All the Best Thinking is Done in the Shower Part 4,891

Always... I should say my best thinking is done anywhere I can't write it down. The shower? That is easily the highest qualifier... At least when I'm driving I can call the house number and leave myself a message with bulletpoints of what I'd like to write.

So here I am, witting in front of the home computer, which underscores the fact that I need to purchase another new monitor, wrapped in a towel with wet legs, not getting ready to go visit my parents... But if I don't do this now, I won't remember later.

I should move some money around and buy another monitor... But I will instead wait for Luis to return from far-away Omaha (he'll be on the 1400 flight out of Omaha to Houston, then wait a bit for his next flight out of Houston to arrive in New Jersey around 2200). Then he can come with me to Staples to select a new monitor that won't be broken.

Back to what I was thinking about in the shower... I was shaving something, and thinking about the social graces in the United States that lead women to do this sort of barbaric stuff. I am not by nature a shaver... not any more. This means I go to a professional and pay without thinking about it to have my armpits and legs waxed. (I go to the nail people in the mall to have my eyebrows done. That's only $8.) There's one place I don't have waxed and will do the barbaric razor thing... I suspect having that waxed would be a higher pain tolerance than even I have!

So. Social graces... I have not been to my waxing wizard now since December, so the resemblence I bear to our evolutionary ancestor the chimpanzee is really quite something. My armpits and legs are so hairy it defies the imagination. I need to go and have it done, but between the germ-fest the earlier part of the year was and the weather, I haven't yet made it. I really have to go soon - before 13 March! That means hair, legs and armputs for around $110. I'd better save for both (monitor and hair stuff).

Now, in this country, why is it that men are masculine for having body hair but women are not? I hate to disappoint any men who actually thought we come premade sans leg and armpit hair and any women who have put their heart and soul into keeping that myth alive, but WOMEN HAVE ALL THE SAME BODY HAIR MEN DO, just in (hopefully) lighter texture and quantity and not so much around our testicles (especially since we don't own those, either...). But for some reason I have to either 1. expose myself to a sharp edge and spend entirely too much time in the shower or b. I have to pony up the $60 to have my armpits and legs more quickly and easily denuded for the right to wear something other than long pants.

(In the winter I don't care if I look like a chimpanzee; it is cold outside and you will never, ever see my legs when it is cold outside. I wear long skirts with long underwear under them.)

Then I was thinking about other social niceties, like yawning. It's a natural reaction to your brain not getting enough oxygen. However, some people put their hands or arm or whatever over their mouths to yawn while others just expose all of their filings and crowns and food stuck between their molars - and why do I need to see this? Please observe some of the social requirements.

Somewhere in the midst of the hair removal process I was thinking about wearing cosmetics, which is not truly a social pleasantry but something way too many women do. With me, I refuse to have anything to do with cosmetics. It's not because I'm conscientously objecting to anything (i.e. animal testing, although I have my feelings on that) but because this is the face you get, like it or not.

About animal testing, since I did think about this, too: I am not completely against it for something such as cancer research. I don't want to know about it, but I do since I read way too much, but I can see the sense in it. Animal testing for cosmetics is an outrage. No one's lives depend on something so wasteful.

And back to social niceties, some I observe just because it is not really couth not to, but find the value questionable. The biggest offender of this is saying, "God bless you" after someone sneezes. I know where it originates. It comes from the belief widely held at least three centuries ago that the devil or evil spirits somehow dominated or got into your body and when you sneezed, you expelled them. So the polite thing to do was shore up that person by blessing them.

I'd like to think in this enlightened age, we've actually gotten past that. No, of course not. I don't want to say "God bless you", since I don't believe in god that way. So I use "geshundhight" (sp?) but I have discovered that it kind of means the same thing in German. So I need to find another phrase. One that is not religious.

I believe in spirituality but not religion.

Yes, I thought about all of this in the last 10 minutes of my shower. Thnking is much faster than reading and a hell of a lot faster than typing!

...And now back to our regularly scheduled programing...