Hot Pockets: It's for weight loss?!?

I almost never go to Starbucks. If I need to kill some time somewhere with free wifi there are better coffee shops here, with fancy French pastries and cream teas and such. But Starbucks is the coffee shop everywhere in the states, and when I'm with my sister we drive through there. They have a beverage with green coffee extract, which has enough caffeine in it for me to actually feel it. I might have a bit of a tolerance. Well, this Refreshers TM drink contains the aforementioned green coffee extract. I guess I'm a little out of the loop, because I had no idea that green coffee extract is touted as a weight loss miracle (thanks, Dr. Oz). It makes me like the Refresher TM less. Let me clarify that I like the lime flavor, not the berry hibiscus. Hibiscus are decorative and do not taste good.

Anyway, I thought calling caffeine a weight loss miracle was old school and went out of style when Dexatrim did. I guess this is just evidence that there are no new ways to diet, humans just keep recycling the same ones over and over. Low-carb dieting was first introduced in the 1800s and keeps getting repackaged and resold. So please, just use your secondhand version of Atkins if you must and stop handing forkfuls of cash to new "experts". All their good recipes are online anyway.

Hot Pockets: The Final Countdown

OK, now that everyone has hair-band Europe's greatest (only) song stuck in your head, it's time to reveal that this post is about how I am acting in my last few weeks in Abu Dhabi. Dan and I will be back in our little house in Phoenix on March 16, just in time for St. Patrick's Day and the tail end of Cadbury Creme Egg season. In these last few weeks, Dan and are melancholy about all the things we've come to know and love...

Nah, we have effectively clocked out of the real world and are already living in Phoenix through the power of the Internet. Dan has ordered a car, we have phones and carriers picked out, and I know exactly what I'm going to buy my first trip to the grocery store (seeded rye bread and sliced ham).

Contrast that to my purchases today. Instead of making a list and buying practical things we could eat, I bought pretty much whatever sounded good and that won't be available in the States. Thus, in no particular order:
Coke (with real sugar)
Flavoured water "A hint of mint and lemon" (also with real sugar)
A hollow chocolate egg with two Cadbury Creme Eggs inside, imported from the UK)
Baked cheese crackers from Australia
Berries and Cherries Muesli
Cherry Passion Fruit Tic Tacs
Fresh sliced pineapple (no extra charge for the slicing)
Frubes (Yogurt tubes with Otter pop-tyle characters)

Not Pictured: Minced beef, ground while I watched

I also bought a sari, because I'd been thinking about for a while so I figured what the hell, and went to the cheap department store and bought one. I could have taken it home today, but the blouse has to be custom-made to fit my sizable chest. 

"Those girls couldn't drown."

It will be done next Wednesday (Inshallah). I did not pay in advance.

Have I started packing?  Nah, I've still got time.

Make-up is not for me

I've never been a make-up wearer.  Even when I was a teenager and all the other teeny-boppers were begging their mothers to let them wear just a little lipstick, I was still trying to look and feel less like a dork (I had just recently started wearing contact lenses and was no longer four-eyes).  I learned to wear make-up on stage, when I was playing a character, and to this day, I still feel the same way when I have make-up on. 

Even though I'm not sure I look any different here.

I used to say that if you never start wearing make-up, no one will expect you to, and that bit of wisdom (which probably sprang more from teenage laziness than anything) has served me well over the years.  I (almost) never wear make-up.  I have a fondness for tinted chopsticks, and wore Dr. Pepper flavored/colored Lip Smacker for years.  I still will when I can get my hands on it.  For my 30th birthday, my aunt bought me, at my request, some Clinique Almost-Lipstick in "Universally Flattering Black Honey." I love it, but like anything I put on my lips, I need to reapply frequently, and so you can really only tell I'm wearing it for the first ten minutes after I've put it on. 

Plus, the fancy stuff doesn't fit in my pocket very well.

That doesn't mean I don't like make-up.  I do.  In fact, I am fascinated by it.  I own a Bare Minerals starter kit, in the wrong shade because I over-estimated the level of the tan on my face, of which I used all the colorless Mineral Veil and some of the mascara.  I have one of those eye make-up sets that are supposed to enhance your eye color.  I have even in recent months tried wear eyeliner and eyeshadow, but rather than make me feel more myself as some people say, it makes me feel less myself and more self-conscious.  Perhaps that's left over from my days wearing make-up in the theater.  Pancake make-up is not attractive on anyone in normal lighting.  I never wear blush because I have just the perfect amount of rosacea, right on my plump cheek bones, which is accentuated when I am excited, have a migraine, or have had a drink or two.  I did pay a stylist a ridiculous amount of money to make me up for my wedding day.  The effect was wonderful, but even the professional application of cosmetics didn't make me look as good in the photos as my ridiculously photogenic husband.

He always looks good in photos.  It's sickening.

My sister says she's jealous of the way I can look so natural.  I am jealous of her ability to pull off the smokey eye, bright colors of eyeliner, and style her hair.  It's an art in which I have no talent, and she does. I can french braid my own hair, but so can just about any woman with long hair.  It's very convenient, and makes me look like I put a smidgen of effort into my look.  I've also been experimenting with nail art, with various degrees of success.  It's the in thing you know.

Box O' Nail Polish

So, in conclusion, make-up is pretty awesome (and have you read some of the ingenious things they can do with color matching and chameleon shades, and OMG is there any way to remove all water-proof mascara? That stuff is industrial).  I own some, but don't use it, and when I do, I'm probably not doing it right.  And that's OK.  A little powder (or mattefying moisturizer) to keep the shine down, a little cola-flavored lip balm (no gloss for me, that stuff is sticky), and I'm good to go.  But even though I've given up on full-face make-up, I'm on to new and greater adventures in fashion.

Quirky Gothic TM

Hot Pockets: You can't always get what you want

Last night I was craving a very distinct food, which I could not immediately identify. It was sweet, soft, a pastry perhaps. Definitely glazed, but not a doughnut. A touch of lemon maybe? I thought about it and thought about it, and yet, it didn't come to me. I'd been thinking about making gingerbread cookies, could it be that, maybe with cream cheese icing? Thinking about cream cheese icing led me to carrot cake. I had been spending time with a friend I introduced to carrot cake who is now hooked. I started planning to make a carrot cake, making a mental shopping list, wondering what recipe to use, but it still wasn't exactly what I wanted. It wasn't until I was drifting off to sleep that it struck me: what I had been craving wasn't anything I could make or buy here. It was a pre packaged cinnamon roll. That particular combination of preservatives, cold smooshy cake, and hard glaze, possibly with some raisins thrown in. Well, that is not something I'll be getting here. Heaven forbid you have a craving for Cool Ranch Doritos or Hershey Kisses (unless you feel like driving to Dubai). An Entemman's cinnamon roll isn't happening. So I made a rum cake. That will have to do for now.