Sick minded

HELLLOOOOO BLOGESPHERE!!!

I have emerged from the wreckage and ALIVE!

Well, I am not going to go into a minute by minute breakdown of the last 2 weeks of March but lets just say they were stressful and sick days, most of the last week at least I have been dealing with an actual cold, not just fighting a little baby bug it was the big momma, it started with that scratchy throat and progressed into a full blown cough, shortness of breath and a really creepy sounding voice, like I smoked 8 packs of cigarettes a day, I scared even people like Jess Adam that has known me since I was 15, she was like, 

Your. Voice.

I had that 

"Death Rattle"- not a nice sound.

Of course I try and laugh and I don't laugh quietly, so I sounded like a braying donkey, getting the occasional kick in the rear end.

It got progressively worse, and by Monday I was feeling like a bag of greasy stir fried ass so I got in my grubbiest give-ups and got in my car to go to the doctor, turn the ignition and my stupid car won't start, well, I got in some mood after that let me tell you.

Old Shitbox was living up to it's name, just literally a glorified garbage can on wheels for a couple of days she was, until some miracle of satan- SHE STARTS.

Hasn't died yet. That almost makes me worry a little more...

BAH!

You know what they say- Rock it till the wheels fall off.

I only had to call a Taxi ONE TIME!

So these were just minor problems but with all of these minor issues stacking up together all the while enduring some PMS from the depths of the deepest hell is coursing though my veins, I started to become unravelled, and looked and sounded like a scary killer for most of the week, all the while I am spreading the plague to all my friends and all of us are all stacked up in one big sick mushy smelly useless pile of garbage, all of us doped up on Nyquil and NeoCitran, a bunch of stinking unshowered bums.

Well I am feeling much better today.

I wanted to write earlier this week but my pattern of thinking was clearly disturbed by the cold medication, I tried and all I could muster was a bunch of non-sensical garbage, with the occasional sarcastic remark followed by some shit I thought was poetic until I read it and really it was a bunch of drugged up craziness from the meds, I prefer to not take that shit but this was the kind of cold where I could have passed out from coughing so hard, I had to take a suppressant.

Some people think its code to just suffer through a cold without drugs.

"Not all bugs need drugs!"

Fuck that noise this bug needs a drug, gimme the daytime/nighttime pack, so I can take the razor edge off what could be a week of pure hell.

With the daytime stuff I can go to work and be productive, sometimes if I'm really hopped up I am probably even more dynamic than usual! I am moving around in stiletto heels and want to do my makeup in a pewter smokey eye and full hair, I am all over the place and I even laugh more. 

Half way through the day I'm taking a couple more with a smile on my face going, yeah!

This stuff is the SHIT!

It usually catches up with me by the time I get home and sit down, and you feel like you are crashing off a caffeine buzz, your head is swimming, your eyes feel pried open, but inside you feel like trash and just want to die, so that's when it's time to pop open the blister pack with the little half moon on it, and nighty night bitches.

I decided a few years ago that I couldn't afford to have a cold and that if I did I would load up on the Tylenol cold day/night and I would just go about things as I normally would except obviously not drinking any wine or anything like that, just taking the damn pills to ride it out, and function at a higher level than a normal sober sick person in bursts throughout the day, and if you do or say anything weird you can blame it on the cold medicine!

Before cold medicine:

 After cold medicine:

Now my poor gay husband is sicker than I was, as he prone to pneumonia and has been knocked right on his ass from it, poor thing will be on antibiotics for a couple of weeks, sad face.

I still have the lingering side effects of that beast, but I feel so good I am happily doing laundry and singing to music, I kind of like the smokey jazzy effect it has had on my singing voice. I have never sung more in my life as much as we do here at the big gay mansion, we break out into musical numbers about just about any old thing around here.

Makes it a very fun happy place to be.

Even if you can't sing you should still try, and even if you suck I will respect you more if you just sing your little heart out, no matter how much it sounds like feral cats being beaten with babies, just belt 'er like a Canadian Idol reject!

Here is one of the songs on my laundry playlist, stuff that keeps me excited about cleaning but I can still sing along to!!!

Even with half a voice, on cold medicine I'm like fucking Celine Dion.

;)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AcyTR5mEC_E

I got my mom into the above band. I played her their metal version of The Phantom of the Opera and she was headbanging a week later!

I have to include my non-metal selection of the evening, I don't care if some say they are gay in the bad way, I love this song, it is truly beautiful and FUN. to sing.

LOL.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sv6dMFF_yts&feature=share&list=FLpMIfRIs2-_F11Yi4adYbqw

Nighty night bitches, and stay away from the black plague, but if you do catch the death I urge you to grab that trusty day/night blister pack!

-E.

Doctors are nuts, tanning beds kill

Hello world.

I just had my interferon shot and while I wait for my side effects to kick in as payment for my night off on Friday, I will blab at the world (or anyone who cares enough to read this.)

When I skip a shot, my next shot usually kicks my lily white ass. Tylenol is the only thing that fights the side effects, I load up but sometimes it doesn't matter. Oncologists call it "acetaminophen therapy"- just another thing to throw at my already over loaded liver- which taking a beating like a fucking champion I must say. If anyone deserves a trophy at the end of this it is my liver, it is made of steel apparently. 

Fuckin' eh.

Tomorrow I have yet another dermatologist appointment, with the fact that I've already had melanoma once I get paranoid because I am COVERED in moles, and I obsess over a few of them, and a few months back I had a pre-cancerous mole on my ankle, and I rushed in to have it punched out. My derm is a very strange man, he has a weird nerdy accent, and a poor bedside manner.

Whenever I see him he busts in the door like Kramer from Seinfeld.

Once he told me:

"Erin, you have a very serious disease that could kill you in five years. One out of three will be dead in five years of stage three melanoma. Do you understand that?"

I am taken aback by this comment, but I nod wide eyed, and terrified. Then he goes:

"So, when are you going to book me one of your vaults (at Ruth's Chris) ? I need a good buttery steak!"

I'm like, ok, here's my card, and he runs out of the room like his pants are on fire, telling me to make a follow up for three months.

I put on my clothes and get the fuck out of there.

After the crazy derm I go see my lovely nurse Colleen at the CCI to get poked and pick up more anti-puke pills and Intron-a needles. YAY! They have to give me blood tests every four weeks to make sure my organs are still working, and not completely shrivelled up and toxic!

I was only toxic once at the beginning of my treatment, on my second week of intense daily chemo, I started to feel like I was dying. I had zero energy, felt so sick, didn't want to eat or drink anything, and had a constant metallic taste in my mouth, I was ready to jump off the highlevel bridge. I felt like something had to be wrong, worse than just chemo side effects. So I go see my oncologist for my weekly testing and he stops treatment right away. I had no immune system left and my liver was toxic. I was like- ok so I am not crazy, I am actually dying!

I had a week off then they resumed me at half the dose. During that week I went back and forth about finishing treatment, I decided I was going to quit and go back to my normal life. 

When I heard my mothers voice when I told her, and the look on my husbands face, I started to think that, ok, maybe I can do this for them. 

Now I am 8 weeks away from being finished this shit.

I urge all of you who read this to spread the word about tanning beds. They is nothing healthy about tanning. For every four sessions your risk for melanoma increases by ten percent. EVERY FOUR SESSIONS. Did you also know that if you have had a family member suffer melanoma you have a 50% chance of having it too. Scary hey? 

Anyways, just some facts to think about. You are playing with a gun that is full of bullets, and you don't know when you are going to get one. If you think it can't happen to you, you are just like me and all the cancer patients in the CCI. Not one of those people thought that their habits would catch up to them... or maybe some knew the risk but still smoked, tanned, drank too much... whatever. Your body isn't your playground. Everything you do to it will show in your health later. Good or bad.

I know how hard it is to be good to your body sometimes, especially with all the designer cupcake stores opening up around town, and all my friends smoke the sexy beast, and there are so many good parties to go to, there are temptations everywhere. Being bad just feels so good, I feel like to indulge is to really live. I live for rich food, wine, tequila and cigarettes, what can I say? 

Thinking about using tanning beds now makes me sick. I can't believe I bought the whole tanning is healthy bullshit and really only have myself to blame for my 15 months of hell. Please please please I beg all people who use tanning beds to STOP NOW, before you have to spend your week seeing doctors who tell you that you could die soon. It's not worth the "benefits."

A lot of people say to me that it helps with their excema. Their acne. To those people I say- "once you are on interferon for skin cancer, you'll have the worst excema you've ever had. It will burn and itch and keep you up at night. It is the itchiest hell. Go get some steroid cream from your doctor. Tanning isn't going to be worth it. 

Ok, I will end this rant with this: TANNING BEDS KILL.

(and doctors are nuts.)

That is all.

In other news, I started having fun with beads recently, and last night I made a rosary with the cross I bought at the cabaret the other day. Check it out!

I so enjoy making necklaces. I think this year I will be making lots of necklaces as presents.

Now check this out and go to bed you guys!

http://www.buzzfeed.com/mjs538/who-is-paul-mccartney

-E.

Eyebrows. Not something everyone does right.

So this one has been in the works for a while, as you know I am a beauty professional and operate my own little home "spa" (a bed in the corner of my apartment) and if you ask my clients and friends, I am a good waxer of the eyebrows. I just see what would look best and shape them accordingly, a skill not possessed by everyone apparently. That is why people like me do brows, to de-uglify the world. The women I see around with bad brows look too scary to try and photograph, so I instead found a few examples of the common ways these women shape their brows, and how they make themselves look like complete idiots.

 HAHAHA Oh man this girl looks so stupid. How in hell could someone look in the mirror and think they look good with this eyebrow??? I knew a girl one time who's name I won't mention, she deleted me off Facebook so it's not like she's gonna read this, she was quite the pretty girl... if it wasn't for her sperm brows! I wanted to tell her she looked like a complete fool but never knew her well enough.

These eyebrows are bad because she took wayyy too much out of the inner corner, and needs to grow all that in. If she did that it would get rid of the "comma" look she's got.

 Not sure if this is a woman or a drag queen, but in any circumstance this is not ok.

What's wrong with this other than the obvious? Too big, too close together, too far up the forehead.
Fail.

 Don't improvise a new brow shape that is drastically differrent from your own. You will wind up looking like this crazy bitch.

These brows are showcasing one of the worst things women do to their brows- draw them too close together and not following their natural arch. Not sure what she is going for here.

Well I had to put this pic up for obvious reasons.
And to point out how ridiculous women look when they try and change themselves too much.

Wow.
Do I really need to explain why this is bad? No ones eyebrow is naturally like that except spock. If you want a higher brow you can always take your pencil to the top of the arch, and fill in the upper area down to the tip. That'll bring the eye to the highest point.

This is ok if you want to look surprised all the time. I can't imagine what it's like to wake up to her in the morning....

Again, don't try and move your eyebrows to a different part of your face. 

 Just don't.

We know that colour in your hair is not natural, you don't need to try and look like a natural "Fire engine redhead" cause nobody is going to buy that. This is only ok under very few circumstances, if you have an extremely gothic subculture look, and if they are very thin and well shaped. I have only seen one woman who did it well.

Now I haven't been a fan of this home wrecking beast since she split up Brad and Jen, so I am using this chance to bash her dumb looking brows. Her makeup artist must have been on team Jen.

The inner corners are too close, once again! Otherwise the brow is fine, a little angular but ok, unfortunately this brings the eye to the nose and the angle brings the eye to her jaw. 

Ok, so now you are saying, Erin! I think I look like example number two!

I need help!

Well you could start by coming to me and getting schooled in the art of a proper brow shape, in many case women have to grow parts of their brow in first. Starting with more to work with is the best way to rehab broke ass brows.

I suggest women grow them in, and then see me for a good shape. But if you are ambitious and wanna become a reformed bad brow girl then heres my advice.

Once your brows are grown in, you will be able to see your natural shape. 

Depending on that natural shape is how you will decide where it starts and ends and where the arch will be.

This is the ultimate guide to eyebrow shaping.

Follow this guide and you'll never do wrong. 

Even if your brows don't have an arch naturally, you can fake it by taking a little more out of the arch, and thinning out the ends a little, and when I saw a little I mean taper the ends. No need to go too thin, or before you know it you'll have half brows. Not good.

Another trick you can do at home is draw the shape you want on and use it as a guide. 

I'd just come to me and have a real brow lesson.

Yes I'm using my blog to plug my business!

http://outofthisworldlashes.com/

Brows will make or break your face. If you have bad brows people will notice, and something about you won't look quite right. It's like when you put on a pair of sunglasses and they aren't right on you. You wouldn't buy those sunglasses would you? So don't walk around with something that isn't you on your face! You'll look like an idiot.

Like these unfortunate ladies above.

-E.