Tell the World I'm Coming Home!!!

Last August while I was vacationing in Florida, I went down to the inlet that connects the intra-coastal canal to the Atlantic Ocean on the morning of my last day there.  My friend John directed me to go to the inlet, and I went there with a purpose:  In my hand I carried an empty wine bottle with a letter sealed inside.  The letter was a prayer to God, pouring my heart out to Him and asking him to please help me find a way to return to Florida to stay forever.  You see, I finally realized not long ago that I’m just not happy here in Illinois. I do not fit in with rural Midwestern culture, and I just simply don’t belong here.  A carefree, independent glamour girl does not belong in a land of soccer moms, Tupperware parties, white picket fences, a-husband-and-2-kids-before-age-25, and other cliché small-town conformities. After having a lifelong obsession with the ocean since I was practically a baby and absolutely despising cold weather, my last visit to southern Florida convinced me that is where I truly belong.  Whenever I go there to visit, I truly feel right at home…like I’m supposed to be there.  Sure it’s fun looking at all the beautiful palm trees everywhere and the beaches because I’m a tourist from a very different region of the country, but there is still something about all of that that just feels like home to me.  After my last visit, I became desperate to find a way to move there and live out the rest of my life there.  I began by obtaining a Florida Teacher’s Certificate and applying for various professional jobs in the southeastern counties of Florida.  Unfortunately, with the tanking economy and job market (and a mailing address that is 1,200 miles away), getting many responses from job search efforts has been dismal.  So in December, I took a gamble and decided to try a different route to get to Florida:  I applied to graduate school at Florida Atlantic University.  My last 4 months have been spent taking multiple exams for my Florida teaching certificate and entrance into FAU.  Anyway, I went to the pier at the inlet that morning in August, took the bottle containing my message to God inside, and tossed it into the fast-moving water  to be carried away out to sea.  Sometime since then, God must have found my message to Him, because today I suddenly received a surprise email from the director of the History Department at Florida Atlantic University welcoming me to the graduate student program for the Fall 2012 term.  In merely 5 months from now, I will be going home to Florida to stay forever.

I was not expecting to receive an answer regarding my acceptance so soon.  I had applied for admission last December and had been diligent in fulfilling all of the admission requirements as quickly as possible, but I was not expecting to receive an answer until after my upcoming in-person meeting with the Department at FAU.  So today’s announcement was a wonderful unexpected surprise.  Within the next week, I will be travelling to Florida to meet with the faculty and have lunch with some fellow graduate students, take a campus tour, get started on the Financial Aid process, look housing options, open a bank account, and interview for one of the coveted Teacher Assistant positions at FAU.  If offered a position as a teacher’s assistant, it will pay part of my tuition as well as pay me a monthly stipend for income.  Although I would be very busy as both a full-time graduate student and a teacher’s assistant, becoming a T.A. would be a blessing for me since I will be in need of income once I leave my current job here in Illinois.  With my background as a school teacher, I should be a strong candidate for one of the T.A. positions.  It would also provide me with invaluable teaching experience at the college level since I want to work as a college professor after graduation.

It’s hard for me to believe that in just a few months I will be leaving behind every person and physical surrounding I have ever known and living out the rest of my life in an entirely different part of the country.  As much as I dislike rural Illinois, this is all I have ever known for my entire life.  As much as I can’t wait to get the Hell out of this place, the thought of being completely alone all the way across the country from my family and friends still makes me feel a little apprehensive. I have already begun growing a small circle of acquaintances in the area I will be moving to and I hope to quickly make many more friends upon moving to Boca Raton, because I’m going to need a little help getting settled in at first. With no family nearby, any help that my new friends can offer me will be greatly appreciated! As the winter season continues on for the next two months, I will take joy in knowing that this will be the last winter I will ever endure. And when the warm days of spring and summer arrive, they will last forever for me.  As I trade in the cornfields, colored leaves, and snow storms for palm trees, ocean, and surf boards, and hurricanes, I will still spend the remainder of my time here reflecting on the landscapes, special places, and memories I have grown up with. I know now that I should reflect and savor these images and experiences before I close the door on this chapter of my life and open the door to the next one.  You can be sure that I will be impatiently counting down the weeks until my moving day on August 4th, but the time will go by quickly.  To my friends and loved ones in Illinois, get your "Jordan time" in while you still can, because this may be the last time you get to see me or be with me.

Right now, I can't describe the peace and fulfillment I feel when picturing my future life of endless summer weather, sea storms, sailboats, sea shells, seafood, surf boards, walks along the beach with my iPod in the evenings, driving to work past rows of palm trees in the mornings, and a new home by the sea FILLED with nautical-inspired decor.  It's exactly what I often daydreamed about for many years.  And someday when my time here on this earth is through, I will be laid to rest in the sea where I belong...a true mermaid's burial.  I asked God to give me this life I envisioned for myself, and He did.  He understood that this is where I truly belong, and He helped make it happen.  And for the rest of my life I will be able to tell everyone how He did this for me.  My prayers have been answered, but the work has just begun.

The Wonders of Permanent Cosmetics

Apparently even many of my closest friends do not know this, but I have been filling in my eyebrows with a brow pencil for the last 13 years.  Over the years, I mastered the feathering & shaping technique and became so skilled at it (as you can see above) that many of my friends and fellow beauty pageant contestants had no idea that my eyebrows weren't fully real.  In fact, very little of them were real anymore, because I barely even had any eyebrows anymore.

I first began getting my eyebrows waxed when I was 12 years old.  As a kid, I had some pretty monstrous thick eyebrows....and this example was even AFTER I began getting them waxed!!  So you probably can't even imagine what they looked like before I began getting them waxed!

Over the course of 10+ years of waxing and plucking, my eyebrows got thinner and thinner and eventually stopped growing back almost completely.  And thus my face began to look bare and naked with almost no eyebrows left to frame it.  Not attractive.  Hence, the eyebrow pencil became my new best friend.

After several years of having to painstakingly draw my eyebrows on every day with a pencil, I began to get tired of the hassle.  Then one day while I was getting my nails done, I noticed that all of the Asian women in the nail salon had perfectly shaped eyebrows.  I complimented one of the girls on her beautiful brows, and she admitted to me that her eyebrows weren't real either....they were tattooed!!  Out of curiosity and fascination, I began questioning her about how it was done, how much it cost, how much it hurt, how permanent it was, etc. As much as I hated having to mess with an eyebrow pencil every day, I was very leery about getting anything permanent tattooed onto my body....especially my face!  That is the reason why I decided I would never get a tattoo on my body, because it's too permanent and I know that someday years from now I won't want it anymore and it will be stuck on my body.  However, after mulling it over in my mind for a few weeks, I finally decided I would go ahead and take my chances with getting permanent eyebrows instead of having to draw them on for the rest of my life.  I figured that having a set of eyebrows permanently tattooed onto my face wasn't something I would quickly tire of having, and as long as I made sure they were perfectly shaped BEFORE the tattooing began, I would be happy with the results.  I had seen a billboard displayed in my hometown for many years for Grace Your Face Permanent Cosmetics.  I checked out the business webpage on the internet and decided to give them a call.  I met for a consultation with Debbi Sawyer, the owner, and went over all of the facts about the procedure.  To my relief, cosmetic tattooing is not as permanent as a real tattoo.  It lasts up to 5 years and requires a few sessions at first, but gradually fades and requires periodic touch-ups after awhile.  This helped ease my nervousness about having permanently shaped eyebrows.  So I said "Let's do it" and took the plunge.  Here are the end results after three sessions.....

It certainly looks a lot better and makes a huge difference, doesn't it!!  Before tattooing, Debbi helped me to painstakingly draw on the perfect eyebrow shape I was looking for and then filled it in with cosmetic powder injected through a tattooing needle.  A topical anesthetic is applied before tattooing to numb the area and reduce pain.  Most women who have cosmetic tattooing done report that they feel no pain at all.  I must be a little different, because I always feel some pain no matter how much numbing cream we use beforehand.  I also have quite a bit of bleeding during the procedure, which is also not typical for most women.  Once the procedure is complete, you have to apply salve several times a day for a week to help the micro-wounds heal.  It's also common to have some pain and swelling afterwards, so I use Ibuprofen and an ice pack.  Due to tanning and the skin-regeneration products I use, my eyebrows seem to fade more than others, so I have a touch-up done every few months. According to Debbi, my eyebrows are by far the most voluptuous she has ever done...most women seeking her services ask for eyebrows that far less shapely and more natural looking.  But when I told her I wanted "Kim Kardashian eyebrows", she was more than up for the challenge!

Grace Your Face Cosmetics does cosmetic eyebrow, eyeliner, eyeshadow, lip liner, and full lip tattooing.  I absolutely LOVE my new eyebrows and no longer having to mess around with eyebrow pencils.  Whether I'm just waking up in the morning, going swimming, or doing any other activity, I always have perfectly shaped eyebrows that won't come off with water or sweat.  If you're interested in looking into permanent cosmetics for yourself, visit Debbi's website at http://www.graceyourface.net   I can vouch that she does EXCELLENT work!!!