Thanks for the Memories...

My friend, and client, Anne passed away last week.

She was 96 years old.

I worked on her when she was 92 years old.

Anne was one of my typically "reluctant" clients... When she first started coming to my shop it was 10 years ago, and she was there simply to accompany her daughter and friends. The girls would be having their make-up applied at my studio and - as usual - we were all laughing and joking and having a generally good time. Anne would sit in the shop and talk and laugh while I worked on her daughter and her friends; and the fact of the matter is that these girls were looking pretty darn good! Anne would compliment them and they would in turn ask her to have her eyebrows applied, but she would always say that she didn't need it.

The girls would push her, but Anne would always say no.

For YEARS, she came into my studio and never had her eyebrows applied. UNTIL, she started living in a nursing home. Then... one day, she and her daughter came in and Anne said, "I'm ready!"

I asked her "why now Anne" and her reply was, "I looked at everyone in the nursing home and they look so bad, and I don't want to look like them."

So she had her eyebrows applied.

Anne's daughter wrote me a wonderful letter last week, thanking me and letting me know that her mom had passed. "Thank you for your kind words," she said. "She looked great till the end and those wonderful eyebrows framed her pretty face. "

When people ask me why I LOVE my job... all I have to do is point to Anne.

Thanks Anne! You look marvelous!

Lookin' Good!

I was talking to one of my clients today; she had just recently had an accident that landed her in the emergency room of the local hospital.

Everybody knows that being in the emergency room is not exactly a picnic. I don't know anyone who would just GO to the emergency room for the fun of it. You don't call up your girlfriends and say, "Hey... I've got some time, why don't we go down and spend the afternoon on a gurney?" But evidently the folks at THIS emergency room must have thought that people do that... or at least that this particular woman did that... because my client said that she stayed for several hours waiting in that emergency room, while people walked in and out, looked at her, evaluated her condition (and her state of mind) and then moved on thinking tht she must be feeling just fine.

This started to really bug her! "What's a person gotta do to get some attention in this joint?" she thought to herself. Then it dawned on her... I probably don't look like I need help. She realized that she looked to happy... too contented... too good. She didn't look like she was needy, or hurt, or in pain. Her permanent makeup made her look TOO GOOD!

The next time someone stopped in to check on her, she let them know that her pleasant disposition wasn't due to the fact she was just feeling all peachy keen... It was due to the fact that her permanent makeup made her look that way. People were amazed... and apologetic. It had never crossed their minds that someone lying in pain in the emergency room could look the way she did, but now that they knew, they attended to her right away.

In most circumstances, looking TOO good is not exactly a problem you might worried about having, but I guess at the hospital it's best to let them know. I've always joked that you need to tell your doctor that you're wearing permanent makeup, but this is the first time I realized how true it is.

Looking Healthy... Looking Well... Looking Too Good!

Now that's a problem I can live with!