Write From Karen

How many of you read the title of this post and thought, “Pasties?!? Karen is wearing pasties??”

Um. No. Perv.

Apparently, I get more stressed out than I think I do. I mean, I’ve always thought I’ve handled stress pretty well – I think quick on my feet and I somehow get through it.

Sure. My heart pounds against my rib cage, I develop this very attractive sweat mustache and I suddenly can’t remember how to breathe properly, but … I handle it.

It wasn’t until Kevin had his motorcycle accident, (don’t worry, that was two years ago, nothing recent. The man has been FORBIDDEN to ride anything less than four wheels), that I discovered another physical reaction to stress – I lose my eyelashes.

Attractive, right??

Well. In case you’re just tuning in, my job stresses me out. A. LOT.

I work in health care. I’m a scheduler for neurosurgeons. Which, on the surface, might sound easy. But my job goes WAAAAAAAY beyond the simple inserting a patient name into a slot duty. Oh contrare – the schedulers are the dumping ground for all new procedures, regulations and really, any thing management can think up in a given day.

I help the patients in the clinic all day. I have to return voicemails. I have to answer nurse’s flags (which is an internal messaging sort of system). I have to pre-authorize radiology testing with insurance companies. I have to check, sort, file and respond to my faxes (which are a lot of VA patients actually since I work for a doctor that works closely with a VA doctor in Arkansas). I have to print medical records and refer people to other doctors … and all of this MUST BE DONE within a 24-hour period.

Because there absolutely, positively MUST NOT BE any overtime!! (*GASP-HORROR-MELTING-FACE*)

So yeah. There are days I’m so stressed that I fall asleep at 7:00 p.m.

No joke.

And when it gets really, really bad, like all I can do is grip the steering wheel in my car, stare straight ahead and wonder if I’m coming or going, my body reacts by losing eyelashes.

So, I’ve been experimenting with false eyelashes – because giant gaps in your lashes is just scary.

I put them on, for the first time, last Sunday. And it was a hot mess. But I picked up a trick or two and decided to bite the bullet – I wore them to work last Monday.

I felt so … WEIRD. I just knew everyone that looked at me would KNOW I was wearing false eyelashes. But no one said a word.

I made frequent trips to the restroom to check on my lashes because I had this fear of one of them coming loose and lying at a weird angle on my face.

But nothing happened, no one was the wiser, they were surprisingly comfortable and I thought, “COOL! This is going to work out.”

Until Tuesday.

I put them on, used way too much glue and then, to try and cover that up (though the glue dries clear and you honestly can’t see it), I used liquid eyeliner to try and make it all blend together.

And that was the day my eyes started watering.

My eyes water – A LOT. Like, “oh my gosh, are you crying” a lot. Some days, they just do that. I’ve learned that I can sometimes freeze them in the morning (place an ice cube on them), then put eye drops in them and THEN take a shower (if I do all of that after my shower it actually makes it worse – I’m telling you, my eyes have been “an issue” my entire life) and that would sometimes help the watering factor.

But I didn’t do all of that on this day and they watered – A LOT.

And my liquid eyeliner smudged and I was once again making frequent trips to the restroom for damage control. But even though I wiped the black streaks away, the eyelash glue held (thank God I had the foresight to buy a waterproof glue).

And I finished the day thinking, “COOL! They stayed on.”

And then I took them off that night. And I guess the build up of the salt from my tears just gunked the ever loving holy crap out of the lashes. I’ve watched enough YouTube videos to know that if you’re careful, you can reuse false eyelashes several times – like close to ten or twelve. But there was so much gunk built up on these lashes that I just tossed them.

I haven’t worn falsies since then.

But I’m not giving up. Because I really like how they make my eyes look and they really aren’t that hard to put on, or take off (I bought this new eye makeup remover per the advice of one YouTuber and OMG – where has this product been my entire life) so … I’d like to experiment with more dramatic lashes, but save those for parties, date nights, whatever – definitely not for work. The lashes I wore to work are called “perfectly natural” and they did look natural – at least, I thought so. But anything more than that and I’m pretty sure people would have been looking at me funny.

You know, if my body would just cooperate with me, I wouldn’t have to go through all of this drama to compensate.

We got rid of Satellite Dish.

I KNOW.

But honestly? No one ever watched it. Save for Kevin and that was generally for the NASCAR station. Everything else he watches was on PBS. So it was getting harder and harder to justify paying $60 bucks (SIXTY BUCKS) every month for … what exactly?

Exactly.

So. Kevin fought himself for several days before deciding we needed to get rid of it.

I could honestly care less. BUT. Right before he made this decision, I discovered the music channels. And one channel plays nothing but traditional Christmas music. And I ADORE it. For two reasons, really, 1. I LOVE Christmas music and 2. I didn’t have to fool with changing discs every 30 minutes.

But I still wasn’t willing to pay $60 dollars for just Christmas music, so I gave Kevin my full blessing – get rid of Satellite Dish. I would stick with NetFlix – I’ll deal.

We canceled our account. But I’m pleasantly surprised to see the Christmas music station is still available, for some reason.

And every time, EVERY TIME, this song comes on, it stops me in my tracks. I have to sit down, no matter what I’m in the middle of (one time I sat down with a toilet brush in my hand), and simply absorb the beauty of it.

This song takes my breath away. It’s always been one of my ALL-TIME favorite songs. I adore it when Julie Andrews sings it, but it gives me goosebumps every time I hear Barbara Streisand sing it.

Enjoy.