Two months and I’ll be damned if I’m gonna hot-wax myself to the floor. (Grooming Notes from the Great Quarantine.)

A note about the home grooming. It’s been well-over two months since anyone other than me has been involved in my upkeep. My appearance may be good enough for quarantine, but I know better. I feel like that goldfish who looks active and robust at the fair, but suddenly appears limp and grey the minute you get her  home. I may look pretty decent around the house (and let us all say a small prayer of thanks for phone and Zoom filters), but who are we kidding here? The minute I go out into mixed company, I’m gonna look like that old lady who puts on her makeup in the dark. In a moving car. With her feet. (Or that woman from the Airplane movie.)

I’ve been dying my hair forever, and I’ve even dyed it at home before (there was a time when M did it for me because I kept making an awful mess, dripping hair dye all over the apartment; the solution was keeping me prisoner in the bathtub until it was all over), but the addition of some highlights means that my hair is now about fourteen shades of brown, not one of which is pretty, and all of which is brassy. In a certain light, I am positively orange. I keep putting a pair of  scissors in my Amazon cart, then taking them out, because I know if they show up at the house I’m going to have no choice but to hack at the ends of my hair and none of that will turn out well.

It looks like a pubic hair went for a walk and found its way to my eyebrow. That’s all.

I may be the only person happy about the face masks because my chin is a battleground between the six stubborn zits that have set up shop there and refuse to leave and two intransigent foot-long hairs which, from the right angle, make me look like an aging billy goat. (Also, once again, can the person who keeps “borrowing” my tweezers please return them? Thank you.)

As for the neck down, the last time I got involved in any home-hot-waxing, I waxed my inner thigh to the linoleum floor. (This project also required M to cross the hall of our married student housing dorm and ask the Texan football player and his wife if we could use their microwave because we didn’t own one. To this day, I wonder if they ever figured out what I was doing.) For now, I’m leaving it all be and wearing a caftan. I’m also wearing sweats and socks and wool slippers because it’s May in NYC and it just snowed and can someone please restore order to the universe?

I’ve been gardening without gloves because my hands were already shot from all the manic hand-washing and anyway, the home manicures I’ve been doing largely involve me painting my nails minutes before I fall asleep sitting up and waking up a few hours later to find polish everywhere but my nails.

I’ve tried face masks and hair masks and I’m staring right now at a product which will force my entire foot to peel off only to reveal the foot of a baby underneath, but I don’t buy it.

None of this shit is working.

My skin is grey. My hair is orange and I just tried on a pair of jeans with a drawstring waist and I may never be going back again.

Happy Monday, people. Smile for the camera.