Already Pretty: Naked Face

Naked Face:



I and my daughter at home. We look serious but it is becuase of the too bight sun light. The reds around my lips are birth marks I have had since I was born. recently I removed them and am having clear lines around the lips.



I found the naked faces are also beautiful in their way in the list of people adventuring into not wearing make-up week.



I do not often wear make-up in its usual sense; like foundation, shadows, concealers and lipstics. When I stated my permanent full time job in my 30s, people would ask me "Why don't you wear make-up?" (By the way, I am surprised that so many fashion bloggers are from the academic or at least highly educated than high school diploma, and fashion for the academis world seems to be one of the popular subjects around the fashion bloggers. Am I too narrow sighted? Or I happened to jump into the highly educated fashion bloggers and trapped in their circles.) Anyway I am in the academic environment as well.



I want to broaden the definitin of make-up into choosing not to have make-up as a part of make-up world. I wear sun protect cream everyday even during the less sunny seasons. I choose not to get tanned as a part of make-up.

My students are wearing make-ups in their own way and I enjoy looking at them advanced into more mature and sophosticated and flattering ways in many cases not to say all.

My not wearing make-up possibly stemmed from my childhood environment. I grew up in a Christian family where the inner being is supposed to be more important than just looking good in outside. And when I went to collge I could not afford to buy other than really important for living and modesty. My husband somtimes criticizes(yes criticize. We do not share the sense of beauty in everythingf frm makeup, furiture, book arrangements, and dress code.) my lack of fashion sense and wants to advise my sophoomore in university daughter his 'sop-his-cated' tips for make-ups and fashion which usually drive my daughter to bursting into tears for they are too oudated and pungent for a still highteen girl..

I think make-up is choices and not to wear make-up is in the list. I choose no make-up as my make-up choice, not an adventure. I do wear make-up when not wearing make-up is regarded highly criminal activity: weddings(mine and others), year book photo takings, very important meetings like me as a chief interviewer or things like that.

Why don't you free yourself from wearing colorful chemicals on your face into broader choices of not wearing them. Naked face is socially acceptable unlik the naked body to me.

"Life never becomes a habit to me. It's always a marvel." Katherine Mansfield (1888-1923)

I like this quote very, very much. \
Only the Marvel is not always the case with me. It maybe replaced with the s little bit sinister synonyms like surprise, amazement, astonishment and then incredulity, wonder, bombshell, eye-opener and revelation and then shock and panic. Not very nice touch of Katherine Mansfield's way but stilll they keep the meaning of not habitual.

Yesterday, I had terrible body-ache all over me caused from the fibromyalgia accompanied with the terrible enervation. I started early work leaving my youngest under the care of her big sister. I received countless calls from both of my daughters for various reasons; like missing her favorite cap, refusing to wear trouser for her endless love for dresses and skirts, and all different amazingly new reasons for whining. I am still tired after ten hours in bed and two hot strong coffees and two dosages of alprazolam(Xanax) and several puffs of asthma spray.

I have never expected these even in my dream. Life is not habit to me. What about you?

I have never said that, honey.

This is what my husband told me when i trie to remind him how he made me at a certain time. I do not think he lies but his tough and scarring words of from out of no where in his head.

I was with my husband for the theraric session with my psychiatrist last Friday. My psychiatrist said the my husband did very well to me(his wife) as he watced him and me when I had extremely terrible asthma untratable for 6 hour in the ER. My uncurabel asthma turned out to be psychogenic rather than the problem in pulmonory area. My coughing stopped with 10ml of valium shot, which means the asthma probably was from the psyvhological reason.

My husband is a good person. He is a good Christian and he is one of the best man I have met n my life. But he is not my kind of husband just as I am not his kind of wife, even though I did my best till I get unsaturated.
He is using perjorative language when he is notin his mood, whic drives me on the verge of craxiness or syncope with blackout.

What makes me more unendurable is that he, when he gets bdk to rather normal range, sais that he did not say that or at best that is not what I really meant.

My health. concerns

I am a midaged woman with lota and lota of health problems.

1. I had meningioma surgery two and an half years ago.
2. I have been on medication for depression for4 years by this June.
3. I am on medication for Behcet disease and Fibromyalgia.
4. I was walking through causeless epileptic seizures.
5. I have been fighting against the weight fluctuation problems for several years already from about 47kg to 75kg, my normal range is supposed to be 53-58, which I have kept since my hight teen years.
5. I have migraine, insomnia, GAD, OCD.

I have not been in the strong side but confronted PhD course works and disseertation with raising two kids and a husband who is always in need of my hands for virtually everything from daily chores to his computer problems and my mother in law who has health problems called getting old and mental problem of asking for endless attention for her daily life(she lives with us). It is not really a Korean tradition becuase my husband is the second son. In Korea in the past parents live with their first son and their family and the first daughter in law is supposed to take care of the in-laws.)

I am healthy enough to count down the poblems I am facing.

Me!

Welcome to my Journal keeping blog!

It is going to be part of my histories and every small things that I do not want to forget about. I do no covet for the expensive women-like-luxurious-thing, that man would think that they pridely offer to their wife, girl friends. W ewomen's mind are with small bits and pieces like stained letters of my girls' mispelled love notes. And even the old university days, my mother made things like clothings for me just for me and would be glad to wear the to make her happy.

After all my direct and incirect experience in human relasionship, family matters, health issues, whid is still deveolping in the side of Doctor's point,I come to realize that life is very important and everybody and everything with life is important.

Unofrtunately this is so much a common sense that this does not tend to be taken seriously. I get to feel it only after several difficult and near death experience in these few years.

This is a chronicle of the things to live through all the difffuculties I am confronting everyday: as a mother, wife, daughter, daughter-in-law, patient for the several specialists in the hopital, a woman on heavy medication, and a woman with a full time time job and living in a very conservative area of South Korea where girls are mentioned as a family memeber in future in-lasws.

But I am not in primistic tribal society. It is normal Korean society if the degree is a bit harder than the place I was born and raised(Seoul) and I am getting more and more uncompfortable with the situation around me becuase I am a mother of one son and and two precious dauhgters and teacher of many future mothers in a ccollege level.

Things here are my struggling to make this life worth for me and for my loving ones. I am not a native Engish speaker but I feel free to wrtie in English because it is the one way to get myself away from rhe people who know me do not like to read Engish blogs at all.

Thrifting

Sal in Already Pretty posted the pro's tips for thrifting. Mine are as follows.
1. I thrift things because it is a good way to experiment new ways of fashion at lower prices. I go to the thrift shop in my city where I can find a lot of $1 items in mountainous height. Even the thrifters ignore the cheap-seemed- to-be-thrown-away things but when I get things on the counter even the storekeeper asks me they are REALLY from that section.


2. Time matters.
Yes, time matters. But every shopping does. Thrifting is compensating becuase you use less money.


3. Thirft sores are just a place away from my everyday work and people. I imgine the previous owners, I imagine how the items would feel when they have second or third chance of their life with me or with sombody else.

4. When I do not have particular things in mind, I look for the colors and fabrics I like first and then check the item throughly drawing pictures of the itme(s)with my other things. Thrifting seems to be less risky if you do not buy certain things just because they are bargains.

Who am I?

I am a middleaged, somewhere around the birth and death, may be near the deathdate, woman and working mom with three kids. I am in a conservative working setting. Other than the mid-life crisis and kids, job and other things, I am fighting for several health concerns, two of them are so serious that the mediccal inurance on the Government partly support my medical bedgets.(Should I thank them at this point?)

Deaths in South Korea

Death is unavoidable in any point of your life but to the last minute we would like to ignore the inevitable facts of life.

In the last few days to kind of deaths were one the news and both were very touching to me.
The first one was military related thing and involves serveral tens of daed bodies wtill down under the sunken war boat. The first one was the suicide of an actor whose sister, a famous actress as well, commited suicide about one and a half years ago leaving two children behind. There were issues about the custody and inheritance with the actress's ex-husband who was infamous for his affair and family violence. The custody was given to the mother of the actress that is the granny of the two little kids.

Both are very sad and made me down.

Suicidal thought has come to me really compressingly for several times with my depression. I am still on medication and am told better that I used to be but still suicide seems to me the easy answer at the deepest ditch of my depression period. When I am calm and feel relaxed I try to think about the thing that I live for. I sometimes write them down to remind myself of those. Actually that helps me a lot. The dead ones in the sunk ship do not have choice to live or die. But the one who commits suicide just deserts the alternatives. There is no reason to dump your alternatives now. There is no time limit for the choices you have to make. I want you who want to commit suicide to have the alternatives for some time more and give it a go for the life for some time even when you are desperate. Why hurry when you have two in our hand.

What to you want to be when you are grown up?

THis is the last question I would be asked as a woman of at the end of the in her forties. I amy not getting taller but wurely I am growing in many ways, which unfortunately does not mean in many cases that you are getting maturer.

Though nobody asks me what I will be in the future. I have dreams.

1. I want to be a children's story writer with my own illustration. I am interested in crochet and knitting. I am thinking of some crochet miniature illustration of teh children's books. I have no idea of stories yet but I do want to write about the stories for the children. This has been my dream since I had a child but the child is over 20 and I have been busy and hectic between the children, hose and study(I have finished my degree weh my first one is third grader.) and after that I was looking for a permanet full time job and after I had the job I was busy in corporating all the sork onto my life and my ability.

I am still very busy and but not that busy to dream that I want to be an chodrens' story writer and illustrator.


2. I want to learn Chinese. I can read and write chines characters quite a lot but speaking chinese is differen thing. I have practiced chinese pronunciation and would like to lear Chinese. I have learned some languages sice high school: German, French, Greek, Latin, Old Chinese characters, and Englihs and Korean(my mother tongue.


What you grown ups want to be in the future other than getting ages?

Springy spring things!

Spring is a burgeroning season and is for a long time for me the hardest season. Last week I forgot the appointoment with my psychiatrist and he was very worried becuase I told him that spring is very difficult for me at the former session. Of course there was nothing happened. And this year I planned to have spring flowers at home and bought crocus, daffodils, and hyacinth.

What is difficult about spring for me is to see and feel the fast changes all around me. In Korea, we begin new semester in March. When I was a student I should have faced the new environments and people at March and I always get sick at the first few days of each new school year. Now I have schoolage children and I myself teach in college. So I still have to face changes and unlike my younger times I am supposed to face them and help my kids and students to face the changes. I do not have any right to get sick and to be excused from the responsibilities.

I decided to make some breathing room by growing the bulbs at home(I live in a flat and do not have garden just like many Korean homes). I decide to enjoy the growth and deceasing of the bulbs. Daffodils and the hyacinth are gone and I am expecting the tulips. What is good about the bulbs are that they will be back next spring. They give me the painful sensation of the changes but the bulbs give me hope to see tham again next spring. This is very important. I have one more reason to survive the stingy spring again.