When life gives you a hundred reasons to cry, show life why you have a thousand reasons to SMILE...

Have a great week everyone!!

Mira

January/February mark. product Reviews:

So, I think I’ve already told you about my new year/new venture when it comes to being eco and animal friendly. Currently, I’ve been searching high and low for these sustainable and compassionate products so that I can do my part in the world to make the consumerism playing field a little more fair and our world a little less polluted.

The fabulous things about mark, for me, is it’s make-up. Eco-friendly, cruelty-free make-up. (Did I mention this already?)
The fabulous thing about me is, when it comes to make-up, I’ve pretty much tried every product known to American (wo)man. A lifetime interest in beauty and four years in the cosmetic industry will do that to a girl. So, if I like something, or if I know something works, my judgment can be tested as a professionals‘.

This blog is my full-frontal honest review about my mark.:

I have received my mark. Products a few weeks ago. It took four days to deliver each order. I ordered a billion things for me to delve and dive into like a make-up starved banshee. Hoping to chuck my blood stained, in-humane, cosmetic products down the drain. (*Really, how could you people use those things! Just kidding… I‘m being melodramatic for the case.)
I tried the basics. Foundation, Lotion, Lip gloss, Eye shadow, Brushes, Blush, Bronzer, etc. etc. etc.
FYI: I was kind of hooked my first order, hence the second order of everything up to high heaven, came quick.

-The eye shadows and blushes are pretty great. Not super pigmented but they come across as a mix between smash box and bare escentuals. Where in there’s a lot of glitter/iridescence and a little less necessary packing. They blend great and the eco-refillable case with magnetic backing is just pure fun. I have already ordered my mega-case to stash the rest of my eye and cheeks.
This (January) month’s color faves: Eye shadow: Minx and Corset - Blush: Bronze Glo

-They also have “Glossblossom” - which is ode to smash box’s o-glow for 25% the price ($22.00 compared to $6.00). They serve the exact same “ripening” purpose and lasts and equal amounts of time. I love it and I’m officially hooked. It is my go to lip gloss. I wear it almost everyday. I ordered the lip gloss in “fig” - what a great long lasting shine. I am a complete fan of their whole lip gloss line. I believe it rivals Mac’s lipglass any day. As for the lipstick, the quality and packaging reminds me a lot of Maybelline’s mineral lips. If you like Maybelline, this product delivers the same results for less, but mark. also comes in smaller tubes. This is in exchange for the cruelty factor is of no contest to me.

- Foundation is pretty average. I’m kinda stuck on my Pur and Bare minerals -which are both animal-friendly. But mark. is Lightweight and does not make me break out (I have the X-pert flawless in Natural) and makes for a good “stretcher” since now, due to the economic need to save money, I don’t think it is very smart to be buying $25 foundations per month . As for concealer, I think this is actually one of the best I have tried. I bought both the light and the medium, for under eyes and blemishes. Crucial to my entirely fake impeccable skin routine.

- The brushes are good. They cannot be compared to Mac or Smash box, but for the price, they are entirely fabulous, especially the concealer brush (which should be replaced every so often due to the bacteria contact that it encounters.) I was able to buy both a bronzer and a blending eye shadow brush each for around $6.00 - that’s pretty fabulous.

-In fragrances, I have both the earth EDT and the karmala EDT.
I gave Karmala to my mother. It’s more so for the Chanel no.5 crew.
As for the earth, it satisfies my inner hippie and lasts longer than anything else I’ve been wearing lately, so it‘s my latest wardrobe staple. (I have been wearing Stella McCartney’s EDT, I absolutely adore it, but I found myself spraying it a lot, either addictively or subconsciously…not sure)

- Make it big mascara is also pretty average. Loreal, which was my original affordable fave, is a closet super animal tester. Behind the celebrity faces, they are quite the evil doers, and one of the cruelest ( http://www.liberation-mag.org.uk/loreal2.htm) Tarte’s lash hugger is a new fave for me, pricey, but it is also paraben-free and in an eco-friendly aluminum container.

- I have also been on a quest to find a good shampoo and conditioner. So far, Sauve’s Coconut (who stopped animal-testing in 2000) are what’s on my head. But they haven’t been giving me very many good hair days. Although, there sleek leave in conditioner is pretty fantastic… My tube seems to be missing. The search is still on for better hair stuff…


Time to go.

Here’s to my extensive mark. Product and Make-up review:

A big Yay! for a Happy, healthier, responsible, and more compassionate lifestyles!



Know your right to choose.
Know your right to learn.
Know your right to love the animal kingdom and our planet.
Wash your hair today knowing no one and nothing was harmed in the process.


Ciao*
Me, Sella (The other gorgeous girl pictured above), and Rocco (the family stud.)

Because People Are Mean

I’ve been stressed. You can see it all over my face. Around my lips and on the sides of my nose. I’ve got acne trying to profess to the world that I’m going through some major issues. I can’t even pin point one thing.It’s more so a bunch of things pent up together.It is nothing compared to some other people’s issues, but nonetheless, that fact shouldn’t invalidate my emotions.
The past few years of holding things back, being patient, staying quiet. I’m a prisoner in my own life and In this world, I have yet to make myself heard by anyone around me. Even if I was given the moment to speak freely, I wouldn’t know what to say.I have so much pent up anger, bitterness, and hatred that I feel if I do ever get the chance to have people listen (really listen) to what I have to say, my tongue would cut like razors through their skin.Sadly, the truth is, no one will ever really listen, instead they’ll just be too busy thinking up the next thing to say as I speak.I have been being bombarded with a lot of people, “family”, lately that have been pushing me to do things I don’t want.These “things” are absolutely inconclusive to my true and desired long term goal; these thing that would only, really, satisfy me instantly and no more.I’ve come to the part of my life where instant gratification no longer has any effect nor do I have any desire to pursue it.I want the big picture, the whole burrito.I don’t want to be pulling mini sized gin bottles from the hotel fridge, I want the damn economy sized Gray Goose from Costco to take home.Guddamit.I’m trying to quietly plant seeds for my own success but others come walking into my garden, with a shovel, digging up random holes. Worst of all they look at me as if I am not doing anything with my life, just because I don’t shout every step I take to the rest of the world.As if I am wasting away because I don’t subject myself to a regular day job, don’t drive a fancy car, don’t like Louis Vuitton, or desire any other cookie cutter corporation lifestyle.
I’m doing a lot. All day, every day, with no breaks.I’m doing a lot more than I could have ever dreamed.I have a husband that loves me, a son that I believe is absolutely incredible, and the drive and will to try to do the impossible or at least learn how to live a life that I am content with.A life with no rules, no schedule, no guidelines to follow.
I don’t need anyone telling me that it’s not gonna happen.I don’t need anyone trying to crush my dreams.I don’t want any predictions or prophecies of what may or may not happen and what I should be afraid of.
I already have enough of myself telling me these things.I’m already up at night until 2 a.m. trying to distract myself from my every fear from failure.
It’s all projection of the same thought. These people that are trying to control what I do are just as clueless and as miserable as the next.They have lived these sad lives. These stories they tell me of disgusting divorces, abusive relationships, broken dreams, missed opportunities, and their children that have gone the wrong path and that they have lost. This is their life. Not mine.
Just hearing these things makes me realize that I am on a completely different level from them already. I’m already blessed with a head on my shoulder that can decipher that playing a victim is NOT going to get me any help from anywhere or anyone.
I’ve got the tools to put my own sh*t together.I can create my own world with out anyone else’s help, thank you very much.
Can’t people tell?
I’ve already got this.

No one escapes, No one gets out alive

It's morning and I'm doing my best thinking right now. Waiting for the coffee to finish brewing so I can pour my first mug - Hair wet, clothes a mess. I'm in a phasad for the sake of my own sanity. No one really gets it. Not really. Why I have to keep this up? It's not hard to explain but I rather not take the time, indulge, nor expose the more sad and pathetic parts of my life here on the internet.

The real world sucks.

It's the real world where I have to put on my happy face to get people to be nice to me.

Three layers of cosmetics and a tube of lipstick always in hand; All this effort just to be "presentable." To look "normal,"so that strangers won't stare at me like I'm some slob, some fresh off the boat Filipino. Mostly, in order to avoid some random person coming up to me and asking "Do you speak English?"

Fuck yeah I speak English.

It's funny what a few bottles of Maybelline can do for a person that looks as typical Islander as I do.

It's now past lunch time. 1:40 PM to be exact. I just finished my grand performance of a responsible adult. Heading to college and dropping of my son at preschool. 

I am taking up Journalism at Skyline and signed up to intern for their biweekly campus circular. I always wanted to a Journalist. I always thought that I was destined to be the next Connie Chung - when I was a child, she was the only female Asian-American role model that existed at the time. A common trait=relate. I get it when my Psychology of Race class required a whole hour session to explain the handicap effects of only white presidents surrounding the room. I really really get it.

Today, I'm the farthest thing from Connie Chung an Asian girl can be.

I was asking God to help me out the other day. To show me what on earth my purpose here is. What do I do now that I have some extra time on my hands. My "phasad" that I had to showcase this morning led me to Skyline college signing up for a late add to JOUR 120: Writing for the media. No FREAKING WAY...then the professor starts the class of with her other classes that she is adding more people in and the applications for the Newspaper crew for the "Skyline View."

Could it be? I am meant to write about something? anything? Am I really mean to write? and will people actually listen.

It starts out with me quitting my make-up job that I had forever, then getting hired for some freelance work on Complainary.com and viewpoints.com, and then all of a sudden I randomly walk into some still open - late add - Journalism classes at Skyline college?

It's almost like a big hot and cold voice. God's saying - Take a freaking hint, Mira!

I originally signed up for voice, humanities, and Spanish. I then dropped them all because the first day, John had a fever, making it impossible to get to class.  

Really, I expected to just hang out at Skyline today and drop a few meetmark catalogs and bolt.

Not at all what happened, in fact - the catalogs are still in my bag untouched and half forgotten.

Well, we'll see.

I could be reading all the signs wrong.

I could be totally just darn stupid.

I could be wasting my time, making it harder for myself, or jumping to way too many conclusions too soon.

Who knows? No one does.

But one things for sure in this little game of growing up:

No one escapes, and no one gets out alive.

So, I might as well keep trucking, and either keep making the same stupid mistakes getting no where, or finally make that single (or seven hundredth) decision that can get me closer to where I need to be.

Mira

 

Moving to Daly City with a luggage full of skeletons

Saturday morning and the weather couldn't be more perfect. It's January and somehow Daly City has managed to act like spring has already begun.
Eight years ago, when I first stepped foot in this city, I could hardly believe the fog, the cold, and the red windburn on my cheeks. The insulation in our room was terrible since their was a crack in the glass window that never was mended, or even had planned to be. We froze ourselves to sleep every night.

Today, the same time of year I had arrived eight years ago, there is hardly a cloud in sight. There is no fog, there is no windburn on my cheeks. The sun is out, the clouds are gone, and it just seems to be an infinite blue spread on the sky around me.
As I write this blog, on a Saturday morning in early January, global warming seems to be doing Daly City a big favor.

Daly City never was my ideal town. The thousands of weird filipinos, the ghetto shopping malls, the impolite strangers, the poverty, the greed. Middle class immigrant America.

But after my parents divorce, their unemployment, and an ugly never ending courtcase, my life at sixteen was the least bit priveleged.
Due to the circumstances, my parent's relied on our relatives to bring us back to America, so we could work, go to college through aid, and finally have the life that was meant for us.
The ongoing court case was that of my father and his mother (my grandmother) over the inhertance that my grandfather had left - including school ownership and many pieces of property. My father felt the desire to move us out from Los Angeles, when I was ten, to the Philippines to finalize the case. I remember those years as the most bittersweet of my life.
I gained some wonderful friends, but also went many nights with out dinner, learned what depression really was, and had to witness the weirdest and ugliest relationship develop between my mother and my cheating deadbeat dad which somehow crumbled my dreams and hopes of any chances of happiness for the rest of my life.

Skeletons in my closet. My dad sucks. and now that I am a parent - I still can't believe how much balls and "douchebag-ness" he had to just get up and leave me, my sister, and my mother. My mother, by the way, has her moments but she didn't deserve, nor is she the kind of person that deserved, what had happened to her.



In reality, I am a middle class immigrant American. Although, born and raised until I was eleven years in Los Angeles, Ca. I am very much aware and knowledgeable of the customs,culture, and language of traditional Phillipine life. Of course, mixed in forever with the California girl I always was I can't really blame any one else in this city for thinking that I may be a weird Filipino as well.

4:35 AM

Can you believe it? It's 4:30 in the morning and I'm wide awake. I haven't slept a wink. I'm not even a tad tired. And - I didn't even have any coffee today. Wow! Could I finally be under stimulated. To the point where, I'm no longer wishing some sweet sweet shut eye?

Let's not lie to myself. Mommy-hood still is deprives. I wish I was asleep right now. I also wish I knew exactly why I am awake at this very second.

I guess I just am. 

I started a brand spanking new brew of coffee, ate a avocoda-salmon bowl, and still my eyes lids don't feel the least bit heavy.

Maybe it's the prospect of things I need to do.

Maybe I'm just not as busy as I am used to, or once was.

Since quitting my job and resting - wrists, vacation, and all - I think that I may have gloriously somehow learned to pace myself, my energy. That somehow, I really have recuperated??

And now, due to these new things, this new recuperation -  I'm up. Back to the vicious cycle of all that is. 

I have no clue what to expect today now. What I'm gonna do, if I'm gonna conk out on public transpo, or just fall asleep altogether and pretend like daylight is night...

John has a dr,'s appt. and if I need to do one thing today - it should be taking him to his check up.

Hope it works out.

I forgot his Immunization Records in my mom's car, so I hope she can be a doll and stop by, on her way to work. I'm a do-do for waiting to figure that one out last minute.

 

Nothing too new here though really.

Some prospects and plans but nothing's been finalized.

I'm still struggling to stay veg. 

which I have failed at these last 3 days due to my father-in-law cooking dinner for all of us.

Meatloaf. :( 

Nothing more parallel to the anti-christ of a vegetarian diet than a sizzling, fatty, loaf of ground hamburger meat.

hotttt.

Anywho, I best be getting my first cup of joe.

I can smell the heavenly brews circulating in the kitchen - calling my name.

Imsomnia is now officially extended...

Mira