My Stash

I sorted my stash tonight, and made a horrific discovery. One of my maintenance inhalers (Qvar) expired in October 2006. Even I'm not messing around with that - in the trash it goes. I also discovered that the sample of my regular inhaler (Ventolin) given to me in December by my allergist expired in June 2009. Harumph.

Ironically, earlier in the evening, while chatting with Dr. P on the phone, I discovered a jar of pasta sauce that expired in December 2007. It was unopened. Dr. P advised me to toss it. I put it back in the pantry. (It was unopened!*) I did, however, toss out the jar of pasta sauce that expired in June 2009, which seems to be a busy month for products to expire in my household. (It was half empty, and I thought I spotted mold in it, although it was refrigerated.**)

Fortunately, my 'stache stash is stocked and ready to rock the world, should I ever need a clever disguise or seven. Steph gave Husband a new extra long fake mustache and a mini mustache comb for the holidays. Between the asthma meds and the synthetic hair and glue, we are good to go.

*God, I am turning into my aunt. If I ever serve salad dressing that expired two years ago, then claim it is fine because it is unopened, I give the recipient of said dressing permission to slap me.
**There is hope for me yet.

Swish

If I were a cat wearing corduroy pants, no one would need to tie a bell around my neck to warn the little animals that I was coming. The swishing sound that my pants make when my thighs rub together as I walk would alert them to my presence. Meow.

No matter what I weighed or looked like, "chub rub" (a term I learned from my friend Alex Elliot) has always bothered me. I can't wear skirts without putting something (tights, shorts, whatever) between my bare flesh, otherwise my legs are red and burning within a few hours. Warm up pants are even noisier than corduroys. SWISH!

Now that I've got that out in the open, I'm off to pluck out my chin hairs. Such is life.

Tweeze This

While at my local pharmacy yesterday to buy Sudafed 12 Hour, I cut through the beauty products aisle. The tweezer selection made me pause. Revlon alone manufacturers maybe ten different types of tweezers. I studied them keenly.

Approximately 90% of Revlon's tweezers are identified for use on eyes. The other tweezer was for "special" uses, primarily removing ingrown hairs. I found another tweezer online for removing splinters. What I did not see, however, was any mention that ladies use tweezers to pluck out our chin hairs.

What?!?! Did I just spill some sort of horrifying secret? Women pluck chin hairs?!?! Goodness gracious! How gauche to mention aloud, let alone in potentially mixed company!!!! Yes, I am a terrible person. I want to buy tweezers that keep my goatee under control, which is what I mainly use tweezers for. (Once in a while, I pick at my eyebrows, butt mostly they get along on their own splendidly, protecting my eyeballs from debris as eyebrows should.) If such an honest product is ever produced, I will be the first to buy them. My suggested name for these tweezers is "Not By the Hair on My Chinny Chin Chin."

Incidentally, the number of pink tweezers sold on drugstore.com is disturbing. What is it with the fucked up notion that if women use a product, it must be pink? I happen to like pink as much as the next women, but this is ridiculous. If I'm going to yank the hairs out of my chin and jaw, I really don't need a pink tweezer to remind me that I am engaging in an un-womanly activity. Take your pink tweezers, hammers, pots, and whatever and shove them up your pretty pink assholes, you marketing and manufacturing idiots!

I Shot the Sheriff

But I did not shoot the deputy.

This is the kind of wackiness that may or may not take place at a cooking party thrown by Hot Pot, my brother-in-law's new business. Husband says that I look just like a sheriff from the Wild West. I am so going to invest in some Wild West Sheriff Gear and kick off my new career as a drag king. I believe that I have truly found my calling.

Letter to My Body - Sort Of

On Valentine's Day, I kicked off BlogHer's Letter to My Body initiative. The Town Crier kicked off Phase II to the project with a wonderful perspective on infertility. As I've mentioned before, I have polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS), which would make it difficult for me to get knocked up if I should ever lose my remaining shreds of sanity and decide that I want to have a baby. Clearly, the infertility problem doesn't keep me up at night. The delightful other symptoms of PCOS are another story.

While reading other women's letters over the past two weeks, I nearly bust a gut laughing when One Fat Momma wrote:

I know I complain about getting zits and blackheads even though you are pushing 30, but secretly? I like picking at them, so it’s not such a hardship. I’m probably jinxing myself by saying this, but sometimes I like to live dangerously.

Because seriously? That's how I feel about my chin hairs. Damn, I hate them, but they sure are fun to pick at. When I have insomnia, de-bearding myself makes for an excellent way to pass time. There's something oddly cathartic about plucking hairs. It's certainly better than my nervous habit of peeling away all the flesh on my cuticles.

Still, when I notice the coarse black hairs on my chinny chin chin, it is upsetting. The extra androgens that cause them - and my slightly-elevated-level of insulin - are not cool. They fuck with my moods pretty badly. I would very much like it if these competing hormones would go away, but I guess this is the one body I got, so I'll deal with it. Plus, there's the added incentive that body snatching aliens probably aren't into bearded chicks, so I got that going for me.

Anyway, 'twas a long day, which explains my late post. I taught my last budgeting class at the local university in the morning, then ran around like an idiot in the afternoon. I also gave in to my curiosity and had my Tarot cards read. It was very interesting, and the cards said lots of nice things. I don't know how much I really believe these things, but it made me feel less anxious. The occult is a fantastic deal for therapy. Long live witches!

Gripes and Grunts

While I could have arrived home from my delightful weekend with Count Mockula before the clock rolled to Tuesday, I decided that I'd save money and take a shared van service from the airport instead of a cab. Sure, it was about 1/3 of the price of a cab, but it also took three times as long to get back. First we drove all over JFK to pick other people up, then we drove all over Manhattan to drop them off. Compounding my misery, the van did not crank the heat up, my feet got numb, and then the driver misunderstood my directions ("Please make a left and pull over to the far corner") and instead drove a block out of the way. At least I had the chance to hear a hilarious "sexy" ad on the radio on how KY heating lubricant will make your Valentine's night extra good multiple times while shivering in the van. Hell, maybe I could've used some to help my feet.

Anyway, before I left for my weekend trip, I carefully checked my punim for any signs of chin hairs. There wasn't even a bud. By the time I got home tonight, I could have been mistaken for a Hasidic guy. How the hell do those suckers grow so fucking fast? And how can I harness my chin hair growing power to help men who worry about receding hairlines? If I could unlock the secret, I'd be a rich woman who could afford a cab home from the airport.

Birthplace of Democracy

When I voted in Tuesday's primary, I felt like I did my part for democracy, rather than what we've had for the past two presidential administrations, which is democrazy. While I believe that Sen. Clinton's health plan is superior to Sen. Obama's, I also think that Clinton is a candidate I don't entirely trust. Of course, she's far better than any of the Republican candidates and I will do everything I can to make sure she is our next president if she is the Democratic nominee, but today I cast my vote for Obama. I think he would make a fine president.

However, if in November, we do somehow wind up with another four years of Republican theocracy (theocrazy?) and fiscal corruption, I am moving to an island in Greece. Why an island in Greece? I wish I could say it is because I want to return the roots of Western civilization or something profound like that, but the truth is that I am obsessed with Greek yogurt. Until my friend Mara introduced me to it in early December, I had no idea that yogurt could be so thick and rich. Not to harp on my pudding obsession, but seriously, Greek yogurt is like yogurt pudding. To live among a people who produce such amazing yogurt would be an honor.

Also, I really love feta cheese. This actually makes a lot of sense because I am a Capricorn (aka The Goat), and as the nutty talk show host Mike said to me this summer, "Beavers suckle beavers; sheep suckle sheep. Why should babies drink formula?" Of course, that sentence just me laugh at the time, but now I see its truth: as a human goat, I obviously prefer items made from goat milk. (There's an extremely icky path we can also go down here about making cheese from human milk, but let's not.)

Not understanding Greek is going to be a large obstacle for me, but really, when learning any foreign language, it's all Greek to me. (yuk yuk.) I'll fit right in amongst the furry goats and hairy people anyway. While my dream of living on a goat farm in Greece is tempting, if not extremely smelly, I really do hope that it does not come to fruition. Let's go Obama! It's time for change in the US.

Blah Blah Blah

Shit that is on my mind this morning:

1. Why will my brain not shut the fuck up when it is time for sleeping so that I can actually rest? Everything else is in place and ready for dreamland – heavy eyelids, slow breathing, stretched out body – but my fucking brain is just chattering away at 100 miles an hour. Yes, I need anti-anxiety meds, STAT!

2. Why is my laptop a fucking piece of shit lately? It takes forever to load up and get running. Then frequently freezes. This morning I wrote a very long email re-explaining the planned system of child care services to someone who should have known better for a variety of reasons (i.e. – he's been told what everything is a hundred times already and in my previous email to him, I spelled things out again – SIGH), and then after I hit send, the fucking system froze. Instead of sending the message, it saved the first two of ten paragraphs as a draft. Thanks.

3. Why has my little crop of chin hairs suddenly become a chin hair farm consisting of hundreds of acres? If I don't harvest the fucking crop every day, it's practically a jungle.

4. Why is George Bush and his cabal of evil still in office? When I looked on the Metro New York website this morning to see if they finally posted my article from Monday (answer: no), I noticed an item noting that "Vice President Dick Cheney and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki acknowledged problems in the pace of reducing violence in Iraq on Wednesday…" It's nice that they decided to stop denying that SHIT IS GONE SERIOUSLY WRONG OVER THERE, but what the fuck? Americans, you are FUCKING RETARDED for not demanding actual, competent leadership.

I used to comfort myself by thinking that at least history will judge them as harshly as they deserve, but since the cabal made all the presidential papers secret and unavailable for scholarship since they know that they are the most corrupt administration since Hoover and the Teapot Dome and more sinister, I worry that justice will never be served.

Yeah, it is a great motherfucking morning.

Is Anglophilia Contagious?

I am an Anglophile. As a kid, I loved learning about British history. (My other favorites were American history and Jewish history from the Dark Ages and on. Once I came home from Hebrew school with a Jewish history textbook and accidentally read most of it in one sitting because I was so fascinated by it. I can see something like that easily happening today. Ah, embrace the geek!) When I first visited London in 2001, I planned an insane agenda and insisted that Husband and I try to do and see everything on it. My fear was that I’d leave without getting to see something I’d always dreamed about visiting, and then I’d never get to go back.

Fortunately, Husband not only remained married to me after that trip, but I also learned how to relax a bit on vacations after we returned home utterly exhausted. Also, I’ve been lucky enough to go back to London multiple times. Every time I’m there, I love it more. No one is supposed to love British food, but I do! I adore fatty pies, scones and clotted cream, Cadbury, curries (technically, Indian of course, but so absorbed into London culture that it might as well be British at this point), and weird meat sandwiches that I bought in convenience stores in subway stations. The little bagel I had with salt beef (aka corned beef) the last time I was there was the best bagel I have ever eaten. Seriously.

Mara took me to the bagel place, and she also sent me this reminder of why I love everything English. It seems that BBC3 will be premiering a documentary called, “Fuck Off, I’m a Hairy Woman.” (Read the hilarious essay about it by the filmmaker in The Guardian. Can you imagine something like that on TV in the US? The title alone would have been changed to something more palatable and mild, like, “The Politics of Body Hair” or something boring and erudite so PBS could show it. If they deigned to do so, which I am not sure they would.

In the past few years, British TV also showed a documentary called “The Trouble with My Vagina” about cootie waxing, which someone burned for me on DVD and I wrote about a long time ago. (I think I need to finally watch it as soon as I am done writing this. I can’t believe I’ve had it for months and keep forgetting to watch it.) Good stuff, good stuff. In America, we get “reality shows” about Playboy Playmates (which also discussed unshaved snatch, referring to it as a “power muff,” making me suddenly wonder if I love the Power Puff Girls so much because it sounds so much like Power Muff Girls...) and Anna Nicole Smith, who is suddenly some sort of national hero. (Mark my words, DNA testing is going to show that the father of her poor baby is her son.)

Next Friday, I’ll be arriving in London with Sara for a nice visit with Mara, her hubby, and their new baby. I can’t wait.

Just Wait 20 Years or So, Kiddo

“Oooh, what’s this?” little me was thinking to myself while I patted Grandpa Ruby’s beard. “Good thing I don’t have one of these scruffy patched on my chin.” Ha! What an innocent fool I was as a child.

I’ve written about my potential career as the bearded lady in a circus before (Being the Bearded Lady at the Sideshow Might be Fun (Maybe?) and the connection between airplane bathrooms and chin hairs), but seeing this picture reminded me that my interest chin hair seems to have begun quite some time ago. How sad is it that I now pat my own damn chin that way, looking for stray hairs that need plucking, lest I reveal my status as a freak she-male to the world unintentionally? (As opposed to through these writings on chin hairs, where I intentionally alert people to my masculine afflictions.)

(Warning: this paragraph is full of cheesy puns.) I know that I am not the only one out there struggling to keep my chin up in the face of this assault on my feminine image. Many, many of my friends – all of us in our mid- to late 20s and 30s – who are obsessive chinnie chin chin pluckers. There’s a market that is ripe for the plucking (heh!) that, shockingly, the beauty industry has yet to exploit. Think about it: when’s the last time you saw an ad for laser hair removal for chin hair? Probably, uh, never. Sure, lasering off crotch, leg, and pit hair? Back and chest chair? Ads everywhere. You can’t open a damn magazine without some naked oiled body builder and airbrushed seductress leering at your figuratively hairy ass from the pages. “Oh, you may shave or even wax,” they smirk at you, “but our cootie and pit hairs will never grow back. Ever! Mwa ha ha ha.”

Yet the one place that it would truly be useful to get laser hair removal is my chin. I am 99.99% confident that female soul patches are never suddenly going to become stylish, but no model is showing off her hairless, oiled chin. Why is that? Damn beauty industry is so busy creating ridiculous insecurities in people (we are mammals, which by definition are warm blooded, produce milk, and have hair, although I often wonder about some people and warm blooded status) while ignoring the ones that would be useful to exploit. Fuckers.

And that does it for today’s look back at my childhood and tenuously related rant about why I hate society.