This Is Me...and My Pride

So, the "magic" number of comments was 18 - I wanted to top the number I received for my WFMW idea. Alas, it didn't happen, even with all the widgets and linkies and what-all. I also remembered that I HAVE posted pictures of myself - here and here. But because I know some of you have been waiting with bated breath for the "reveal," this is by far the best picture of me:

Actually, I discovered after making my rash Thursday Thirteen promise to make a guest appearance that I have very few good photos that are in digital format (which may explain the Yao Ming/LL Cool J results from the celebrity website).

I do like the following snapshot of me the day Henry was born two years ago, although I also feel significantly sheepish that I applied make-up so soon after delivering a baby. Vanity! I once believed, like Anne of Green Gables, that I couldn't possibly be vain since I don't actively aspire to beauty (which in my mind would be in vain), but my vanity is nonetheless there - similar to the attempt to dye one's red hair jet black is to think about make-up soon after giving birth simply because one's first mommy photos are, frankly, terrifying.
This T13 look-alike scheme also brought me back to one of the soapboxes of my brilliant (slightly misguided) youth. When I was a sassy 19-year-old, I wrote a poem with the lines: Beauty you complimented, yet accused of me, when trying, plying silver tongue...Tell me rather I'm intelligent, fun, for such require more character than face; And you'll please, or woo, at a quicker pace when true compliments are what you give...

What a snide little sonnet! Me thinketh I protested too much. As proud as I am of my 10-minute beauty routine - not to mention my Dorian Grey philosophy of living right so beauty will just magically show on the outside, and my 4th grade teacher telling my mom at parent-teacher conferences that the only thing I could improve was to comb my hair every once in a while - I've really always longed, just a little, to make a room go silent with my beauty when I walked in. Just once. Like Yuliya Tymoshenko, who can make astute world leaders bumble and fawn like so many awkward school boys.

I hate to admit it, but I was quite stressed out about this little picture stunt I unwittingly created because I started to believe what my (best) friend told you about looking like one of my favorite gorgeous actresses, and now the pressure to produce the real-live photographic truth! Gulp.

But tonight I was once again reminded not to take myself so seriously, because just as I was hunting down a good enough photo, Calvin came in after his bath and was playing around with his dad. He paused and looked at this picture on the screen. Then he said with the sweetest little wistfulness in his voice, "Aw, Dad. Mom's so cute, huh?"

A little heavier than I want to be, a lot more tired than I should be, and not what I thought those glasses really looked like on me, but to at least one little boy, I'm cute. I hope Juliette Binoche knows what that feels like. I think it's just about like being the most beautiful woman in the world.

But if you all don't mind, I'm going to keep the Tonka truck as my profile pic.

And I will consider carefully what my next T13 will be, because if it causes this much introspection and self-revelation, it needs to result in at least 19 comments or I'm giving it up.

Incidentally, about comments - Auntie M - if you don't know what to say, I'm looking for, "Uproarious! Three thumbs up! The feel-good post of the summer!" or something like that. I think that's quite witty. At the very least it suits my vanity.