Stiff Upper Lip

 

Consider the lilies of the field,

how they grow;

they toil not, neither do they spin:

and yet I say unto you,

that even Solomon in all his glory

was not arrayed like one of these.

Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field,

which to day is, and to morrow is cast into the oven,

shall He not much more clothe you,

O ye of little faith?

— Matthew 6:28b-30

 

            We are going to Hawaii. We leave at O Dark Thirty in two days. We've never been, and we're very excited. To top it off, it's snowing out right now. HA HA HA HA HA!!!!

 

            But, as usual, I have worn myself into a frazzle getting all the Top Priority Must-Do Tasks done so that we can get out of town. You know, the Top Priority Must-Do Tasks that are suspiciously like the Bottom Priority Who-Cares Hakuna-Matata Que-Sera-Sera Tasks. Somehow, it's in my DNA that I've got to do them all, or I won't have fun on my trip. Meanwhile, I spend the whole trip recovering from the frazzle of getting out of town. It's a cuckoo situation.

 

            Anyway, among the 47 million things to do in the week leading up to this big trip was doing something about my Fu Manchu moustache. That's right: when Aunt Flo moved away a year ago, and I started getting Nuclear Power Jolts on weird places like the insides of my elbows, and I was playing even more than usual on what Beloved lovingly calls my "Hormone-ica," I noticed one day when I was looking in a mirror in the sunlight that I was sprouting a Fu Manchu Moustache.

 

            AAAIIIEEE!!!

 

            What makes it all the more ironic is that I now have an easier time growing facial hair than Beloved. His one errant attempt at growing a Tom Selleck-like moustache ended hurriedly, after a one-inch gap refused to produce even a wisp, between his two mouse-eyebrow halves of a mini-moustache over on the far sides of his upper lip.

 

            But mine was amply fuzzy, and the fact that I am a girl made having the Fu Manchu Moustache just make me want to say . . . fu-ey.

 

             What to do? More patient women probably just pluck themselves, a little at a time. But I've never been one for regular maintenance and common sense. The chemically-minded use a self-bleach. But I am science-impaired and no doubt would screw it up. The wise and wonderful women, I'm sure, just ignore unwanted facial hair, knowing that they're the only ones who really notice it, and it is far more important to serve the Lord and accept yourself as you are and save the whales and make a living or make dinner, than worry about your own appearance.

 

            But dang! I couldn't let Beloved spend this kind of money on a second honeymoon in Hawaii, when he's imagining Brooke Shields running toward him on the beach in her bikini . . . and instead he gets me, in a Fat Lady muumuu with a Fu Manchu!!!

 

            So I went to get waxed. The room they led me to looked suspiciously like a morgue, but at least it had a lot more comfortable bed. I didn't realize that to get waxed, I would have to lay down. I took my shoes and socks off and lay there, awaiting my fate, with cold feet - a signal to which I should have attended.

 

            Here came the happy, peppy, positive Wax Mistress, wielding her Wax Pot. Did you KNOW there's such a thing as a Wax Pot?

 

            She loaded up heavy, warm wax on both sides of my upper lip and down the sides, waiting a moment, and just as I was wondering if I could move my lips with all that heavy wax on there long enough to say, "I CHANGED MY MI. . . ."

 

            RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRIP!!!!!!!!

 

            She yanked a long strip on the right up and away, creating a pelt from Beauty Shop Hell.

 

            I saw my bare feet rise up off the foot of the bed, toes spreading out wider than I thought possible. Hmm. Wonder why my feet are doing that?

 

            And then YOWSA! I felt the PAIN!!!

 

            No sense trying to organize my lips into telling her I changed my mind NOW. I would have to go to Hawaii with one side lustrously Fu Manchu, and the other as bald as a baby's behind. I'm just too German and needful of order to go for that. Besides, then Beloved's dream date would be even MORE weird-looking in Hawaii. So I braced myself, and sure enough:

 

            RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRIP!!!!!!!!

 

            There went the pelt on the other side. And holy schmoly! Ouchie oochie!

 

            Then she plucked and pulled out about 50 more little dollops of wax-speckled, deep-rooted hairs, here and there and everywhere, all the while making pleasant small talk. In shock, I paid the money and walked out into the cold, my now-hairless but totally numb lip icing up like a slick airplane wing.

 

            Within a day, the numbness gave way to blisters and a few little sores. I think she accidentally yanked off a few sections of the skin of my lip, too. Plus I was touching it so much to "check" for hair that I spread germs and so forth. It kind of looks like I have herpes or something. Ewww!

 

Why, oh why, didn"t I leave well enough alone? It didn't look THAT bad. Now it looks even WORSE.

 

            Then our daughter Eden pointed out that the irritated and brand-new skin would be much more likely to sunburn. If you sunburn fresh, new skin, you get a permanent scar. And here I was, going to bright and sunny Hawaii, planning to be outside every day for 11 days!

 

            "A SCAR 'STASHE!" she chortled. "You'd better wear a thick layer of sunblock with the highest SPF on your upper lip the whole time!"

 

            So now my Beloved is going to have his Brooke Shields running toward him in a Fat Lady muumuu with a Santa Claus moustache!!!

 

            At least the Wax Mistress gave me SOMETHING to bolster my flagging self-esteem. As I was leaving, she actually complimented me. "You wax well," she said.

 

Heyyyy! I wax well! That's something! Look out, Hawaii! Here we come! †