I don’t wear a lot of make-up or spend a lot of money on clothes, but one thing I DO do is get my eyebrows waxed. I always thought it seemed silly and pointless—that is, I thought this until I saw how lovely my eyebrows could look when cleaned up and shaped a bit. They’re not horrid in their natural state: I don’t have a unibrow and they’re not too caterpillar-like. But they look so much better when I get them waxed.
Penny has been doing my eyebrows for a couple of years now. She is a little Vietnamese lady at a small salon near my house, and she cracks me up. She always yells at me because, instead of getting them done every four weeks like I’m supposed to, I often end up waiting six weeks.
This time I had gone a full eight weeks and I knew she would let me have it. She did.
I stopped at the salon today on my way home from work, and as soon as I walked in she took one look at me and said scoldingly, “Oh, my God. I know why you here.” As she escorted me back to the waxing room, a large African American man with a lot of bling was getting a manicure, and he said, “Hey, Penny! You’re looking beautiful today!” She never even glanced at him and snapped, “You be quiet or I get my stick!”
As I lay down in the reclining chair, she shook her head and said of my eyebrows, “Is like garden!” I apologized profusely, saying, “I’m sorry, Penny! I’ve been busy and I haven’t had time to come in.”
She asked, “How long you not come back?”
Sheepishly I answered, “Eight weeks.”
Penny stirred her wax and said, “I make nice. Take long time.”
After she ripped the first piece of wax off and I yelped in startled pain, she said unsympathetically, “Maybe next time you not wait so long. Not hurt so much.”
“Okay, okay!” I cried as she applied the next smear of hot wax. She insisted on showing me the cloth strips onto which my ripped out eyebrow hairs now clung. Frowning, Penny said, “Is like bush.”
Speaking of which, for the first time ever Penny tried to talk me into coming in for a bikini wax in the near future. I’m not too keen on waxing anywhere near the hoo-hoo, and told Penny I was afraid it would hurt too much. She nodded and said, “Depend. You want all off, hurt very, very much. Just little off, hurt much.” I told her I would think about it.
Our waxing session ended the way it usually does, with Penny admiring her work on my formerly scandalous eyebrows and me promising to come back in four weeks while giving her an excellent tip.
* * * * *
In other news, I got a bottle of red food coloring and have been having a great time with it.
Some people like to make marshmallow Peep dioramas. I lean more toward installation art. I had lots of leftover Peeps from the book club meeting held at my house Friday night, so I took them and created something I like to call “Peep Genocide” in my bathroom sink:
(As always, you can click on the pictures to go to my Flickr account and enlarge them.)
I realize it looks a little disturbing, what with the decapitated Peeps and all. My hands look like I recently murdered someone, and my bathroom sink may never be the same again.
Then I made beef stew with bright red dumplings:
Despite its strange appearance, it was quite tasty.
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