Waxing Lyrical...

(I had posted this a few of years ago in my now defunct blog. I happened to find a version of the text I'd saved when I deleted that blog and thought would be good to share it here)

I love having control. Rather, I hate losing control. The thing is, anything delegated to someone else by me, is always messed up. Hence my faith in letting someone else doing a job for me well, that I can do myself, is close to zilch. So I am fussy. And I micro-manage. However, I find all this DIY rather inconvenient.

Spring has been around for a while now. While I really love the weather, I miss covering my body up. Well, I don't as much miss that as get bogged down by the extras I need to do before I reveal my limbs.

Much as I love the after effects, depilation / epilation has never been my favourite pastime. There are too many options. None of them win hands down. The crèmes are messy and need to be repeated over and over within a short period. Shaving causes stubble with a day and need to be repeated over and over within a short period too.

Epilators are prolonged and painful, and leave angry red marks which sometimes never go away. Tweezing is not effective over large areas. Nor is threading. Electrolysis is too expensive and takes too much time, and most importantly, I need to rely on someone else, which is a capital n capital o.

Which leaves me with one just option - waxing. Now, over the years, I've figured that this is the only method which is effective and worth the mess and time it takes. Over the last few years I've discovered there is no telling how good a so called "professional" is with this technique. Even places which charge ££££ cannot be blindly trusted to leave my skin unblemished and smooth. It all depends on how good the professional-du-jour is. Even if she is terrible, one won't dare argue with a woman brandishing a stick with hot wax stuck to it.

The one big issue with waxing is that I still need to depend on someone else to help me with far reaching areas - like my upper arm. In olden days, when I was young and wild and free, there was always a girl cousin or a girl friend around, to help exactly as per my orders - uh - I mean, instructions. Now, they are all busy with their own lives.

Therefore, I thought of enlisting DH to do the job. He is a perfectionist. He is capable of following my instructions. Most importantly, he is aware of the fury I am capable of unleashing on people who disregard my instructions.

Before I enlisted a [gasp!] man to do the job, I needed the opinion of my trusted buddies. Nearly every girl I asked had tried enlisting her husband. And all those I knew, who had tried, had failed. As though their respective men had all gone to some frigging charm school together, they had, I heard, put on horrified expressions before replying, "Oh! That looks painful. I can't bear to hurt you.", or some variation thereof. Fact.

Now, I was armed. As in, I knew what was coming. I prepared myself mentally for replies [actually, retorts] to such an answer.
- "Come on; don't be a wuss. it is not as painful as it looks."
- "Don't worry I'll bear the pain and will just love you more for it." [That one sent my gag reflexes soaring]
- "It is just like pulling a plaster off."
- "Be a man! Pull the darn strip off."
- "Ten pounds per strip you yank off!" [Lame, I know, but thought it was worth a shot]

So, I equipped with my retorts, I walked up to DH confidently, jutting out my right upper arm with a wax strip stuck to it, and said, "Hey! I need some help with this waxing. Can you pull this strip off, quickly from the top?". Before one could say "brace", he yanked it off! I screamed. I was so not ready for that!

"I thought you were used to this pain", he remarked casually, sitting back and staring at his beloved telly. I wanted to yell back, "Your wife could do with some frigging TLC right now! Didn't it bother you in the least that you were going to cause me pain?" Thankfully, it was my hair which was gone, not my brains. Through gritted teeth I simply said, "You need to give me a warning just before you pull it off."

I'm not sure he even heard me over the telly. Then, of course, I turned the telly off, stood akimbo, looked him in the eye and ordered him to come in, to help me finish. With disturbing enthusiasm, he complied. Listened to, understood, and followed every single instruction I gave, to the T. I got the smoothest finish I've had in years.

Heavens forbid; if anything untoward were to happen to his suit-wearing, laptop-carrying, high-profile job, there's hope at an alternate career he's so good at. And seems to enjoy, as I note with considerable alarm.

 

Thank you, folks for your kind comments!