WAXING POETIC-NOT!

"A bottle of wine contains more philosophy than all the books in the world." - Louis Pasteur

“I think I’m gonna be sick.” –Ann Piccirillo

I was invited by my friend Kathy to dine with Lettie Teague, the former Executive Wine Editor of Food & Wine Magazine; presently the wine guru at the Wall Street Journal. I was thrilled! Not only would I meet an award-winning writer, but I would be dining with people over three-feet tall who wouldn’t ask me to cut their meat. How refreshing to sup with people willing to guide me to drink, rather than drive me to drink.

My love affair with wine began with a bottle of Boones Farm Strawberry Hill wine, and a boy named Michael who cut himself on the twist-off cap. I wondered if that story would amuse Lettie; or perhaps she’d be amused to learn that in my family it’s just not a party without a good box of wine on the table. With her pedigreed palate, her love affair with wine is akin to diamond-gifted trysts with a fabulously wealthy man at The Pierre Hotel; my love affair with wine is akin to waking up in a cardboard box next to a wino, whom I possibly dated in high school.

          I forced myself to push aside these oenophile musings to think about more immediate concerns—like looking my best. In this disastrous economy I’ve expertly learned how to cut corners.  I’ve gone from Lancôme to Avon, and, truth be told, my skin has never looked better. Anyway, while in the middle of ordering face cream the other night a screen popped-up screaming, “SKIN SO SOFT FRESH & SMOOTH HAIR REMOVAL MICROWAVE WAX KIT --A BARE NECESSITY!”  I decided to check the customer reviews; they were all five stars. It was on-sale for $10.99; what could I possibly lose except unwanted hair?  

          The box of wax arrived just in time for my dinner with Kathy and Lettie. I mean literally, just in time; it was delivered at 4:30 p.m., and dinner was at 7 p.m. I excitedly tore open the box and got to work. What happened next is best expressed by haiku:

“Wax goes on like fire.

Upper lip is siz-zle-ing.

Eau de burning flesh!”

          I positioned the linen strips atop the wax and ripped it off my upper lip. Screaming in pain, I looked to see if my lip was attached to the strip. However, when I looked into the mirror, NOTHING HAD COME OFF! Not even the wax. I scrubbed my lip with a washcloth, but all that did was turn my second-degree burn into a third-degree burn. Then I remembered I forgot to pull the strips off my eyebrows. Guess what? The wax worked on the eyebrows. The wax not only removed the unwanted eyebrow hair, but it took half of my left eyebrow off while leaving a thick residue of wax behind.

Frantically, I took a cotton ball dipped in oil and began to rub my lip and eyebrows. Disaster! The cotton was sticking to the wax leaving behind festive garlands of stringy white fuzz. I looked like an ancient Hasidic Rastafarian Rabbi. I continued to rub, and rub until I managed to remove most of the cotton fuzz, but there was no way to get rid of the thick mucus mustache I was sporting over my lip and above my eyes.

          Oh, no! Kathy was beeping outside. Quickly, I grabbed scissors from the cabinet and cut my hair to create bangs to camouflage my missing eyebrow. After the first cut I realized I had grabbed toe-nail scissors. I now sported bangs in the shape of Barney Rubble’s big-toe. To draw attention away from the flaws I applied lipstick, but the tube slid across my cheek and did a perfect figure-eight right into my ear. I looked like a Madame Tussaud’s Wax museum reject.  

          I’m happy to say that dinner was amazing, and the wine that Lettie chose for us to drink was spectacular. She even wrote about our dinner for the Wall Street Journal. However, she kindly left out my wax-encrusted upper lip and absent half-eyebrow. I don’t think the Wall Street Journal is ready to wax my kind of poetic…yet.

If You Give a Mom a Cosmo

You know what happens “If You Give a Mouse a Cookie,” but what happens “If You Give a Mom a Cosmo?”

If you give a mom a Cosmo, she’ll want a cigarette;

Chances are when she finds a cigarette stashed away in the back of the junk drawer beneath a pile of torn recipes and Chinese soy sauce packets, it will be stale and deformed;

But her day sucked so badly that she’ll want to smoke it anyway;

And if she smokes it, she’ll have to go outside so her children don’t see her, and tell their teachers that their mother is a drug addict since schools now brilliantly teach that alcohol and cigarettes are considered drugs;

And she won’t want her neighbors to see her smoking while drinking a Cosmo especially since she’s braless, barefoot, and uncertain when she last found time to shower;

So, she’ll probably take her Cosmo and her bent butt and go to party behind an overgrown bush;

And if she drinks her Cosmo and smokes her crooked cigarette behind a bush, chances are she’ll eventually have to pee;

And since she’s left it to her husband to put the kids to bed she won’t want to go inside and get sucked into his drama;

So, she’ll simultaneously fertilize that bush, toss the twisted nub of the cigarette into her neighbor’s yard, and continue to drink her Cosmo because she is the consummate multi-tasker;

And while fertilizing that overgrown bush, she’ll start to think about her landscaping and decide that next summer she’s going to hire some Guatemalan day-laborers to plant her a vegetable garden;

Thinking about planting a vegetable garden will make her hungry, so she’ll take her Cosmo to the car and dine on a tapas of orphaned cheerios and motherless gummies crusted like infected scabs on the floor and car seats;

After she’s done crumb-diving in the backseat of her mini-van, she’ll find that tube of Revlon Cha Cha Cherry lipstick that she lost in 2003 wedged beneath the driver’s seat. Having survived six mid-Atlantic seasons of melting, freezing; melting, freezing; melting, freezing; melting, freezing; melting, freezing; melting freezing it now resembles the shriveled little finger of a very old arthritic man, providing for her the perfect metaphor for her life; 

But she’ll decide to color her lips with it anyway. And once she colors her lips, she’ll have to look in the rearview mirror to inspect herself;

Believing that her dim-lit reflection resembles Super Mario will remind her that she hasn’t waxed since Memorial Day;

Sneaking inside and reaching into the back of the linen closet she’ll find a mummified bottle of Nair that hasn’t been used since before she got pregnant with her last child, and she’ll lather it all over her body;

And while she’s waiting for the odiferous depilatory to work its magic, she’ll finish her Cosmo and turn on the shower;

As she waits for the water to warm, she’ll feel a burning sensation and realize that along with her unwanted hair, the Nair is also removing 3 layers of her epidermis;

She’ll hop into the shower and use the sacred scented Lancôme body wash she bought six years ago when she had both a life and disposable income, and use it to diffuse the stench of eau de Nair that fogs the air;

After her shower she’ll wrap herself in a towel and, feeling sleepy, will decide to lie down on the bed;

Exhausted, she’ll probably drift off just as her husband comes into the bedroom;

Seeing her lying on the bed wearing just a towel, he’ll think this is his reward for giving her a break by putting the kids to bed for the first time since June 2006;

She’ll think she might as well check him off her mental list of things to do, freeing up her nights and weekends for the rest of the month…

Crawling in the dark searching for where he threw her towel, she’ll feel like a cigarette;

And chances are, if she has a cigarette, she’ll want a Cosmo to go with it...