Put On a Little Makeup, Makeup, Be Sure To Show Your Good Side, Good Side

Any men reading this probably want to skip to another post or go back to watching the game. This evening's post has to do with makeup.

If you have a nose job and your bruises are anything like mine, they're...arresting. You'll be stared at and not in a good way. Assuming you don't want people to think your boyfriend beats you or you find an awful lot of doors to walk into, you need to cover that up. As I said before, I bought Couvrance makeup, which is supposed to be designed to cover bruises, rosacea, varicose veins, unfortunate birthmarks and the like. I gave this the full test today getting ready for work.

OK, here I am with freshly washed skin, bruises in the raw. Sorry about the rollers; I don't have all the time in the world here, so I have to multitask.

A quick note: the nurse tried to get most of the tape residue off my skin, but there's still some there. The pores are also a little bumpy. Normally, I sandblast my skin with some St. Ives apricot scrub, but because it's so sensitive, you can't give it a good working over.

I dabbed the yellow corrective concealer over the bruises. You can still see some of the bruise underneath, though, even before I blended it in. Disappointing.

Here it is, blended in. Hmm...this is no good.

Added a layer of Couvrance foundation creme with the sponge. It doesn't really blend all that well. You can't see it from here, but I look a bit like someone's grandma who can't see well enough to blend her makeup. Compounding the problem is that I can't really press on my skin to blend it. Also, from the pictures, it looks like the shade is a bit too light for my skin tone. I bought shade 2/natural.

To Hell with the sponge. Just get in there and get some on your fingers, get a trowel if you have to, and slap it on like a Texas housewife! It's still not great, I can still see some blue under the makeup, but it'll have to do. And it's cakey.

Now I have to do something about the eyes. Here are my eyelids in their natural state. Shari joked that she thought it was my color.

I used L'Oreal HIP Cream Shadow Paint in Nervy. This is more drama than I usually go for for daytime, but the usual stuff isn't going to cut it. I think they carry a nude shade. This covered the bruises--my eyelids looked completely normal. Incidentally, I really like this eye shadow in general: it doesn't crease and wear off in an hour like some cream eye shadows.

Add some mascara, some blush, take out the rollers (I really don't know what's going on with my hair here; where is Simon, the god of hairdos?) and I almost look normal! Still puffy, still piggy, still with bright red blood vessels in my eyes, but the show must go on.

Here's a better profile shot of me, as promised. The bridge of my nose, though inflated, is SO MUCH SMALLER. I stop myself when I glance in the mirror at an angle, astonished because my huge nose isn't covering up my eye and cheek. This might not make sense, but perspective-wise, with a big part of my nose out of the way, things look different.

Here's another profile shot. You can see the part between my eyes where my nose meets my forehead is REALLY swollen. It HURTS, too.

Here's a random aside about oddball things you notice post-surgery. I have the world's largest pores. Huge. They're like craters the size of your local swimming hole. Ok, so they aren't pockmarks or anything, but some of my pores are especially notable. I used to have one kind of up towards my eye on the right side of my nose and another down by the tip, also on the right side. Whenever I was over the airline luggage weight limit, I could fit a pair of shoes in there, maybe a bottle of chianti. Anyway, they have now repositioned themselves. The one that was near my eye is now smack in the middle of the bridge and the one that was down by the tip is completely MIA.

The nose feels pretty good today, overall. It feels a bit tight, so I can't grin with abandon because the tip starts to pull and my cheeks just...stop. It's hard to explain. I think this is from the swelling and will go away. It's a little uncomfortable, but it doesn't nag on me.