I’m late with Makeup Monday this week, and didn’t post my usual academic career related post last Friday at all, because Kellee and I were travelling, first to a conference we spoke at in Victoria BC, and then to see our son Seiji, 17, who is confronting some mental health challenges and not currently living at home. The latter part was a challenging visit, and we came home anxious and drained.

We got into town at about noon (having  been up since 3:30 AM), and I proceeded to crash on the sofa, eating chips and chocolate and binge watching weird television (ie, a badly made Smithsonian Channel “documentary” about the lifestyle of 1960s flight attendants). In short, my usual mode of dealing with emotional stress.

I determined there was NO WAY I was going to my dance class (hip hop) this evening.

The day passed, and I felt mostly worse and worse. Not only from emotional upset and eating terrible food, but also from knowing I’d missed all my dance for the previous week while also gorging on large quantities of junk food (inc repeated visits to the spectacularly over-the-top Chocolats Favoris in Victoria —>), and was about to miss it again.

But then, I remembered the two samples of NARS PowerMatte Lip Pigment that had arrived while I was gone.

How exciting! I needed to test those out!  And testing while lying on the couch watching TV and eating chips is meaningless. The only worthwhile testing is at dance.

Ergo, I needed to get off the sofa and go to dance.

Not because I wanted to dance. Not because I wanted to see my fellow dancers.  Not because I wanted to see my marvelous teacher.  No.  Because I wanted to test my new lipcolor.

And, off I went.  Wearing NARS PowerMatte Lip Pigment in Le Freak.

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We danced to this 🙂 :

So, how did my NARS do?

Amazingly well.

Here’s after class.

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Le Freak clearly lasts WAAAY longer than American Woman, which is the other shade that came, and which I far prefer.  But as I discovered in last week’s post, it doesn’t have anywhere near this staying power. Too bad.

If you’re wondering why I am interested in other long-wear liquid lipcolors besides my beloved Beauty Bakerie Lip Whip…. well, that’s because Lip Whip can be a little bit heavy and cakey for regular wear. I do love it, and wear it for talks and webinars all the time. But for running around town in a place like Eugene, it can be a bit much.  So when I learned about the flexible, lightweight “stain” effect of the NARS, I wanted to try it out.  It’s a good product–i just have to figure out the shades that work.

But, the larger outcome?  I went to dance!  I danced!  I saw friends, and I felt substantially better.  Better enough to write this post, in fact, and tell this story.

And that, reader, is how makeup ends up a motivator for me. It’s a strange thing, and I imagine it won’t work for everybody. But right now, it’s working for me. And in the strain and struggle of this season of life, I’ll take it.

In other news, last week I invited all you readers to comment substantively on the Facebook thread to this post, and you did!  You really did! I enjoyed it immensely. 17 of you commented.  And as promised, I chose one reader randomly (#14) to receive a box of barely used samples/full sized items that I am prepared to part with!  Here is the box!

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As you can see, it includes items from Smashbox, It Cosmetics, UrbanDecay, Peter Thomas Roth, and MAC.  It’s headed out tomorrow to lucky reader #14!

This week, let’s do it again!  Comment substantively on this post on FB, and I’ll send out another box of samples or full-size items that I bought and only used slightly.  It’s a win-win—I get to de-stash, and you get some items you might never have tried, and we all get to converse about makeup on FB!