Enthusiastically Eclectic

Catharsis is defined by Merriam Webster as: "purification or purgation of the emotions, primarily through art" and "a purification or purgation that brings about spiritual renewal or release from tension." I find this to be a particularly apt word for describing the run of my emotions today. I have a memorial tattoo of a sugar skull surrounded by marigolds to which I add a flower every time a loved one passes away. While I still ache for my departed family, I have found some measure of solace in the tattoo process. My Great Aunt Neta passed away a week ago today, on my parents' 37th wedding anniversary. It was unexpected. We were a tight knit family when I was growing up, so Aunt Neta and her husband (one of my paternal grandfather's brothers), Charles, were always around. The thing I remember best about Neta was her laugh. She had one of those joyous, infectious, completely unselfconscious cackling giggles that transforms the face into a ball of glowin

I don't consider myself a makeup guru, but neither am I a novice. Long ago, in my tech theatre days, I learned how to contour a face for the stage and create different effects with makeup. Even longer ago I learned makeup for stage and photo modeling. I like makeup and I like to feel pretty. Recently I subscribed to the Sephora Play! makeup sample bag out of curiosity. I've been subscribed to the Ipsy Glam Bag since September of 2016 and have been pleased with all the samples, even going so far as to purchase more of some items to add to my collection. The Sephora Play! bags are within a dollar of the price Ipsy charges and include items that can be purchased in-store as well as additional rewards points and free tutorial appointments that can be used in-store. I have seen reviews of Ipsy vs. Birchbox but not Ipsy vs. Sephora Play!. I am sure I'm not the only one to review the contents of both bags monthly, but I thought that at least if nobody else reads this, well, at

In my therapy sessions for my Masters program, I've noticed that even young girls have cultivated "The Silent Treatment." One of my girls needed to make up a session she had missed, so I pulled her with one of my better-natured, easygoing boys about her own age and with similar goals. We were doing a sensory activity that tends to make the boy (we'll call him "Randy") very silly. Randy has an Autism diagnosis and is one of my favorite students to teach because we do sensory activities all the time. I am a very tactile person anyway, so his session is like a work-play session for me. The little girl ("Sarah") is usually very mature and has frequently informed me that the activities I have planned are "for babies." She is also good natured, but in a very different way. The other day, Randy was busy wiggling and crowing over the toys we were describing and then burying in a box of dried beans, when Sarah stopped dead in the middle of one of

My grandmother has early-stage dementia. We recently moved her out of her home in Austin, Texas, where she had lived for the last 25 years. Unfortunately, my grandmother was also a hoarder, so that process was more difficult than it would have been in any case. She now lives quite happily in a semi-independent assisted living facility here in the Dallas area, but is progressively having difficulty with her memory. Today, my mother, grandma, and I were all out of our separate domiciles for a girl's day. We do this often on Sundays. We had lunch, did a little shopping, and enjoyed  Oz the Great and Powerfu l (which was fantastic). Everything was relatively uneventful except our shopping trip: we misplaced Grandma. We shopped for some warm-weather clothes and a dress for Grandma to wear to my upcoming wedding, and once my grandmother's needs were met, my mom and I did a little shopping for ourselves. We asked my grandmother to sit in a chair just outside the fitting rooms whil

Holy stressed-out student, Batman! By student, I mean me. I am working on my Masters in Speech-Language Pathology (SLP). If you ever want to see hundreds of (in my case overwhelmingly female) professionals freaking out about cheap pencils, pens, t-shirts, popcorn bags, and other items that have a company name on them nobody will ever read, go to a professional convention. Seriously, there were about twenty males at the conference I attended today, and many of those were working the vendor booths. Some snazzy guys even had tuxedos on! I must have missed the memo. I discovered today that large groups of people pressing together make my shoulders creep up around my ears like an ill-fitting turtleneck. My ears then start to burn like I've had too much wine and someone told that embarrassing story my dad loves to tell. You know, that story everyone thinks is soooo amusing about how he found me balanced on the rim of a huge garbage can full of dry dog food snacking on kibble when I was