Slimy Situations

Snot.

Even the word is disgusting. The actual body fluid? EWWW to the 10,000th power.

I am one of those people who doesn't do well with fluids that emit from body cavities. I can handle throw-up and the twins, poo and pee. But, beyond that, I'm pretty much a wienie.

I REALLY dislike stuff that come up through the head cavity. Or, more appropriately, out of it.

So, now that I've completely grossed you out and you probably won't be able to eat for days on end*, let me tell you why this is important.

Razors.

Yes, razors. While on our vacation, I had to buy some. I had grown something on my legs that was between prickly-pear-cactus and pissed-off-porcupine. It wasn't pretty, it didn't like pantyhose, and I was tired of poking myself.

As you can imagine, being on vacation, I wasn't even slightly interested in trying to find the closest Target. I just wanted to buy my razors and get back to the hotel. So I ended up in a grocery store, one that only carried two kinds of straight blades: Ultra-expensive and disposable.

Remember, I'm cheap. So I chose the disposable kind. A two-pack. They seemed pretty high-tech to me, boasting of their "two-step comfort strip" on the package. For $2.69, this seemed like enough of a deal.

The shower at our hotel was less than extraordinary. The management must have had a governor on it that only allowed for "lukewarm for short periods of time" because that's what I kept getting, day in and day out. So, I moved quickly to shave my legs.

After the first pull up my calf, I noticed a strip of goo that I can only compare to the aftereffects of a two-year-old with a nasty head cold sneezing. If you've ever seen this happen, you know stuff is hanging and dripping everywhere. I almost threw in my Mommy card when this first happened to me and my firstborn.

I'm looking at my leg and this disgusting, snot-looking trail of junk sticking between my leg and new razor and I'm thinking "If you swallow hard, you won't throw up. Hard. Swallow. Don't look down." At this point I just knew I needed to move quickly, before my stomach did.

Pass two was worse than the first. Apparently I had "broken in" the comfort strip. If someone had walked into the bathroom at that point, they would have said "Obviously, there is an alien dripping junk from the ceiling onto your leg. Whatever you do, DON'T LOOK UP."**

It was all I could do to finish my legs. By the time I was done I was really glad I had already eaten because there would have been no way I could have put anything in my mouth after that.

Or blown my nose.

Or shaved my underarms.

Next time? I'm pitching in the extra coin for the expensive blades. With absolutely, positively, no hint of anything called a comfort strip.

I'd rather cut myself and be bleeding profusely then go through another slimy, gooey, snotty experience with a razor.


*If this was your New Year's resolution, you can thank me later.

**If you remember the scene in Alien where the beast looks like she is about to eat Sigourney Weaver's face off, you know what I'm talking about. Grossness beyond measure.