alex got a hair cut. this means he can now use a comb instead of bella's large brush to detangle his curls and locks in the morning (but he's still going strong with the crab mister).

the first day with his new trim after getting his own hair worked out he went downstairs and offered to comb bella's hair, something we all like to do ¹. after he began, bella noted the comb in his hand and said, "alex, that's the dog comb."² alex looked at it momentarily before replying, "i took all the dog hair out."

it turns out the spray mist bottle was the least of my problems.

and given the tools already at hand, i wonder if we can get alex groomed at a pet place. it might be cheaper.

¹ when i say "we" like to comb bella's hair, let me expound. we includes everyone in our immediate family, friends, and some of bella's girl cousins (many of them already have thick heads of hair as well making bella's mane nothing all that special to them). it also includes several black girls bella went to school with in early elementary. and they win the exuberance award for sure. during this time i'd sometimes stop by at recess to play ogre. instead of finding bella running and climbing, i'd find her sitting on a curb with two to three older girls behind her gleefully brushing and braiding her hair. without moving her head, she'd angle her eyes up towards me, waving a hand and saying, "hi dad". she'd then say the girls knew she had to play ogre when i arrived and they'd be done in a minute. classic bella.

² we don't own a dog but occasionally have them live with us for stretches of time as part of bella's dog-sitting service.

alex desperately needs a haircut. it makes marty mental. every time she brings taking him in for a cut he calmly answers, "in the summer." when his hair gets long like this, i call it his medusa hair because it looks like he has snakes coming out of his scalp. it is such a spectacle that it will stop passerbys who want to look and comment on his bountiful head of hair. in fact, it now is so long, even marty has reached a curious indecision saying maybe we should let him go another month or two because then it would be close to being donatable to locks of love and given its thickness, a number of kids might benefit from the contribution.

and something new this year is on mornings before school at some point before we leave, alex runs up to the bathroom, wets his hair down and brushes the character out, leaving it straight. given the fullness of the hair and the exaggerated styling technique he employs, he looks like a smiling youth out of a seventies claymation clip (e.g. the elf that wants to be a dentist).

i've tried to talk him into leaving the rope-like curls but he quietly resists my advice. which is the right choice because my opinion isn't totally because i think he looks better with his unique curls and mayhem but because when he "fixes" his hair he uses an old spray-bottle originally used with our hermit crabs and then with our lizards (all of which are now deceased). before going to work with the brush he wets his hair down with this old clear mister-bottle (that has the mysterious word in black FLUKERS printed on its side). i know technically the bottle never came into actual contact with the crabs or lizards but there's just something about him using it that skeeves me out.

also, i don't know if this extra attention to his hair has anything to do with the gaggle of girls that have started madly chasing him around the playground at recess. he says no but i'm not a big believer in behavior-changing coincidences.

marty walked into the bathroom as i was blow-drying my hair. the second the door swung open, i turned the dryer off and held it by my side while she grabbed her need and left. when she closed the door i turned it back on and resumed my work.

when she next saw me out of the bathroom she confessed to thinking i was doing something bizarre to myself with the hair dryer. while tempted to run her down a dim and twisty rabbit hole, i admitted that i turned it off only because she opened the door and the dryer is loud and the boys were still sleeping.

i could have sworn she looked more disappointed than relieved. i mean, you don't think she was privately hoping for something like this, do ya?

my family was eating at lion's choice (a local roast beef sandwich house) enjoying a rare trip out for food. while ordering our food i glanced at the guy next to me. he was an older gentleman and was in the midst of talking to the cashier. his face was framed by the take-out window and in the daytime sun, i noticed a significantly long hair sticking out of his nostril. now this was not a weekend growth variety of nose hair. this one had been brewing for many months, if not years, and had become dislodged with a sneeze or snort as it was sticking out a full inch or better. my immediate inclination was to tap him on his shoulder and motion to my nose letting him know he should go check it out, but he was putting in his order and my cashier was talking to me as well. when i finished paying and turned the man had already moved on.

moments later we had our food and took our seat. i distractedly looked around and saw the man sitting on the other side of the dining room with a guy about my age who i presumed to be his son. prior to seeing his table mate, i assumed the man was alone and had no one to tell him he had a wayward nose hanging more than an inch out of his right nostril. seeing he was not alone, i got annoyed that the guy with him did not let him in on the matter. marty noticed my glance and asked if i knew them. i said i didn't but told the table what i saw. we then spent our lunchtime talking about acceptable ways to handle such moments and how informing people of such things, even if embarrassing, is the neighborly thing to do. it also came out that i was bummed out that i didn't get a chance to give the guy a heads up but going to the table uninvited to tell him in front of his lunch date was even a touch out of my comfort zone.

our table's conversation moved on but i'd occasionally look the old guy's way wondering if there was anyone else in his life who may let him in on his grooming mis-step or if he'd have to wait for the weight of the hair to pull it from the follicle naturally. after his meal was complete the man stood to refill his drink. seeing this i hurriedly excused myself grabbing my own still full drink and headed to the soda counter. he was already there and i positioned myself to his right. noticing me he shifted to the left giving me room to share. knowing the moment was short, i began with a smile ...

TROY
thanks

OLD GUY
sure.

TROY
oh. excuse me.

OLD GUY
yes.

TROY
i think you have a hair getting away from you there.

OLD GUY
huh.

TROY
(i rubbed my nose and quietly added) you have a nose hair making a break for it. the next time you're in the bathroom, give it a quick look and you'll see it.

i then sidled away. his last look didn't seem to register a quick comprehension of my point but that is not the sort of conversation you tend to draw out any longer than one needs to. when i returned to the table i excitedly told my cohorts of my adventure which they eagerly took in.

that was several months ago. last week after our family dinner was wrapping up and alex and anthony had excused themselves, bella, marty, and i sat in our chairs talking of this and that. shortly before excusing herself, bella said to me:

BELLA
hey dude, you got one getting away from you.

TROY
what?

BELLA
(she wipes a finger across her eyebrow as if she's giving some old mafia sign). over here. you got a hair getting away from you.

TROY
where? here?

BELLA
(she motions me to lean forward and reaches forward) no here. the next time you're using the bathroom, you should run it down.

after several futile attempts of my trying to grasp it, she reached up and grabbed the long hair that decided to start pointing straight out from my head instead of resting flat with the others. once she had a pinch on it, she gave it a few soft tugs to prove her find. seeing how long it took for me to get the message, i now worry i should have sent bella over to the old guy instead of me given how slow i was in understanding her not at all subtle clues.

and don't think i (or marty) didn't notice her perfect re-use of my technique (on me). and while i'm sure having a keen memory will benefit my children in life and school, i can see, already, it isn't doing my parenting any kind of favors given their seeming ability to recall my every bit advice, which oftentimes, when used on or against me, seems less sage than when directed at others.

the kids had an extraordinary number of snow days this year (one more and i think marty would have made a house-call on the superintendent). on the last afternoon of the last snow day they had, marty took the kids swimming. in the bustle of getting out the door, marty didn't have time to address her adjusted winter time shaving routine. while at the pool bella swam underwater to marty. when she, bella, came up she leaned into marty and whispered in her ear.

BELLA
mom, you have some hairs sticking out ... down there.

MARTY
i'm sure i do bella.

BELLA (still whispering)
but what if someone sees them?

MARTY (whispering back)
i have the benefit that most people here aren't swimming at my crotch in swim googles bella.

we don't discuss often enough the crazy good parts of getting older, the number one of them being, caring less about what others think. in fact, i think our care level decreases in direct proportion to the growth of our number of wayward hairs. the jaw-dropping intelligence of the human body does not end in the womb or after puberty or after childbirth. it's smart to the end.

additionally, i remember a former boss of mine once telling me that a big breakthrough moment in her life was when she realized not only weren't people talking about her, they weren't even thinking about her. that woman taught me many amazing lessons and i attribute a great quantity of my professional experience to things she taught me in her small office in our large cooperation.

some latent observations about yesterday's post dealing with male grooming:
i guess i may be the last guy walking around who didn't know that male grooming is better known as manscaping.

i guess it's only fitting that the girl who cuts my hair be the one to tell me that.

i guess i shouldn't have been surprised when i googled manscape that a word like 'boyzillion' would appear in the results.

i guess i should have remembered sooner that when bookpimp got married, as a wedding gift to his wife, he got his back waxed. when the hair lady looked at his naked backside she explained that what he paid her wasn't enough to do the whole thing and asked if he wanted to pay more or wax less. the wife was still touched that her man got a large rectangle of hair removed in her honor.

i guess i should have known an images search on the term manscape would have produced something as depressing as this.



i guess after seeing that photo my advice to hair-conscious men everywhere would be stop shaving and start running.

shortly before i stopped being a corporate whore, i had an unusual-ish lunch. two things made it odd. first off, i went with five guys, colleagues, i didn't know all that well, only one of which would have even rated as an acquaintance (i usually eat lunch alone or with one or two people i like pretty well). the second curiosity was the conversation itself. it dealt with, of all things, male grooming. when the topic was first floated, and it was not raised by me because such matters aren't even on my radar, i scanned the table thinking in a group of people who push ones and zeros around for a living this subject might have a life-span of 36 seconds. but as i studied the five expressions i didn't see disdain and disinterest but instead mild intrigue and readiness. i almost yelled at the whole lot of them saying they can either like network gaming parties or shaving their genitals but not both.

seeing the subject had legs i turned my attentions to the conversation's sponsor. you groom? down there? unabashedly he said he did. he then asked me. you don't? at all? unabashedly i said i didn't. he asked me why i cut the hair on my head. i said because it would be unprofessional not to. he asked why i shaved my face. i admitted that even though i was still as of yet unable to grow cheek hair if i could i would still shave because i felt face pelts were also unprofessional. he then started asking about marty. and if she shaved and groomed. i said she did but certainly not at my demand. and frankly, i could care less if she did or not. the whole table groaned loudly and recoiled like slugs to salt. what's the big deal i asked. are they afraid of a natural woman? it seems they were afraid of the potential. a few of them had seen movies and were witness to what was in fact possible.

seeing i was getting nowhere with the first guy, i sought support from the rest of the table. one by one i asked them if they owned a male epilady or some such device and one by one they confessed they did, my acquaintance included. i saved my sure bet for last, a contractor straight from the india homeland, arranged marriage country and all. he said to me in the most classic and quintessential accent, "i am sorry troy, but i am unable to help you here." even the indian guy was sitting on the closed-lid toilet, with his knees flayed apart, tweezing groin hairs with his free time. does he know how to tie a slip-knot? has he read the the count of monte christo? can he spin a pencil in crazy ways on his hand? no, but he doesn't have a body hair on the outside of the elastic leg band of his underwear. how admirable is that? as weak as it may appear, that last guy really took the wind out of my sails and in the end, i quit the fight. there were too many of them and they proved immune to any powers of persuasion i thought i may have had. sad to find myself spending time with such a lot, i became morose.

perhaps my despondency drove the guy who started the whole preening debate to share the following story about a friend of his who was uber-manic about his hair removal. it seems this guy's appearance was a real house of cards given his hirsute genes and required more routine care than a fertilized lawn in portland. after he moved in with a girl he'd been dating, he was finding it difficult to find enough private time to keep the hedges at bay. he was having to go to work late or come home for lunch to get his primping time in (sheesh!). one day his girlfriend wasn't feeling well and left work early. after walking in the door and setting her keys and purse down she heard something coming from the bedroom. she moved to the door, listened for a moment and then opened it. she saw her boyfriend lying on the floor, on his back, naked, and with his legs pulled over his head. he had an electronic thing in his hand but she didn't have time to make out what it was or what he was doing with it before he sprang forward into a sitting position, and started yelling at her through bugged-out eyes to get out of the room. she slammed the door shut and stood there with one hand still on the knob and the other covering her mouth. some minutes later he came out of the room fully clothed and aside from a huffiness about him, acting like nothing had happened. seeing that he wasn't going to volunteer an explanation she asked him what he was doing in there. he exploded saying it was none of her business and she should learn to knock on closed doors before entering rooms (her own bedroom included it seems). he never told her he was shaving the hair from between his buttocks and she never recovered from not being told that he was shaving the hair from between his buttocks so they broke up shortly after the incident. if i recall the story correctly, she let him keep the apartment.

i rebounded from the evil outing by imagining the guy in the story was the guy pushing the topic at my lunch table (he was reasonably hirsute). i had to do that because that meal happened four years ago and i still hold an image of a slightly overweight naked guy rolling around on plush carpeting contorting a braun razor in his hand fighting for the last, perfect angle. typically, i'm the stamper of such imagery and not the one having uninvited images pressed into the walls of my brain. call me a sore loser.

there are few days that go by that i don't think about how hard life as a woman must truly be.

and we can all thank bookguy for sending this morsel my way.

do you remember me talking about juju? i thought i was on my best behavior in utah. i swear. but by the looks of the blemish that has taken over the region above my left eyebrow it appears the ju-ju gods believe i took an aluminum bat to bookguy while he slept.

it began in the form of a small bump shortly after our return. then it started to show its teeth, growing in diameter, height AND darkness. saturday night i eyed it in the mirror, turning my head from left to right seeing how it looked from various angles. all told it remained quite innocuous but i let the fact that people were coming for brunch in the morning cloud my judgement and i threw down. two minutes in i knew the right move was to cut my losses but i had made some ground. eight minutes later i was waving the white flag, in this case a balled-up kleenex. i not only lost the war but took quite a thumping in the battle as well.

the next morning i studied the zone. there was no way to call it anything other than bleak. but i shook it off, i'm a grown man. what do i care if it looks like someone spot-welded a red bouncy ball to my forehead? i'm bigger than all that mess. in the midst of my self-pep-talk, i heard a knock at the front door and responded. it was a close friend of marty's. as she stepped into the foyer she made big, wild eyes and brightly said "ohhhh! what happened there?" and waggled a finger around the bouncy ball. i bashfully lowered my eyes and said i think i beat my friend with a bat while he slept.

bella clips her own fingernails. toenails too. has been for well over a year now. she's quite adept at contorting her hands and feet in all sorts of crazed poses to get just the right cut. the thing i love most though is how meticulous she is about cleaning up. as clippings drop she plucks them from her thigh or shirt and adds them to a small pile of prior victims. and, if a shard jettisons through the air she tracks it with eagle-like awareness and then retrieves it, even getting up to recover the runaway if necessary.

another thing about bella is she's an improver. she often devises methods for doing things faster, smarter. at some point bella deduced that instead of handling every nail piece individually, it would be quicker to hold her foot or hand over some sort of container. this way, the debris, aside from the occasional shooter, would fall right in thus saving her a step. while you would think we could all celebrate such a handsome improvement i was quick to identify a slight flaw in her process. her receptacle of choice is my work shoe.

now it's not that bella is inconsiderate. when done, she carefully picks up the wingtip and empties it into a nearby trash can. after the initial pour, she'll peer into the dark recess of the shoe with squinty eyes. if she detects any hangers on she'll give it another tip and shake, possibly even clanging it against the side of the bin. when satisfied, she returns the shoe to it's home beneath my dresser.

this leads to a second issue in bella's workflow. if she's in the middle of her grooming and neighbor-molly sticks her head in our door calling for her, the clippers get immediately dropped and the shoe left in place as bella hurriedly scrambles down the staircase excitedly calling "coming molly. i'm coming." then at some later point in the day marty will walk by, see the shoe in the hallway, pick it up, quietly curse me and haphazardly toss the footwear in the direction of my dresser.

the next morning i will slide my socked and unaware foot into the loafer moments before dashing down the stairs to usher the younglings to school and then myself to work. i may notice something straight away but in the a.m. fervor don't take enough heed to do anything beyond wiggle my toes or shift my foot around. it isn't until hours later when i'm sitting in my office discussing some mundane matter with a colleague that it again occurs to me something is amiss. it is here that i roll my chair back, remove the shoe and tip it over. as i watch the translucent pieces of human waste tumble through the air before disappearing into the dull-colored carpet my mind screams "noooohhh!" i turn to look at the face of my alarmed co-worker. it is clear they feel are too near someone with an exotic disease that makes their toenails brittle and crumbly. and my condition appears so dire i can't even wait until i get home to attend to my illness privately and on top of all of this, am inconsiderate enough to just cast my withered body pieces all willy-nilly about the workplace.

have i mentioned that bella will also on occasion trim her own hair. that particular habit has 'night in jail' written all over it.

marty and i have been enjoying the terribly underrated freaks and geeks series together. i can't tell you how interesting it is to be watching this with someone who was neither a freak, a geek or, as with her spouse, somehow both.

although i will say i feel like a celebrity. she's so full of questions, questions i know the answers to. and she asks them excitedly, sitting on the couch with her knees pulled up to her chest, smiling widely as she works to get them out.

were there really girls who would/could push guys around? did guys really freak out about having to shower in gym? do people really dance in front of and converse with their mirror?

the answers:

1. my mom made me put the dollar bill she gave me for lunch in that funny little pocket above the regular right pocket on levis. three people knew this. myself, my mother and a girl named audrey who simply held her hand out every day she saw me before lunch.
2. at my high school, we only had to shower during swim week. me and a terribly overweight kid were the only ones with doctors notes excusing us from the program for three straight years. you see, not only did i not know how to swim, i didn't get a chest hair until i was 19, started shaving a year after that (and then only once a week until i was 25). you do the math. i was about twelve leg hairs away from being diagnosed with alopecia and advertising my pubeless groin to all of my rowdy and hirsute colleagues was simply not in the plan.
3. dammit

but don't get me wrong, i'm also learning stuff. like that the average person could feather their hair if they so desired?

although, for me, it raises another question; who wouldn't desire to feather their hair?

last week i received the worst haircut i've had in over 10 years.

this was my second haircut PL (post-Larry).

and, this was my first.

odd places i've seen stray pubic hairs in the not-too-distant past:

1. in alex's diaper at his 1-week pediatric exam. the doc checked to make sure it wasn't attached before confessing that had it been, we may have a problem.

2. sticking out of the play-doh as it passed through a fun factory's shape maker. the shape of the moment was a simple square.

3. on my work laptop's computer keyboard.

and on the last item it was the client i was meeting with who brought it to my attention. he didn't say anything, he just waggled a long index finger above the letters R and T where it sat. 'oopsey-daisy, wonder where that come from?' and, to say you don't quite know what to do with it once you're holding it in the air pinched between your thumb and forefinger, highlighting it's curlycue shape, would be a vast understatement. if it were an obvious head hair you'd just lightly shoo or blow it off the desk and onto the floor, but i know how i'd feel if someone started floating stray groin hairs around my work area all willy-nilly. so i did the only respectable thing i could think of (at 8:15 in the morning at least) and daintily picked it up, studied it momentarily and deposited it into my shirt pocket. i'm a staunch believer in conducting low-impact business meetings.

after leaving this appointment i spent a moment hoping the guy knew i was simply trying to be respectful of his space and that i was not a collector of random short hairs. although, i can say, should anyone have such a hobby or collection, i would have interest in seeing it.

i plucked my eyebrows for the first time ever last thursday, the day before the taos ski bonanza. it began after i spotted a single rogue hair a bit above the rest. so i found marty's tweezers, leaned in close and yanked it. do you realize how much chaos you can see on your face when you lean in two inches from a well lit mirror. i didn't either. so twenty minutes later i'm done with the razing. nothing extreme. just addressing 34 years of unfettered growth.

when i was finished it occurred to me that i was seeing bookguy the next day. now he didn't cross my mind during the maintenance but primping and preening to such dire levels before meeting an old friend makes one take pause.

admittedly, there's something you got to know about bookguy. he's a little on the observant and opinion-friendly side. i mean until he started shaving his head he had this thin fang of hair charging over the top of his scalp. i called it hair's last stand. since eliminating that he's been a little harder to ding physically and he seems to harbor a keen memory for this distant poke at his fading coif.

in regard to my ablutions, he didn't say anything one way or another. and, i don't want to say i'm hurt, but it would have been nice for him to have noticed. that's all.

on a side thought, if i ever started a band i'd name it Marty's Tweezers. additionally i'd make certain we'd open for buddy james' band Amy's Flank Steak. a certain one-two punch for all ages.