Tuesday, October 1, 2013

Brothers and Peaches and Rashes, Oh My!


For the next 14 minutes, today is October 1, 2013. There have been a few new things going on in my life, some really big, some not so big. Okay, well only one really big one. I have found my brother. I grew up knowing he was out there somewhere and hoping he was happy and wondering if he was still alive but I never could find him. Then three days ago BAM! There he is on Facebook! I am still giddy about it. He said he would get to know me, so I hope he likes me (some people do, actually). Then there were two not so enormous things that happened today, but still will hopefully stay in my head as a learning experience.

The first one of those things is I found out what's in a peach! I know there's a pit, but I decided to dig even deeper. I had finished my yummy, juicy peach today and was looking at that hard thing in the middle that looks like a tiny wooden brain and really studied it. I got to know my pit. I was in tune with the pit. Then I decided to break it. There's this seam down the middle and if you bite it really hard and don't mind having a dentist yell at you later, you can crack it right open! Well I did, and there's a whole other world inside the peach pit! Instead of this gnarled ugly chunk of wood, there is this smooth wooden womb. It looks like a tiny woman must have been in there her whole life shining and dusting and smoothing that wood. It looks so pretty. I just had to touch it and it felt like those beautiful wooden bowls you see at art shows and things. Well, also, inside this silky, chocolate colored cocoon is a seed. I had always assumed the pit was the seed of a peach. Turns out there's like a seed inside the seed. It's very pretty and smooth and the color of cinnamon and looks just like a fat almond. The only difference at all is that it is softer. Even when I broke the seed apart, the inside looked like an almond. The meat was smooth and milky white and had that split through it just like an almond. Now, I know some of you will not understand this, but I thought “well, it looks like an almond on the outside and on the inside, it smells nutty, I bet it will taste like an almond too!”. So, I bit it. Oh, it was awful. You know how you have to let something settle on your tongue for a minute before your brain catches up to what's going on in your mouth? Well, by the time my brain caught on, the damage was done. I had let it sit there and get this, I don't know, bitter - maybe - taste in my mouth. Then came the burning. Oh, it hurt so bad. Actually at 11:59 it still hurts so bad. The tip of my tongue. Because, you know I had to nibble it and let a bunch of crunched up pieces sit on the tip of my tongue while my brain was on a coffee break and when it came back it realized something was burning the tongue! So it finally sent the “Spit it out” signal and I spit it out, but the tip of my tongue feels like I had left it sitting in kerosene for a while. I know that sounds weird, but it's a gas, or kerosene flavor. And my mouth hurts. So, I did not find a new source of almonds. I simply found a way to get the flavor and effect of fuel in ones mouth without having to do any of that nasty siphoning. There has to be an award for that.

Second thing I found out. Warning labels are there for a reason. Any woman reading this will know what I'm talking about when I say under-boob sweat. It's like what guys get in their armpits, only it's under where our boobs make contact with our chest. Fortunately mine hasn't reached my knees yet and we're still at chest level. But that tiny area of contact can get so hot and sweaty. Like behind your knees in a hot car in the summer kind of sweaty. So, as I was putting on my Va Va Vanilla deodorant two days ago I knew I'd be working, so I put some deodorant on my under-boobs. I've done this once or twice before and never thought about it. Well, shortly into the work day, I got a migraine. I quit and went to bed and turned off all the lights and dared anyone to speak above a whisper. Then yesterday, I still had the headache so I didn't shower because the sound of water is like a jet engine when I have a migraine. I just reached in my cabinet and put on some deodorant and thinking back to the day before (as spots swam before my eyes), I put more on my under-boobs, just as a precaution and went back to bed and later threw up. Well, today the headache is down to a level that I can force myself to take a shower, because I hadn't taken one yesterday. So guess what? When you put deodorant on where it doesn't belong for two days in a row, it will give you this searing rash all up under your boobs that consists of about a bazillion tiny blister dots and it's red and stings like you got stung. I had always seen the warning label on deodorant that said “For use on underarms only” but for the life of me I couldn't figure out why they needed that. What, was someone going to use it to get rid of the stink-eye? Were they going to walk around in it to make their feet smell better? Maybe they could brush their teeth with it? I never understood the label. What dumb ass doesn't just put deodorant under their arms? That would be me.

So, as a way to waste time, this October, I am going to challenge myself to do something new every day. It has to be something I've never done before, like get a brother or eat a peach seed, although, those don't count now. I might smash a plum with a hammer or test the no-tears theory behind baby shampoo. Who knows? I will do things around the house that I have never done before because if I go outside I am bound to get something from nature on me and the nature in mountains is usually big, so I've ruled that out. I probably won't go anywhere because home is where my Diet Cokes are and I really have to see what I can do about this rash.
Wish me luck!

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