I have poor lighting.
The only room in my house with decent lighting is my kitchen. At the moment, I have one broken floor lamp and one standing desk lamp in my bedroom.
What that means is that I have inadequate lighting when putting my makeup on in the morning. I can light one side of my face or the other. So that means that it’s likely half my face will be Casper-like and the other side will be more Las Vegas show girl.
I was going to say whore, but for some reason that made me uncomfortable. I’ll have to think about my reasons why later.
Middle Sister asked me what I wanted for Christmas. At first, I wanted a new casserole dish, but then I decided that a light up makeup mirror would be more useful and less likely to start an oven fire.
She got me exactly what I asked for and half of the mirror works great. The other half? Well, the other half only reflects my paternal grandmother.
Holy fucking hell. If a magnified mirror has not been a part of your morning routine, then you do not want to start that shit at age 50.
I’ve been self-congratulatory on how well I’m holding up. I’m aging like a fucking prom queen. Not many wrinkles, very little facial sagging. I look amazing!
Then I looked at the magnified side of the mirror. The broken side.
I swear, as soon as I saw the face looking back at me, I wanted to light up a filterless Chesterfield, pop open a Weidemann, and look for Fatso, my ugly, partially hairless dog to lick my old lady legs for an hour our so.
Yes, as disturbing as that image is, it is an accurate depiction of my dead paternal grandmother. She was the evil grandmother. My nice grandmother made fudge and these really good coconut cream cheese balls and she never even once hit me with a fly swatter.
I have craters and lines and wrinkles and the skin around my eyes is so crepe-like that I wouldn’t be surprised to see them break out in powdered sugar and whipped cream.
Now I want crepes.
I guess the way to fix this would be to just not look at the magnified side, but I can’t help it. It’s compelling. Kind of like the way you’ll poke at a sore tooth with your tongue. You don’t want to do it, but then you do anyway.
I do appreciate my new makeup mirror. My eyeliner has never been more straight and even.
Really though, my dead grandmother has got to go.
LOL I am laughing so hard at this, but I imagine I’d see something I wouldn’t much care for either. In our badly lit bathroom, I can just see the start of lines around my eyes. BF swears they don’t exist, but I can see those little fuckers. A magnified mirror would probably prove they’ve brought family members along as well.
Yeah, you need to just avoid that at all costs…it was truly horrifying..I’m not even kidding.
[My sister Bee’s kids’ grandmothers were either The Soup Grandma or The Ice Cream Grandma. My mom was The Ice Cream Grandma.]
I’m fortunate in that I cast no reflections in mirrors.
HAHAHAH….that’s fucking perfect. Not casting a reflection. I wish I was a vampire too..without the icky blood drinking.
I imagine magnified mirrors are much like the scales in the doctor’s office – broken or straight up evil.
Yep…that they are. Evil horribly monsters.
Oh, my. I’m staying away from magnifying mirrors forever! Your post had me cracking up though, so thank the magic mirror for that.
You’re welcome..and avoiding the magnified side is the best course of action.
I’ve looked like silent bob my whole life…you’ll get over it.
Hmmm…that’s not so bad. I like Silent Bob. And he’s funny.
The Magnified Side:
I use it to grab ‘hold of those pesky nostril hairs with the needle-nose
pliers and yank ’em out while I’m on Musical Hold.
It’s either that or I’m gonna start looking askance at Vernon the Cat,
who doesn’t much like me to begin with.
That made my eyes water.
I have a little magnified mirror that I use for eyebrow maintenance and chin whisker patrol. I am careful never to hold it far enough away from my face that I can see the entire view. I am fortunate that my bathroom lighting is sufficient for my make-up needs!
yeah, I should have never looked at the full face…
I have one of those mirrors. I never use the magnification side. There’s huge cat in it–I know this because my cat spends a lot of time having staring contests with it.
Ha! Maybe I should get a cat.
I feel your pain. I didn’t get a makeup mirror, oh no, but my guys managed to get me a hair kit with a shitload of brushes, a hair straightener (which I used today which many giggles and very few cuss words), and a hand-held mirror. I haven’t used a handheld mirror in years, partially due to the fact that I really don’t want to check out places I can’t see naturally. But now that I have one, I fully imagine that’s going to happen sometime in 2014. And they’re gonna get kicked when it happens. They won’t know why, but they’ll feel the pain anyway.
I use a hair straightener and have no problems with it…but I never see the back of my hair..I figure if I can’t see it, then I don’t care what it looks like.
I have always believed the reason that our eyesight weakens as we get older is so that we don’t notice that our partners are ageing, seeing each other in soft focus keeps us young
Hmmm…mmaybe. I don’t mind that my husband is aging, I think he looks good no matter what. I’m much more worried about own looks.
Does everyone have a mean grandma and a nice grandma? Until I read your post, I thought I was the only one.
One summer when I had been sentenced to spend two weeks with evil grandma, I stepped on a nail while I was playing outside. Grandma’s reaction to my painful wound: “That nail was probably rusty. You’re going to die of tetanus.” Since grandma was a nurse, I believed her and spent the rest of the “vacation” waiting for lock-jaw to set in.
Good times.
Fucking hell, that is horrible. Mine would have said something like that but she was ALWAYS drunk, so her words slurred a lot. She could still hit though. I don’t think I ever spent the night with her even once. And I hated going to visit.
Don’t listen to the mirror of Brobdingnag. Stick with your I’m holding up well perspective because:
1. You probably are.
2. It’s healthy.
3. Nobody, no matter how seemingly flawless, holds up well under magnification.
All good advice. I’m going to really try to not listen.
I have some 3x reading glasses that I once mistakenly bought, which I keep in the bathroom in case I need that close-up view of my face. (Only the left side, since the right-hand light is out.) But it’s not an everyday thing, which helps keep fresh that appalled expression that always greets me.
HA! Yeah, I know that expression.
LOL, Michelle! I can totally relate. My mom stares at me from the mirror every morning and it’s particularly disturbing since she died 11 years ago. I can’t help believing that she’s taunting me and laughing her ass off from afar! Well done!!
Haha..Thank you!! And it is distressing, right?
I loved this…hell, I’m so blind that I don’t that issue unless I decide to put my contacts in BEFORE doing my makeup…I try to avoid that at all cost.
This is first time on your blog…you’re a hoot!
Thank you so much!!!
I don’t have contacts, but my eyesight is failing. it’s for the best
Michelle, I am rolling on the floor!!! I am way behind on my blogroll, obviously, but had to comment late. I too have a two-sided mirror with one side wretchedly broken…how is it possible for my mother and my paternal grandmother to combine into one 10x magnified reflection???? I see my mother more regularly now that she lives nearby, and cannot believe the flashes of her that I see in myself…not to mention my long-dead grandmother EDNA. Yes, that was truly an appropriate name for her…I still shudder when I think of her. Solution: don’t use that broken side, and keep on keepin’ on. We ARE holding up great, feeling good, kicking ass!
YES! We are doing all those things…but the magnified side does help with my eye liner..