Never saw it coming

Dragon Mood? -- mystified

Yesterday, something happened to me that I never saw coming. (chuckle)   Yup, never saw it coming. And, in reflecting back on how it actually unfolded and evolved, I can't even recall the chronology and steps that led to its happening.

My entire life, since puberty anyway, I have had hair on my upper lip. Hair that grew in dark and plentiful to my complete horror as a teenager. I can remember my mother driving me to an electrolysis "salon," this small, dingy house in a depressed area of town to have the excess hair "burned" out by small needles. I was scared witless, as you can imagine; thank God, my mother was compassionate and willing to go through this exercise with me.

Since then, I've tried more electrolysis in high-priced salons, bleaching with commercial products and home-grown recipes, and plucking, plucking, plucking, all to no avail. The hair on my upper lip (I never refer to it as a mustache -- I can feel embarassed just typing it) continued to grow in, healthy and thick. ArrghhH!

This weekend, somehow, SOMEHOW, my sister, my niece and my daughter all conspired and plotted (in the fullest sense of both those verbs) to cajole, wangle and strong-arm me into agreeing to remove the hair by means of a new product. They returned from a trip to Target, sat me down, applied ice in a bag to my lip, Ruth held my hand, Jess warmed the plastic strips and Lina applied them, one after another, to my poor, defenseless upper lip. It HURT! I swore after each one was ripped off! Lina held them up to the light, examining the success of her efforts. After six or eight of them (I lost count), she looked at my lip and pronounced us DONE! Thank goodness!

This new product provided some liquidy salve to apply to the affected (assaulted) area which felt cool and soothing. I applied more ice to prevent swelling. I gingerly felt my upper lip. It felt naked and strange and unfamiliar. Weird!

That's what happened to me yesterday.