Christmas Ball

I had a good night last night at the Charles Morris Christmas Ball held at the Hilton Hotel. Was in my room earlier doing makeup for Sunny and Megan - I was so proud of myself - plucked Sunny's eyebrows and if I say so myself it was a pretty good job. I felt a little like I used to in my dancing days - haha - I make myself sound so old - when we would all cluster in a little room with mirrored walls and do each other's makeup and hair and the whole room would be filled with anticipation of the upcoming performance and after everything we would run back into the room and cry and laugh and hug each other.

I sense that this entry is about to get emotional...

Anyway on the subject of makeup, I really wish sometimes that I had a little tool for looking at the inner beauty of people and not at their outward attractiveness. Something like the disease Shallow Hal was cursed with has a little skin over my soul and I can't shake it off... and sometimes I guess I may be blinded to the good points or faults of people just because they look the way they do, and I really don't want to be like that.

Anyway, this poem by Kipling really made me want to shake off that shallow, frivolous, ditzy, flighty side of me -

IF YOU can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim,
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on!”

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

- although I am not a Man nor Kipling's "son" nor will I ever be.

Dancing last night to the jolly jazz band I felt my feet flying and my heart light

And came home to the comfort of my nightly tumbler of hot water and a cosy room.