Mirror, Mirror, On the Wall…

It is Friday night.  I have had a wonderful day and I don’t want to go to bed and have this day end.

Paul is playing a game on his computer and I am writing here and we are both enjoying? an extremely dry glass of red wine.   Worded that wrong…the glass isn’t dry, the wine is…a glass of extremely dry red wine.  It will soon be midnight and the new day will have begun but I am going to milk this one all the way up to 11:59 p.m.  Paul was off this afternoon as a part of his Labor Day holiday weekend.  He met me at the Ft. Bliss pool and we swam together!  Love it!  I used my much-too-long flippers and a kick board to help me swim a mile.  New personal best.  Then we had lunch at Jason’s Deli. YUM.  And then made a stop at Kirkland’s to look at mirrors.

I am participating in my third of Alison Lumbatis’s Style Me Challenges and decided it was time to get a good mirror in order to take better selfies in my challenge outfits.  I am not absolutely sure there was anything too horribly wrong with my el cheapo Wal-Mart over-the-door mirror.  The way my reflection looked in it, I would like to think it was more like a fun house mirror but I can’t prove that except that in other mirrors my hips don’t look THAT broad and my body doesn’t look THAT lumpy.  Even under the horribly unforgiving dressing room lights in some of my favorite stores.  So I have been looking for the right mirror for my recently re-decorated bedroom.

I have visited mirrors on a regular basis in person at Steinmart and Home Goods and online at Kirklands.com.  Found several that I liked at all three places but kept telling myself that the purchase of another mirror was really vain and wasteful considering I already had a mirror that wasn’t cracked or broken at all, i.e. no seven years of bad luck.   (I could hear my mother saying some version of “There are lots of children in China who would give anything to have …  a plateful of green peas, a hand-me-down dress, a distorted mirror).  But today I broke through all of the voices in my head (albeit very temporarily) and bought a new mirror.  I originally daydreamed about, planned to buy a leaning mirror that could rest against the bedroom wall.  Something with a champagne or perhaps, distressed silver frame.  When I got to Kirklands – the real store and not online this time – $10 off coupon poised on my phone – I realized that most of the mirrors I had been visiting at virtual Kirklands were not available at real Kirklands.  And even if they had been, they would have been too big to fit in the backseat of my Nissan Altima.  Lucky for me, they had an ‘Antique White Cheval Floor Mirror’ on sale for $45, and with my coupon…$35 and with our military discount (thank you, Paul, for your service)…$32.50. Surely at that price my mom and the children in China wouldn’t think too badly of me for buying it.  My mom does love a good bargain.

Paul put the mirror together right away and swiftly showed the Wal-mart reject mirror to the door.  I found a space in the corner of our room for the Antique White Cheval Floor Mirror  where the lighting would be good for my challenge photos.  I gathered all of the day’s challenge outfit pieces, got dressed, put on some makeup and did the best I could with my swimming pool hair.  And then I stood in front of my brand new mirror.

Drum roll, please….ba-dum-bum-CHING…

I looked the same.  Maybe not exactly the same but yup, pretty much the same as I did in my el cheapo Wal-Mart over the door mirror.  I was still 56, my hips were still broad and my body was still a little lumpy.***  I blinked.  Once, twice.  And then looked again.  Despite the imperfections that I could easily identify and catalog all day long, this magic new mirror enabled me to see a healthy body, a loving heart, laugh lines and worry wrinkles that I had earned, that helped to tell my story.  And all of that wrapped up in a great outfit for Day 5 of the Work Wear Challenge.  I have so much to be thankful for.  I have a wonderful life, a loving husband, caring family, sweet friends, cute kitties, good health, the promise of a fun new part-time job and I live in the best country in the world.  If I look into this Antique White Cheval Floor Mirror everyday and realize how very blessed I am, the goodness I have in my life, then I think this mirror at $32.50 was quite the bargain, don’t you?

Ooops, it is midnight.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

***September 17, 2014:  Since writing this, my daughter Lauren has come to visit.  One evening several days ago, after a good soak in the hot tub, Lauren and I began talking about teaming up to work on the blog together.  She was looking over what I have written here so far…my meager beginnings…and became upset with me when she read this particular post.  Lauren was frustrated that I wrote critically of myself when I said  “I was still 56, my hips were still broad and my body was still a little lumpy”  upon seeing my reflection in the new mirror.  She suggested that it would be more uplifting and encouraging if I would write more positive statements about myself, or at least not identify in great detail what I see as flaws.  She said it isn’t healthy to beat myself up about those little problems because we all have things we don’t like about our bodies.  And so I am going to make a concerted effort to be more positive, to celebrate myself a little more!