneezing for a few days, but by that Sunday afternoon before Christmas, she developed a high fever. A few calls back and forth with our pediatrician confirmed our fears. Because she hadn't received her vaccines and was younger than 8 weeks, we had to bring her to the area's foremost pediatric hospital immediately.

(I cringe as I relive the hours of procedures that included needles and spinal taps. A newborn looks especially little when lying on a hospital bed.)

We took the evening's events in stride and praised God for the relatively harmless dianosis of RSV. That is, until two days later, when at the crack of dawn our house phone rang. I heard my husband answer, and his side of the conversation included the question, "So should we just bring her straight to the ER?".

I just looked at him in disbelief as he hung up and relayed the information. Cultures had begun growing on the bloodwork samples they took Sunday evening. They asked us to bring our little one back down to the hospital for additional blood draws.

I found myself making that long drive back down to St. Petersburg only moments after I'd hurriedly packed a diaper bag with a few essentials. When I pulled into the parking lot of the hospital, the brief glance into the rear view mirror stopped me in my tracks.

I looked awful. Dark circles (which I'm prone to even on a good day) encircled my eyes, and I hadn't applied a stitch of make-up in days. My lips and cheeks were pale and colorless, and my hair was a mess.

So, in a decision I'm not proud of in retrospect, I took a moment to groom myself. Smoothing down my hair with one hand, I dug through the diaper bag with the other, only to find a shade of lipstick I vaguely remembered buying but never trying. Good enough. I applied the deep, indulgent shade of red onto my lips and took inventory of my progress.

Fantastic. All I needed to complete my look was a cigarette and some fishnets. But I had no time left to fix myself. My thoughts shifted back to my sweet little sniffly baby in the back seat.

We made it through our second emergency room visit, which ended up as nothing more than a dose of IV antibiotics and another collection of blood (days later, the confirmation came that the first bloodwork had been contaminated - no bacterial infections and a clean bill of health were given).

A few hours later, I found myself pulling back out of the hospital parking lot. As I shifted the car into reverse, I happened to catch a glimpse of myself in that ever-present rear view mirror again and laughed out loud.

I had to hand it to Revlon and their Colorstay collection of products. Because my lipstick hadn't faded one bit. I was almost as pitiful to look upon as my infant daughter, with all those bandaids covering holes in her little hands, thighs, and back.

So, when my blush brush fell out of my makeup bag today while I was driving and landed in my open mug of coffee, I laughed out loud again when my initial thought was to quickly try to salvage it from the hot liquid.

"Oh... yes, as a matter of fact I am trying a new look. Thanks for noticing. I call the cheek color 'Mocha' and the lip shade description is 'Working Girl'! What do you think?"

With all my make-up mishaps, I sure am glad that the Design Girl is in charge of how my blog looks.

Speaking of which... I just ordered up a new look for my blog and can't wait to begin working with Danielle on the details. Keep checking back often, as I plan to incorporate a few new elements in the coming weeks.

(New Year's Resolutions Update: I'm so glad that so many of you resolve to spend more time with Jesus... reading the Bible, praying, seeking Him in your lives this year. I'd love to for us to hold each other accountable. Let me know how I can help you & pray for you!

As for me, I've been following along with the one-year reading plan in my new Bible and am only a day behind. My friend and I will attend our first Weight Watchers meeting tomorrow night, and I attended the preview class for Financial Peace University last night.)