Trichous Inductus Vomitus

It's been cold in Colorado lately.  And I don't mean a little on the chilly side, but booger-freezing cold.  So cold that when you step outside your boogers, even if you didn't know you had any, freeze into solid boogercicles.  When it's that cold it's easy to let a few grooming habits, like leg shaving, go by the wayside.  After all, don't Polar Bears have a layer of hair close to their bodies that traps the heat in the dead airspace?  Aesthetically speaking, who is actually going to see my legs anyway?  It's winter.  I'm in long-johns and jeans or long-johns and scrubs.  Who cares if my leg hair gets a little on the long side?  And if Happy Hubby has too big an issue with my prickly legs he can just sleep on his own side of the bed.

So during the last cold spell, I ignored the leg shaving for a week or so.  That was about as long as I could stand sleeping with my own prickly legs.  The weather finally warmed up to freezing, literally we got up to 32 degrees, and I'd had enough of sleeping with my own prickly legs.  Into the shower I went, armed with shaving cream and fresh razor.

I took care of the basic shower duties: hair wash and rinse, body wash and rinse, armpit shaving.  Life was good, time to take the hedge clippers to the legs.  I squirted the shaving cream into my hand, leaned over to slather it onto my legs and, oh shit *blech* there *blech* were two *blech* loose hairs from my head *swallow, swallow, don't puke* stuck to my *gross* leg hair *oh God, I'm going to puke*, which was acting like velcro.

See, I've got thing thing about loose hair.  It grosses me out.  Loose, wet hair?  Well that's just a puke-fest waiting to happen.  In fact, I can't even watch this commercial...



I had to have my husband preview it for me before I posted it, as just the thought of all that *blech* wet *swallow, swallow* hair makes me want to puke.  Some people would accuse me of having trichophobia, an unnatural fear of hair.  I'm not afraid of it.  It just makes me puke. 

What I really have is Trichous inductus vomitus, hair induces vomiting.  Attached hair is fine. 

Loose hair = dry heaves. 

Wet, loose hair = puke fest! 

Oh boy, I'm a ton of fun at a public swimming pool.  And the pool deck when I took Scuba diving lessons - that was a deck full of potential landmines as far as I was concerned.  I'm pretty sure I was the only one who mastered getting her airtanks on while standing on tippy-toe between clumps of hair on the deck.  It's been years and the memory still makes me gag.

The thought of a nice, long, hot soak in the tub?  No way, Jose.  Do you know what goes down the drain?  Hair.  Do you know what floats back up into the tub? Hair.  No effing way!  A nice, long, hot soak in the tub, for me, involves duct tape.  After the drain is closed and before the water starts running, there has to be some of this involved...

...covering the drain or a bath ain't happening!

I'm not sure where my affliction came from, but it hasn't gotten any better through the years.  In fact, it may have gotten a tad worse.  One of RockCrawlinChef's biggest jobs is to "save" me from any loose hair in the shower.  When he hears, "ooo, oo-oo" like a monkey and sees my hands flailing about helplessly he has to come save me from the wet hair that has attached itself to my body before  the dry heaves start.  The worst, by far, is fingers and toes.  Again, just thinking about it makes me gag.

Sadly, during the shaving incident a couple of weeks ago, RCC wasn't around to save me.  I had to do it myself.  I pulled down the shower head and attempted to just rinse the loose hairs away.  Have you ever tried to rinse hair out of velcro?  Doesn't work.  In fact, it just makes it worse.  Whereas before, I had two hairs hung up on the velcro-like leg hairs, now I had the loose hair stuck to both my leg and the leg hairs.  I had no choice, I had to do it.  I had to actually touch the hairs with my fingers and pull them off of my leg.  I took a deep breath, clenched my jaw against the impending puke fest and resolutely plucked the hairs off of my leg.  I tried to ignore the dragging sensation as the hair pulled off of my leg and tried to ignore the feel of it between my fingers, but to no avail.  I did manage to sort of save myself from the hair, but I spent the next five minutes bent over the shower drain with the dry heaves.

I managed to get my dry heaves under control, quick shave my legs and get out of the shower before the dry heaves started in earnest again.  I spent another ten minutes bent over the sink, praying that there was something in my stomach to puke up rather than the rhythmic contractions of the dry heaves.

I learned an important lesson from having to save myself: don't let the leg hair grow long enough to become velcro, no matter how cold it is outside!  It just ain't worth it.