Q: If you're struggling to get a job because of your lack of experience, respectfully tell friends and family that you're trying to find clients. Offer to do their funeral makeup for free so you can practice your skills. Pre-arrange everything with the client, including makeup preferences and choosing a reference photo to work from. If you already have plenty of experience, continue to do this type of freelance work as a way to earn income in addition to your funeral home work. If you'd like to increase your chances of getting a mortuary makeup artist job, get mortuary qualifications. You can train across a wide range of mortuary skills so you qualify for more mortuary positions. Training in multiple mortuary fields will make you a more attractive job candidate at smaller funeral homes where they may not be able to hire a large staff. Since it may be difficult to get experience without landing a job first, contact local mortuary makeup artists and ask if you can learn from them.  Keep in mind that most apprenticeships are unpaid. It's important to have your cosmetology license before you begin an apprenticeship because you'll probably be working with deceased bodies. If you can’t find a mentor or a way to get lots of experience, don’t worry. Many mortuary makeup artists get their initial experience after they’ve gotten their first job. As long as you have your training and license, you are still a viable candidate for a mortuary makeup artist position. Many funeral homes will want to train you according to their preferred practices.
A: Volunteer your services to gain experience. Attend mortuary science school for an emphasis on funeral home work. Ask to apprentice under another mortuary makeup artist. Get on the job training.

Q: Skunks are scavengers, so they'll eat anything nutritious they can find. If you have trees that produce nuts, berries, crabapples, or other fruits, clean them up by raking your yard as often as necessary.  Other vegetation, like piles of grass clippings, should also be discarded, since it may contain seeds or other sources of food for skunks. If you have a garden, harvest ripe fruit and vegetables as soon as you can, to prevent a hungry skunk from feasting on them. Use a tray under your bird feeder to catch most of the seeds, and clean up stray seeds dropped by birds often. Similarly to raccoons and other stray animals, skunks can survive on garbage alone. It's important to keep your trash cans properly sealed. Sometimes regular garbage cans simply won't do. To defend against scavenging animals, you can buy locking garbage cans at a fairly cheap price at your local home improvement store.  If possible, store your trash bins in a shed or in your garage at night, so their smell doesn't attract skunks. Use an enclosed compost bin, since skunks like to eat old fruit and vegetable peels, eggshells, and other items that you may be composting. Skunks like to make their homes under decks, porches, and in other sheltered areas. Close off spaces that may be appealing to skunks using rocks, fencing, or plywood.  Log piles and piles of lumber or building materials can serve as shelters for skunks. Store the materials in a shed or bin to prevent skunks from moving in. Large bushes are also good shelters for skunks. If you see skunks hanging out in bushes or low vegetation, you might want to trim back the branches so it's not quite as appealing.
A: Remove nuts, berries, and other natural food sources. Protect your waste. Close off hiding places.

Q: Listening to Arabic music is a great way to immerse yourself in the language as well as become more familiar with common words and phrases. The typically repetitive nature of song lyrics reinforces the words and phrases in your mind.  Major music streaming services typically have an Arabic channel or Arabic playlists. Check with your favorite streaming service to find out what's available. If you happen upon an artist that you like, search them online. You may be able to download their albums or watch music videos for some of the songs you like. Movies and television allow you to listen to more natural Arabic conversations. Many popular movies have also been dubbed into Arabic, so if you find a movie you're already familiar with, you'll find you start to comprehend a lot more of what's going on and what the characters are saying.  Fantasy and historical drama tend to be dubbed in Modern Standard Arabic (MSA), while contemporary comedies and dramas are usually dubbed in either Egyptian Arabic or Levantine Arabic. Reality television tends to use a limited vocabulary and exposes you to more realistic unscripted conversations. You likely learned how to read in your native language with simple children's books. This is also an effective way to start reading Arabic. Copying the sentences from the stories can help you practice your writing as well.  For free children's ebooks, visit http://www.childrenslibrary.org/icdl/SimpleSearchCategory?langid=309. Visit the Arabic Collections Online at http://dlib.nyu.edu/aco/ to access more than 10,000 free digitized books in Arabic. Use sticky notes to write the Arabic word for objects in your home and label them. Every time you see the object, repeat the Arabic word for that object aloud. Over time, you'll come to think of that object by its Arabic name first. This can be a great way to expand your vocabulary as well as get your brain used to thinking in Arabic.  Extensive Arabic vocabulary lists are available at http://arabic.desert-sky.net/vocab.html to help you create your labels. Once you've committed your first set of labels to memory, take them off and use different labels. Generally, it's a good idea to go from large to small so you don't get confused about what the label applies to. For example, you might first label your sofa as a whole, then add labels for "arm" or "cushion." Al Jazeera has a website available at https://learning.aljazeera.net/en that offers news as well as basic learning stories and videos in basic Arabic to help you learn the language. From the website, you can also take language level tests or chat with an Arabic teacher.  Even if you don't use the video resources, you can take advantage of the online dictionary available on the site to look up words you don't know. Al Jazeera broadcasts and language lessons primarily focus on Modern Standard Arabic (MSA). However, you'll also find lessons on Mediterranean Arabic. The ultimate test of immersion is spending time in a country where the majority of the people speak Arabic. Simply sitting at a café and listening to the conversation around you can help improve your comprehension. Try to go to a country that speaks the form of Arabic you've been studying, or you may find you have a difficult time understanding people despite your study. For example, if you've been studying Levantine Arabic, you would want to travel to Lebanon or Jordan rather than to Egypt.
A:
Listen to Arabic music. Watch movies and television in Arabic. Read children's books in Arabic. Label items around your house with their Arabic names. Practice reading and listening comprehension with Al Jazeera. Travel to an Arabic country.