beauty ain't cheap

[dragonlady7]

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Before I can present this post, I must include this message from our sponsor. Bert the Beagle would like to inform you that she wants attention. She wants attention right now. When you left for the grocery store, at 11:45, and told her you'd be back in "like ten minutes", and came back in half an hour, she felt deeply betrayed. Not because she understood what you said, or could tell time, or indeed was tall enough to see any of the clocks in the house. No... Because you left the house. Bert does not like it when people leave the house. She feels abandoned, and is forced to immediately seek out and destroy anything remotely edible anywhere in the house, including metal tubes of cat hairball remedy and vacuum cleaner bags with crumbs inside. She will, if neccessary, eat the vacuum cleaner to get at the bag.

And so, before I can compose this post, Bert had to climb onto my chest, lick my mouth and chin, put her wet paws down my shirt, and shed an entire dog's worth of hair onto my corduroy pants.
Thank you, Bert. We are all richer for the experience.

You may now continue with your regularly scheduled blog post.
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Dave and I just made a midnight run to Wegman's for beauty supplies. It was fun. I love grocery stores that are open all night.

The straight razor he ordered arrived today, so we had to run out and get some shaving soap and aftershave-- and a stiptic pen, one of those freaky things you use to make shaving cuts stop bleeding. ("If you slice your jugular, I don't think this will help," I said. "It's worth a try," Dave answered with a careless shrug.)

In the meantime, I picked up normal shave gel for myself, some new face wash because the stuff I'd been using for like five years is suddenly too drying for my skin (am I suddenly old? Then why do I still get zits? Feh.)...

It sounds simple, right?

Well, first we spent twenty minutes in the organic stuff aisle staring at the Burt's Bees products. They're the only shaving soap in the store, but they offered a startling array of other products. None of which were what I needed, however. But they were smelly, and that is somehow a good thing.

I considered buying Just A Big Old Tube Of Vitamin E, and forgetting about all the other anti-aging bullshit, but then I figured, you're only almost 25 once for an extended period, so I'll wait until after I hit my quarter-century mark (in 2 days less than a month) to start worrying about that stuff. I just thought it was amusing to contemplate Just A Big Old Tube Of Vitamin E, in topical form. Fuck Oil of Old Lady and its miniscule tubs of miracle cream! I'll just buy the concentrated stuff in bulk! Yes!
It's vanity, the hippie way. I am a consciousness-raised consumer of luxury goods.

Then we went on to the non-organic, normal skincare aisle. ("Man," Dave said, "I want my stuff tested on animals first!") And I stood for twenty minutes absolutely paralyzed by the massive selection of Stuff To Clean And Moisturize And Tone And Exfoliate And Resurface Your Face With.
Holy Lord, what IS all that?
"Ha," Dave said. "That's why I like men's skincare. Check this out." He turned around, and was instantly reduced to a gibbering wreck because the men's side-- was just as bad. Yow... it was the Wall O' Manly-Man Pore Refiners And Toners. Scary.

I finally bought something, anything, because it was on sale for thirty cents off with my Shoppers Club card. Fine! It's pink! It says "cleanser"! I'll buy it!
And then I bought another facial cleansing thing, just in case. Why not! It's not pink, and says "deep cleanser", so if the first one doesn't work, I have a backup! Also, it was also on sale for thirty cents off! Because thirty cents off of six dollars is thirty cents less than Fucking Ridiculous, which means just Third-Base Ridiculous, I suppose...

Then I thought, I might get some shave gel. Turned around. Dizzying array. There was a sale sticker. Twofer. "Man," I said, "I don't even know what I want one of, much less what I want two of..." The girl standing next to me (yes, I was, actually, not the only person looking for shave gel at midnight) laughed and agreed. We'd each settled on something when I noticed that of the five flavors (scents, colors, whatever), two of them were considerably larger, but they all cost the same. ?? We were both boggled by that. We both had to reconsider. We didn't know what we wanted, but surely more of whatever it was, for the same price, was better.
Right?
Sure.

In the meantime, Dave had discovered that Wegmans was selling a disposable "All-Terrain" razor. I shit you not-- "All-Terrain" was seriously what it said on it.
Yes, an SUV for your cratered face!
Go marketing! It was a need I never knew I had. I didn't know I had rough terrain actually on my body. But man, that razor looked manly. Yes. Because other people will see you shaving, and will judge you by your razor.

Anyhow, tomorrow Dave's going to mow his face with the new straight razor. I've got 911 on speed dial, just in case the three digits are too hard to remember.

Comments

this is from kat

[(Anonymous)]

Hey, on the 911-might-be-too-hard-to-remember topic, when Trevor sliced his leg open and then passed out with blood spurting everywhere, I actually had trouble dialing the damn numbers. My brain had vanished. I mean, literally, I picked up the phone and cried out wildly, "What do I do? What do I call?" before some subconscious thought drilled into my head in second grade said, "911 is just 9...1...1..." Then I did everything wrong and was hysterical to the 911 person, and couldn't remember where I lived or anything. Luckily they have that machine that tells them where I live.
This was how the conversation went:
"Hello, 911."
"Help! My boyfriend...he's on the floor...he's bleeding!"
"Okay, ma'am, calm down. Where do you live?"
"uh...I think he's having a seizure! Help, help!"
"Do you live at 2097 Foster Ave?"
"What? I don't know...I'm in my house."
"Okay, we're sending an ambulance. Take a deep breath. Calm down."
"Help, help! He's bleeding!"
It was ridiculous, really. For awhile they thought somebody had stabbed him, because I said he was cut with a knife. Then when I said he cut himself, they thought maybe he'd tried to commit suicide. I didn't really calm down til the ambulance folks got there, which was luckily about one minute after I called (ahhh, it's great to live in the city).
If I haven't told you how he cut himself, this is how it happened: He was working on a Halloween costume, sawing through a dowel with the dowel propped on his knee. I had JUST told him not to cut things with a knife without a good, solid, preferably knife-resistant item between the thing being cut and his leg, to which he laughed and said, "Stop acting like a mother." Then he said, "Hmmm..." and I said, suspiciously, "Did you just cut yourself?" He agreed, went into the bathroom to clean it up, passed out and had several seizures before they fixed him up. In a minor victory, he did agree (while we were waiting for the nice sew-em-up doctor at the hospital) that I HAD told him so. :)