Melanie

My face painting partner and dear friend, Vicki.

Hunsaders Annual Fall Festival starts this weekend on Saturday and will run for the next 3 weekends. They added a third weekend last year and it was  so successful  they are continuing with it this year.

This is my 12th year face painting out at the festival! I cannot believe that it has been that long for me.

Years ago, my mom and I used to do crafts and we did a booth at Hunsaders. My friend, Kim Hunsader, who helps run the festival called me and asked me if I wanted to help the face painter. I had never painted on a “moving canvas” before but thought why not? I helped the girl, and had a great time. The next year Kim called me and asked me if I wanted to actually do it myself. I didn’t hesitate to say yes!

Being the perfectionist that I am, I immediately started researching professional face paints and ideas. I went to a very expensive class by two guys that are now world renowned artists. And then I enlisted my dear friend, Vicki Callahan, to be my partner in crime! I hired two other painters and the rest is history.

I have painted pregnant bellies, bald heads, boobs, tiny babies, as close to butt cracks and you can get and then an estimated 30,000 kids over the past 10 years!! It hasn’t been all fun and games, my poor friend Vicki  has gotten all the bad luck and has been nearly puked on, spit on and had a girl pass at on her.    She keeps singing and smiling though.

The experiences I have had and the relationships I have created  over the years have thoroughly blessed and enriched my life.

I have painted little ones faces as a two year old and watched them grow up over the years. I have watched my own children each year go out there with me and run around eating the food, playing the games and performing with their school band. Now, they are in college.  Unfortunately,  I have watched people get sick and die. I have watched people have babies, and grow up and get married. I have seen the same people every single year come out and set their booth up in the same place.  I have seen the festival grow  to that which literally thousands attend from all across our state.

This is actually a side job that I do, and painting out at Hunsaders has been my “Christmas” money for the past 11 years.  However, 20% of all my proceeds goes back to Hunsaders and they donate to a charity of their choice.  I am so grateful to Trish and Kim at Hunsaders for allowing me to be a part of the festival, and letting me be the only face painter for all these years.

Logan and Lexie at the Pumpkin Patch

Speaking of charities, a good friend of mine has been in a booth next to me out there for the past 6 years donating his time and money for several charities.  And I would like to give a shout out to him.  His name is Chis Egler.  You might know him as a Ford salesman!  Or, better known as the “Bass for Bucks” man.  Each year he holds a raffle at Hunsaders for BUDS (Bringing up Downs Syndrome) as well as two other charities.  This man and his wife, Sue, donate THEIR time and spend each weekend at Hunsaders in their booth selling $1 raffle tickets for BUDS EVERY year.   The selflessness of this man and his wife is humbling to me.

Come out and see his booth (Next to mine, outside the children’s circle along the 675 HWY)) and support a wonderful cause)  In the raffle this year, he is giving away another TV or a $1,000 cash!!

As many of you know, I severely sprained my ankle several months ago.  Almost 3 months to be exact, but whose counting?  If you know, me you also know that I LOVE to wear heels and am rarely seen in that four letter word:  FLAT.  Five letters plural… FLATS.  (But that didn’t work as well with my story)  So, I sprained my ankle a grade 3 sprain.  I HAVE to visit that scrumptious Dr. Arthur Valadie every two weeks, and have to go to physical therapy for two months.  I couldn’t walk for a week, I mean NO WEIGHT bearing at all on this foot.  But after my first few visits of PT, I ask him, “So, when can I wear heels?”.  He laughs, like I am joking.  I am serious, and when he realizes I am serious, he says “UM, YOU CAN’T”.  Tears just rolled down my face.  Now I know many of you must be thinking GET A LIFE MELANIE.  But stay with me.

I continue my doctors appointments and therapy.  Dr. Valadie says I can wear heels by my birthday which is in September.  Hooray!  In the next breath, he says my healing time is at least 6 months. So, in the interim I purchase the most expensive pair of tennis shoe “I” have ever bought.  As well as pair of Alegria shoes.  Those of you that are nurses know this shoe well.  They aren’t cheap either. 

The day we bought the tennis shoes, I had Lexie pushing me in a wheelchair because I still couldn’t walk.  I told her to get me to first store she saw that sold shoes. (We were at DeSoto Square so we knew our time was short before we would be shot, mugged or raped)  She dumps me at Finish Line and there and young man old enough to be my son attempts to help me.  He sees what I have done and asks how I did it.  I tell him like I have everyone…..with a sheepish grin…..”trying out for  a show”.  He tells me he has sprained his ankle 20 times.  No joke!!  I am stunned by this, his most recent was two weeks ago and here he is standing and working.  Yet there I sit like a senior citizen in a wheel chair barely able to walk to the wall to look at the shoes.  Hm….

Anyway, he helps me pick out a shoe and I can’t even fit my fat, swollen foot in it.  *Sigh*  I buy them anyway.  They sit in the box for two weeks because I have never paid this much money for my favorite pair of heels.

Fast forward a month and now I am walking and on a mission to get some (*cough*) F L A T S for work.  I head to Pelts in Sarasota.  Lucky for me the girls in there were awesome and they had shoes for hairstylists and nurses.  The first pair one lady brought me looked like something my great grandmother might wear.  I turned my nose up and said, “Don’t EVEN take those out of the box”.  I needed some support but yet fashion…is that possible?  I find the Alegria patten leather black, Mary Jane’s.  I am thinking they are “funky”.  That is until Lexie sees them and busts a gut laughing.   I can’t win.  Stay with me.

I wear these shoes despite my daughter’s bratty opinion since I believe I am the one that taught HER the definition of style in the first place.  Here is where the story literally will make you pee your pants.  So either grab a laptop and get on the toilet or get your depends.

I get ready for work as usual, “trying” to make myself look good despite the way I feel.  I put on some nice pants and a shirt and my new Mary Jane’s.  Due to my lack of mobility I have gained a few pounds (or it could be the wine, I’m not sure) either way, I DO feel my pants should be on a person of smaller stature but I waddle my fat butt in them anyway.  I put great emphasis on my makeup because I figure your FACE is what they see first, right?

Off I go to work, but first I have to get gas.  When I pulled into the Shell gas station, it was as if the world went into slow motion like in a movie……I pulled right behind this woman.  There she stood pumping her gas.  The FIRST thing I saw were her HEELS, they were beautiful high, open toed.  My eyes couldn’t help but follow up and see her slim legs in a white mini skirt and a beautiful black flowing shirt.  She had long dark hair pulled back in a pony tail.  She stood pumping gas into her brand new convertible  Jaguar.  For a second I thought I was a lesbian. 

There I sat in my sedan, with my chubby hands on the steering wheel gawking at her like a 13 year old boy. Let’s not forget my muffin top hanging over my pants and my rockin chunky Mary Jane F L A T S.   Talk about a bad day.  Man did I feel like crap.  As funny as this story is, the truth is I truly felt inadequate.  WHY? 

The Dictionary’s definition of Vanity is:

noun, plural -ties, adjective

noun

1. excessive pride in one’s appearance,
qualities, abilities, achievements, etc.; character or quality of being vain;
conceit: Failure to be elected was a great blow to his vanity.

2. an instance or display of this
quality or feeling.

3. something about which one is vain.

4. lack of real value; hollowness;
worthlessness: the vanity of a selfish life.

5. something worthless, trivial, or
pointless.

I never thought of myself as vain….that is until now.  I SO felt number 5.  All because of a pair of shoes?  It was an eye opener to me.  I have never struggled with self worth or self confidence.   I have always been comfortable with who and what I was….until THAT day.  That wasn’t that long ago, so I don’t have all the answers, but what I do know is this.

My shoes don’t make Melanie. FLAT or HEEL I can be beautiful in either IF I choose.  Because it IS a choice. We all know that true beauty comes from within……but wouldn’t we be unattractive if we didn’t wash our hair, brush our teeth,  put on some makeup and take pride in our appearance?

BTW, there is one final note…..when the hot chick turned around she had a horse face. 

My beautiful heels

Fat Mary Jane’s

Hello everyone,  I had such a great response to my Camping Chronicles that I decided to start a blog of “My Life”.  It seems as though the things that happen to me make people laugh.  Or should I say it is probably my reaction to how I handle the things that happen to me that make you laugh and  want to read more!   More than one person has told me, “Please go camping again Melanie!”   I plan to write about everything and anything that happens….happy and sad.  Hopefully I will make you laugh, cry and inspire you.  Hang on, I promise it will be a ride!!!