Grooming (a.k.a. my eyebrow is growing back nicely)

April 28, 2011 by TBird 5 Comments

Hair is showing up in strange places and I’m disturbed.

This age thing is a beast. The older I get, the more work I have to do.

Back in the day I remember trying waxing the ‘bikini area’ before a house boating trip. This didn’t do much for me on two levels. One because I ended up with little red dots all over the place in that particular place, that’s right, the crotchal area. I’m not sure if ‘crotchal area’ is a real term yet. But I bet you know exactly what I mean when I write it!

Red dots? I was told to loofah. Yah, riiiight.

Second level where it didn’t do much for me – back in the day when I was shy about my body, I used to wear an oversized t-shirt over my bathing suit. And sometimes shorts too. I didn’t know just how great things were for me back then! So I would spend money to get hair removed from an area on my body that no one ended up seeing anyway!

A few years after that, I worked with a friend of mine and she was telling me about these at-home waxing kits. You can do your upper lip, your eyebrows and especially your bikini area.

So I thought I would give it a try at home myself. How hard can it be? I mean seriously – I can take whatever the drug store can dish out.

I’ve done way worse than any at-home wax kit – seriously.

Does the word Epilady mean anything to you?

When I was a teen, I was doing Epilady. Granted, I could only do it twice and I didn’t even get it all over my leg because that thing hurts like a royal son of a b**ch!

Using a battery operated machine to rip your leg hair out from the root? Come on! Who thought up that one? Probably the same guy who invented high heels. Or Spanx (see a previous post for that ordeal).

So I figure if I can withstand Epilady, I can do some measly waxing on my nether region all by myself.

I bought a kit. I followed the directions to the letter. I placed the strips on my inner thigh and pulled. Ouch.

And pulled.

And pulled.

Ouch!

I actually had to phone my friend that night because I could not for the life of me get the wax strips off that particularly very very very very very very sensitive area.

My friend suggested soaking in warm water and maybe having hubby help yank the strips off.

I ran the bath water and stripped down. I called desperately to hubby to come help.

Now that’s love.

Your wife is lying naked in three inches of bath water, covered in sticky white strips, begging for your help to pull them off. Kinky? Perhaps. Disturbing? Definitely.

And he tried. Poor guy. Didn’t work. They didn’t budge! Oh the pain.

I phoned my friend back and she suggested baby oil. Maybe that would help loosen the wax strips.

At this point I asked hubby to leave the bathroom (after grabbing me the baby oil). There are some things that even the bestest husbands shouldn’t have to witness.

I felt a little like some poor woman having a baby in a doctor’s office on the wrong side of the tracks with the panting, groaning, pulling, pushing, bath water and baby oil.

It’s all a blur to me now because I think I closed myself off to the horror of what was happening to my privates (isn’t that what people do under extreme duress?) but I somehow I got those stupid little wax strips off my body.

I no longer have them on my crotchal area, and I’m pretty sure they didn’t just fall off. I can’t remember how it happened, and I don’t remember how long it took, but I do know this – the parting of the wax strip from my body couldn’t have been any less miraculous than the parting of the red sea. It just couldn’t.

But isn’t that what us women go through? And some men too…

No pain, no gain – we don’t want to be all fuzzy, looking like a Yeti in a bathing suit, so that’s what we do, right?

Just don’t ever mention the words Brazilian to me unless you are talking about a fun weekend getaway. It ain’t happening.

I am however, intrigued by the laser hair removal treatments for the nether regions. But that will have to wait until I’m back at work or hubby wins the lottery. First we have to pay for soccer, swimming, camping, school, clothing, food, shelter, renovations, cat food, cat litter, cat toys…

Besides the daily grooming of shaving, moisturizing, brushing hair, brushing teeth, putting on makeup, applying deodorant, there are other things that need to be done once in a blue moon to look nice.

I reiterate my statement from before – the older I get, the more stuff needs to be done.

All I’m going to say about nose and ear hair are the following two things:

1. I haven’t experienced ear hair as far as I know.
2. I remember a family member buying a nose-hair trimmer a few years ago and I thought it was really funny. I’m not laughing so much anymore.

As I said, that’s all I’ll say.

On to other body parts.

Oh joy.

My feet. Oh god. I don’t think I’ve had enough wine to talk about the dry skin and calluses and straight out disastrous crap going on down there. So I’m going to skip that whole topic because it will just depress me.

Let’s just say I love pedicures. Way easier to pay some nice lady to whittle down my calloused toes and foot pads rather than sitting on the toilet in my one bathroom in the house (as we are renovating the other two and have been for seven months now) and filing my feet.

I just have to remember to trim the little black hairs that seem to be cropping up on my big toes before heading to the spa. I know I’m paying the lady to sit there and do lovely things to my feet, but there is a line even that poor woman shouldn’t have to cross. Hairy toes? I’ll try to spare her. So gross. Who am I? Shrek?

So let’s skip the toe topic and talk about my latest grooming disaster. The eyebrows.

I have the eyebrows of both an adolescent boy and an eighty-five year old man. On one hand they’re kinda thin and have a mind of their own. On the other side of the coin, my eyebrows are long, scraggly and have a mind of their own.

Yes, I have been known to gel and/or hairspray the little buggers in place.

And I tweeze. And I trim.

Okay? It’s out there. I trim my eyebrows.

Or at least I try to keep up with it.

If the hair on my head grew half as fast as the hair on my toes or my eyebrows, I’d look like Crystal Gale!

I’ve had my eyebrows waxed a few times – without incident.

Actually, that’s a bald-faced lie.

Most times I’ve had an incident.

Usually it involves an ingrown hair (which, by the way, is horrible to have after a bikini wax!).

Two times I’ve gone for a wax and had a layer of skin taken off just under my eyebrow… yeah, I guess you could call that particular spot my EYELID!

I had a SCAB on my EYELID!

Some days I just can’t get over how incredibly sexy I am.

Reminds me of back in the day when I used to have glasses and braces. And pimples.

Now I just have scabs and pimples.

Good thing I’ve got a hubby, because they definitely aren’t lining up at my door with this ‘grooming’ crap going on, let me tell you!

I have a feeling that lines won’t be forming anyway after the hairy-toe comment. 

I know what you’re thinking.

My husband is a lucky man.

Anyway, back to the eyebrow thing.

Let me take this time here to inform you that the scab thing that happened twice? I was at two different spas. Can you believe it? I just wanted to clarify that.

So I’m going for another wax. You’d think I’d learn my lesson by now, right? But nooooo.

It’s the same as colouring your own hair. Or cutting your own bangs.

You think you can do it and save yourself some money in the long run.

But no, you screw it up and end up having to run crying to the hairdresser so he/she can fix the disaster that is your hair and you end up spending loads of money anyway.

But once in a blue moon, even after all the damage I’ve done to my hair, I’ll still think;

hmmmm… I really need a root touch up and I can’t get in to see my gal for another week. I need this done NOW. Ah-ha, I’ll just go pick up a kit at the drug store. There’s a cap in the kit. There’s a crochet hook. I’m good. No worries….

Famous last words.

So I pop in for an eyebrow wax and I make sure to tell the girl (who looks like she just hopped off the school bus) that my eyelids are sensitive and I’ve had issues before with scabbing, etc.

She listens, she’s sympathetic. She performs the wax.

And guess what? She took off half an eyebrow.

I kid you not. I should have taken pictures.

It was about three months ago and I just noticed a few days ago that it’s pretty much all grown in. I’m so relieved!

Now I don’t have to pencil in my eyebrows like some sad new-age Mrs. Roper (without the comfy mu-mu)!

So glad I got that off my chest.

I think I’ll go pour myself a glass of wine and give myself a face masque.