“Leaves no oily residue,” my eye-makeup remover reads. I just read that this morning while I was washing off the oily residue from my eye-makeup remover.
Just tell the truth. Jesus. “Removes your makeup pretty cheaply because it’s the drug store brand.” You know what I really like is that Clinique eye-makeup remover, but it’s too rich for my blood. Even though I got new lips yesterday like I could afford it.
Wait. What?
On Tuesday, I had a consultation at the same place that I get m’Botox and m’Juvederm. In case you’re local, I go to Barber Center and I see Robin.
You know I hate my lips, right? And I already have a Gor-Tex implant in the top one, from 1998, and lemme show you my lips, former.

Okay. Here’s me and my blemish and my lips, fmr. I took this Monday. I’ve no idea why. I’m certain there was a reason at the time. …Oh, I remember. Self-obsession.
So I went to the consultation on Tuesday, and this Robin over there, man does she look good. Not fake cat-lady good, either. The point is, she said, “Thin lips are really hard to bring out. We can add bloo-dee-blah and see if that works, and on top of that, add bleee-dee-bleep-bloo if we wanna keep going.”
That all sounded good to me, but she’s so in demand that she wasn’t available to do it till August 29. “That’s fine,” I thought, and don’t you hate people who say, “I thought to myself”? Who the hell else do you think to?
Anyway, my theory was that’d give me time to save my pennies.
Then yesterday at work, the phone rang.
“Robin has had a cancellation. Do you want to come in today?”
I wonder if we’ve met. Hi, I’m June. I’m impulsive. How do you do? LET’S STREAK.
I mean, I could have said, “Oh, I’ll wait till August till I’ve saved my pennies.”
“I’m taking an early lunch!” I announced, and hightailed it right to the office of beauty and naturalness. The building of aging gracefully.
While I was waiting in the lobby, my old workplace called and up and offered me a job. I am not kidding you. It’s the place I worked at circa 2008–2009. I demurred. Then I went in and had my lips done did. Talk about your dramatic day.

This is what she used on me, and look at this bitch. If I had her regular lips, I’d be praising Jesus and all the saints.
“We’ll try Volbella,” Robin-who-looks-great said, (“Volbella.” Good lord.) “and if we want to keep going with other stuff, we can.”
First, I iced my lips, and I don’t mean I murdered them. Then she put this numbing cream on me, and maybe this process was the other way around. It was all a whirl. I woke up yesterday not knowing NEW LIPS were at hand.
Here’s me yesterday with the numbing gel, waiting for my million shots to the lips. SHOT TO THE LIPS, AND YOU’RE TO BLAME. Darlin’ you give aging a bad name.
I mean, I think you have to hand it to me that with all this last-minute-ness, I thought, Oh, shit, I’ll probably blog about this. I should take a fow-toe. So I did. And flattering lights in there? When the lights, shine down, on the biddy.
How much of that lidocaine you been takin’, honey?
Then she gave me the shots.
Mother of pearl.
Look. I get through Botox like it’s nothing. And I had Ultherapy and wanted to die (I think I’m beginning to see the results of that, by the way). This pain was somewhere in between.
Mostly, the fact that my lips were so numb freaked me out. It felt like they were 11 feet wide, and I worried, “Am I able to breathe? I can’t really feel my breathe parts.”
And then also, and I want you to brace your own self, but having needles poked right in your lips really hurts. But each shot included lidocaine (Take your silver spoon, dig your grave), so it got more numb as time went on.
Who here is hoping hard I keep referencing cocaine songs?
We used up the Volbella, and after some discussion, in which my lips did not actually move, we decided I’ll stay with just this for now, give it two weeks to settle in, and see if I want to add this other stuff on top of it.

So here they are now.
“It looks very natural,” my Aunt Kathy said, when of course I immediately texted her the results of my day of needles.
“Yeah, that’s the problem,” I wrote her back. “Natural is never my goal.”

So here’s before, with the flattering numbing cream, and after. I think I will probably go get more shit put in. Because last night Ned stopped by, which by the way, I pulled into my drive just as he did, because I had been out on a very important mission.
Faithful Reader and now Mother of One of My Foster Kittens LaUral sent me info on this: rosé vodka. You know in the cartoons where someone takes off in a hurry and there’s a little puff of smoke behind them?
“Hi. I’m a girl,” my new lips said to the indifferent woman at the liquor store. “I hear there’s a rosé vodka.”
She sighed and took me over there. To the vagina section of the liquor store. The only good thing that happened was this song came on:
and it turns out, we both love it, if you’ll forgive the pun. So we had us a little dance party in the vagina aisle.
Anyway, so Ned popped over, and I was all, “Oooo! I won’t say a thing, and we’ll see if he notices my new giant lips.”
He didn’t.
Oh, I was pursing them, and smiling with them even though they hurt. I was turning my head in every direction. That male, straight motherfucker.

Anyway, I can tell, but I will probably add to the lip sitch in a few weeks.
Oh, and yes to the rosé vodka! I tried it straight and it kind of tasted like rosé wine, but then I added it to my PowerAde Zero Fruit Punch flavor, and it was a dream. I hardly ever drink now, because I’m tryina be thin and also wine never fails to make my head hurt, so I think the last time I drank was that party back in early May. The good news is I have one drink and I’m all painting my body gold and singing Wild Irish Rosé.
Don’t give me any lip,
June