The V-beam Laser: Looking Puffy, Feeling Angsty

August 14, 2013 / Ally Bean / 27 Comments

HERE’S WHAT’S UP with me this week: I’m at home hiding inside my house. This is because I had a V-beam laser treatment at the doctor’s office a few days ago and now my face, as it heals, is a puffy mess.

Yes, I look like a cross between a jack-o-lantern and a piglet. Well, not orange or pink, but structurally that’s what I look like. In bright red. Like I spent the day at the beach without sunblock.

# # #

SO WHY DID I have another V-beam treatment? Good question. Glad you asked.

I suffer from rosacea. This means that my face gets all red and blotchy because of annoying spider veins, blood vessels and broken capillaries which show through my pale skin. ‘Tis not pretty.

And it is embarrassing because I look like I’m embarrassed even though I know that I’m not. This, in turn, makes me flush red because I’m embarrassed about how I look embarrassed when I’m not really embarrassed. [With me here?]

# # #

THE PROPENSITY FOR rosacea occurs within anyone with a northern European heritage. It’s genetics, people. And as such you have three options.

Ignore it and pretend that looking like a drunk all the time is exactly the image you want to project;
Avoid certain trigger foods and drinks while taking daily antibiotics to tame the redness; OR
Have periodic V-beam laser treatments at the doctor’s office to zap those annoying ugly red veins, vessels and capillaries out of existence.

# # #

BUT ROSACEA IS a condition for which there is no cure; one can only manage the symptoms. To wit, each round of laser treatments destroys some of the veins, vessels and capillaries, but there are always more just waiting to make their appearance on your face.

Which is why I’m once again at home avoiding the sun, dodging all mirrors and waiting for my face to not feel fat. If experience holds true, the results will be worth it… but the wait is making me angsty.

# # #

[Not my doctors, but some V-beam laser information if you’re interested.]

University of North Carolina

University of Virginia

YouTube video of doctor doing procedure like the one I had done.

When A Squirrel Takes A Fancy To Your House, This Can Happen

July 31, 2013February 24, 2015 / Ally Bean / 27 Comments

• • •

He might decide one morning to catch a few rays on the deck.

• • •

I’M NOT GOING TO bother to tell you ALL the back story of The Squirrel Wars that go on here in this subdivision. Suffice to say, in the past, we had to hire someone, with humane traps, to remove all the little chirpy baby squirrels and their parents from our attic/roof. Then we had to get someone else to repair our roof. This kind-hearted approach succeeded in keeping the squirrels away from our property until this year.

• • •

He might decide one evening to dine al fresco leaving the remains of his dinner for a fly.

• • •

ON THE OTHER HAND our former next door neighbor, a retired Army colonel, decided on a more aggressive way to deal with the squirrels. He hired someone to put spring-loaded traps in the gutters where the squirrels liked to nest. Then when a squirrel stepped on the trap, the squirrel was speared through the heart, thrown over the edge of the gutter and left to dangle to death under the gutter from a rope attached to the base of the trap.

It was gruesome– and ultimately not so effective. The squirrels immediately took revenge on the colonel’s house, bird feeders and tree branches causing him more trouble than you can imagine. While I’m not a fan of squirrels, I did think the colonel’s approach was a bit [shall we say?] extreme and will admit that I enjoyed watching him lose to a bunch of squirrels.

• • •

He might decide one afternoon to take a siesta in the pot behind the zinnias.

• • •

BUT THAT WAS THEN and this is now. Which is to say that over the last month one lone squirrel has taken a fancy to our house. I’m not thrilled by it, but as we are past breeding season and there is no indication of a wife and family anywhere in the house, I’m trying to live in peaceful harmony with this sun-loving, tomato-eating, pot-snoozing, gutter-lounging squirrel who insists on calling our house his home.

• • •

He might decide on a stormy afternoon to lounge in a gutter daydreaming of sunny days.

• • •

Shopping For Make-Up: Plain Jane Vs. The Kabuki Woman

July 23, 2013 / Ally Bean / 25 Comments

I’m not a fan of make-up. I think that the stuff is overrated, but I bow to social custom and use a little of it*.

I believe that for me THE NATURAL LOOK IS ALWAYS BEST**.

Combine the foregoing with the fact that when provoked I will say what I’m really thinking— and you get the following conversation between me, Plain Jane, and the sales associate, Kabuki Woman, at the Bobbi Brown counter in Nordstrom***.

~ • ~

Plain Jane: (approaching the make-up counter) Hi!

Kabuki Woman: (looking blankly at me) Yes.

Plain Jane: (continuing on, ignoring her disinterested tone of voice) Yes, hello. I need to get some Bobbi Brown eye shadow. Would you be able to help me please?

Kabuki Woman: (sighing at the injustice of having to wait on me) Yes.

Plain Jane: (fully aware that I am staring at this woman’s ghostly white face + overdone eye make-up, but unable to look away) Ah, yes. I need Sable & Ivory, please. I looked them up online before I came in and I think that those would be the most neutral colors for me. What do you think?

Kabuki Woman: (glaring at me with loathing while making a dismissive gesture with her hand) They’ll be fine… on YOU.

Plain Jane: (hearing my mother’s voice in my head say: “young lady, you go upstairs right now and wash that stuff off your face so that we can see how pretty you really are”) And I need a lip liner pencil. I wear Clinique Spicy Honey Almost Lipstick and I want the pencil to blend with my lips and be natural.

Kabuki Woman: (fixating on me with a fiery hot hatred, snarling her overly pigmented red lips) You’re supposed to see the lip liner when you wear it. You can look at these here. All of them are neutrals. Just pick one. They’ll all work.

Plain Jane: (getting steamed, wondering why I hadn’t gone to Sephora where the nice gay man with too much eyeliner had helped me just a week ago) Well, I think it should be a little bit better than: IT’LL WORK. Which one do I use?

Kabuki Woman: (starting to look a bit red underneath her ghostly white face) ANY… OF… THEM…

Plain Jane: (saying what I had been thinking the whole time) Look, I HATE MAKE-UP AND SHOPPING FOR IT IS WHY. I just want someone else to figure it out for me. SO WHICH ONE DO I BUY? I want to look natural.

Kabuki Woman: (shocked into actually doing something) Use this one, Bobbi Brown Brownie Pink.

Plain Jane: (making a mental note to join a convent where no one expects women to wear make-up so that I never have to suffer through this again) Thank you.

Kabuki Woman: (tottering away from me as fast as possible on her slutty high heels without so much as a thank you or a goodbye) You can pay over there.

~ THE END ~

~ • ~

*Interesting. “Would We Feel Better Without Makeup? One Woman’s Modesty Experiment”

**Adorable. “Sloth Gets Her Makeup Done Before The ‘Today’ Show (PHOTO)“

***Useful. Bobbi Brown Website

A Few Thoughts Plus A Few Photos Doth A Blog Post Make

July 18, 2013August 29, 2018 / Ally Bean / 16 Comments

I REMEMBER YEARS AGO when I started blogging someone said to me that he didn’t like blogs because all people did was take photos of things in their homes and talk about them. He found this boring and pointless and stupid. Even though I thought that he was wrong, I shrugged it off without a comment.

His point of view seemed uninformed and mean-spirited to me.

– • –

THEN A FEW YEARS AGO when I was in a blogging slump someone suggested to me that I take some photos of the stuff in my house and share them. Again, I was back in a conversation about photos in a blog, although this time the conversation was helpful, not hurtful.

This woman suggested that when you’re at home you are who you are. Unvarnished. Authentic. Free to do what you want to do with the space that you have. So why not start there in your home, and write about it or whatever it brings to mind?

Her point of view seemed practical and kind-hearted to me.

– • –

SO IT IS AT THIS POINT that I find myself today. I have the photos. I have knowledge necessary to post them. I have nothing profound to say about each photo, nor do I have a cohesive theme to this post that makes them noteworthy.

But I believe that when you commit to being a personal blogger sometimes showing up and posting something is what needs to be done. This means that if sharing three photos from the last few weeks is what keeps this blog keeping on– then so be it.

And that, my friends, is all I have for you today.