drinking the kool-aid

So I’m going to BlogHer '09 on Thursday morning with Laurin, and like just about everyone else, I’m kind of freaking out about it. I’m excited, nervous, the whole shebang and all the shenanigans. Yesterday I was on the phone talking about Chicago weather and was about to say, "yeah I should check to see what it's going to be like next month" and then I remembered that it's July right now and we're leaving in like four days and barf.

I haven’t really purchased new clothes since before I was pregnant with Moose, which was over a year and a half ago. It took some major digging to find some outfits I liked in my closet. I ended up grabbing a new dress at Marshalls, and I recently bought a few things online including my new favorite tee shirt.

I’m absolutely aware of how silly it is for a bunch of women to worry about looking cute at a conference for a bunch of women. But fuck it, man. I like getting dressed up once in a while, especially now that I work from home and have been known to take my trash to the curb in my pajamas. (Don’t tell anyone, but one time the door-knocking Fed Ex guy woke me up from a nap and I blearily walked out onto my porch in my underwear to grab the package. Luckily, he’d already driven away.)

In my efforts to primp and plan and do everything in my power to ignore my weeping, sobbing, nervous-poops-fear of flying, I went to get a pedicure and an upper lip wax. (I’m a quarter Italian and a quarter Portuguese. My stache, let me show you it.)

So on Saturday I’m sitting with my mom on our crazy pedicure thrones and this poor Vietnamese woman is frowning and frowning and frowning while she tries to make sense out of my bitten and picked toenails. (Which, by the way, still had polish on them from BEFORE MOTHER’S DAY I WISH I WAS JOKING.)

“Wow, I’ve never seen them get that out before,” my mom remarks.

I look up from my People magazine to see what "that" is and this lady has a fucking DRILL like a drillity drill from Home Depot drill with some sander thing on the tip and she starts drilling my cuticles off.

Anyway, it didn’t hurt. Much.

I walked away with pretty pink shiny toenails and headed over to the waxing room. I sat on the table and the chick looks at me and says, “Lay down, yes?”

“Oh, ha ha ha,” I lay down.

“First time?”

“Oh, no. Just been a while. Ha ha ha.” Cringe.

She proceeds to pat some old-lady-scented shit on my face and then waxes both sides pretty quickly. It hurts. My eyes start watering, which embarrasses the shit out of me because dude I’m not crying I just tear up easily.

Thinking that I am in fact crying, the wax tech girl slathers something slimy all around my mouth.

“For the pain,” she explains as I sit up.

“I don’t worry, it didn’t hurt as bad as—“ I gesture at my crotch.

She laughs uncomfortably, and as my mom points out later, she possibly has no idea I’m referring to a bikini wax and not childbirth or really bad sex or a yeast infection or crabs.

As we’re driving home, I start to feel burning and numbness at the same time, which is a pretty weird combo. By the time we pull into my driveway my entire face is throbbing. So I run straight to the bathroom to wash whatever the hell is eating my face off and I look and I have HIVES ALL OVER MY FACE. HIVES. ON MY FACE.

It literally looked like 400 mosquitoes had a dance party around my mouth.

I came out of the bathroom shrieking, "IF THIS FUCKING SCABS I CANNOT GO TO CHICAGO." Then I grabbed the hungry baby and nursed him and sulked a bunch.

“It looks pretty bad. Why did you get waxed?” my husband asked, handing me a bunch of children’s benadryl and one of those freezer boob-relief things for me to stick on my fucking face while I nursed the baby. “It always looks fine.”

Because.

Because of.

...BlogHer.

Er.

Damn it.

Luckily within an hour it turned red and pink and not swollen with yellow hives:
So the rest of the day, when I SHIT YOU NOT I went out shoe shopping three individual times, I walked around with an awesome pink handlebar around my mouth.

Anyway, if we end up making out at BlogHer ’09, you can rest assured my upper lip is silky smooth and luckily now hive-free. Just don’t look at my fingernails. (I'm Aiming Low.)