Moderate Excess, Volume Three

What, did you think we were done? Oh my goodness no. We are done with the makeup, yes, but knowing as you do about my color issues, you must have guessed that the compulsion to have every color extends in other directions. Like this one.
This, my friends, is the kind of pencil/pen case you come home with if you shop at Walmart at odd hours of a Saturday morning. This item came home with me on the ill-fated bra buying trip.
I was stumbling around the office supply aisles and all the school stuff was out and suddenly the though streaked across my under-rested brain like a late breaking dementia: IMMA GET A PENCIL CASE!!!!
There were lots of sedate options; burgundy. Olive green. Even the ones with kittens looked less like they fell out of a young Ken Kesey's backpack. But I had to have this one. So have it I did. And here's whats inside.

We have Magnatank gel pens in red, blue, green, purple, and black. Papermate bold points in red and black, Dixon Tri-conderogas (on account of they are triangular, yo) and their special sharpener, two clicky pencils, some colored pencils, old school Bics (the lenders in my pencil case; these go to shady pen borrowers who may/may not return), some more gel pens, couple of Zebra Sarasas which are the best gel pens ever and come in maroon and forest green and other colors that make me want to weep with their perfection, two Pilot Varsity fountain pens that are grudgingly acceptable replacements for my cracked, old Parker fountain pen that the soulless bastards at Parker stopped making, more Papermate bold points, and various 3m Tape Flags and Tabs because you never know when you might run across something that begs to be tabbed and color coded and you NEED TO BE READY.

There was a time when this kind of pen stash was completely reasonable. I wrote letters. I had international pen friends. I wrote letters of encouragement in painstakingly transcribed Russian to prisoners for Amnesty International. I journalled, which is apparently what all of us did before we had this fabulous medium of self indulgence and confession.

These days, my commitment to the epistolary arts has not departed altogether but it is seriously diminished. I still journal, because there is some mental floss that simply does not require its icky bits to be flung into public scrutiny, whether it be an attack of preciousness or unassailable darkness. BUT BUT BUT....I NEED pens. I just need them. I still have to write checks and fill out ambulance paperwork and write more checks for the ambulance association and take notes in classes and carefully write appointments into my schedule book and sign birthday cards with a flourish. I need to leave notes to feed the cat and jot witticisms on bulletin boards. I need to scrawl "You, sir, are a selfish bastard" on a post-it and slap it on the driver's side window of a car parked across the last two parking spaces. (Do I carry post-its in my purse for this and similar purposes? Hells to the yes. )

But in the end, most of the pleasure just comes from spreading them out and looking at them.
I like to think it comes from a deeply seated need to see, feel, taste and experience LIFE.
In all the colors.

Moderate Excess, Volume One

Beauty, to me, is about being comfortable in your own skin. That, or a kick-ass red lipstick.
Gwyneth Paltrow

There are some things in life I can't get enough of. I thought it might be fun to give you a peek into a few of them.

I confess, further, that these are things I have obsessed over since childhood. In my pre-literate days I was fascinated with color. I'd line up the Mobil Travel Guides or McCormick's Cookbooks and stare at the spines, spellbound by the way they were all the same and yet different colors.

I have trouble when things come in colors. How can I choose just one? What if, one dreary day, I want something different? Or what if that old compulsion to line them up and just LOOK AT THEM overtakes me? You can imagine how long it took me to pick out and iPod shuffle. (In the end I opted for red.)

So anyway. Somewhere between being a ground in, denim clad tomboy and my big hair high school days, I discovered makeup. I found out that I could look at pictures in magazines and copy the way makeup was put on. In the 80's this was not hard, since the application tended to be of the paint-roller variety and the color contrasts were pretty stark. Every woman on Dynasty looked like she was one gold-beaded headdress and a g-string away from Carnival. But I was in the fourth grade, and my makeup collection was limited to giant stick glosses the size of a peppermill in various flavors like grape and cotton candy. I'll admit now (since I believe that the statute of limitation on sisterly beating has passed) that my earliest experimentation started with creeping into my sister's room when she wasn't home and parking myself on her vanity bench.

These days, I'm a makeup connoisseur, but not a makeup snob. I'm just as delighted with a cheap thing that works great (hello, NYC Color and Wet & Wild) as I am with my Smashbox and Tony and Tina. But my ALL THE COLORS thing hasn't abated. If anything, its gotten worse.

I start with the lipstick case.
My lipstick used to be neatly ensconced in the Tool Box. (We'll get to that.) But it quickly overflowed its allotted portion of the box, crowding the other neighbors and causing complaints. Well, maybe I should just show you.
Its hard to fit it all in to one picture. What we have here is a seperate compartment for champagne/beiges, one for lipliners and sharpeners, one for pinks, and one for fiery reds, for those days when only a retro hair roll and a bit of burlesque-queen black eyeliner will do. What you see in the middle is the entire collection of NYC Color Extreme Lip Glider Lip Gloss, including the three special edition colors that weren't in the NYC display but I found then anyway. Oh, and seven Chapsticks. And a Blistex in Raspberry Lemonade. And some Rosebud Salve.

Don't judge me, but sometimes I lay in bed in the wan predawn light, thinking about what color I'm going to wear that day. Then I build the rest of the 'look' around it. I take issue with Gwyneth on one point; beauty is being comfortable in your own skin and believing that you are worthy of a kickass red lipstick. Lipstick says, hey, I decorated myself today, and I'm happy with the result. (Red lipstick says a few more things but I'll leave those to you to figure out.)

In our next installment, we'll venture to the Tool Box, where we'll examine such pressing issues as:
Is there a place in your life for yellow nail polish? (Perhaps)
Does one really need five completely different types of eyeliner? (You bet your sweet bippy)
Ulta: Delightful retail establishment, or dangerous makeup crackhouse? (You be the judge.)