December 12, 2020 – The power of suggestion.

I just have to tell you what a relief it is to move off of the topic of ‘trying to save the world’. Even though I am tempted to resurrect it again another day, it was becoming a heavy burden to bear and I recognized it was time to head over to greener pastures. Every waking hour I was thinking about things that people can do to make a difference while simultaneously thinking about all of the things that I feel we have little control over. No, don’t flush your unused pills down the toilet (or your feminine products). Yes, do flush Mr. Goldfish if he floated up to the top of the fish tank yesterday and hasn’t moved since. No, don’t hoard all of the toilet paper at the grocery store. Actually, don’t hoard at all. Once you start down that path, it is hard to turn back and it usually has catastrophic results. Unintentionally converting your home-sweet-home into a fire hazard will be the least of your troubles. Yes, do support local businesses. They need all the help they can get! Those are pretty easy things to figure out. But what do you do about corrupt governments? Or when people attack each other over differences of opinion or religious beliefs or ethnicity or skin color or sexual orientation?

See what I mean? I know when it’s time to cut and run. I can figure out a few things but there are some things that are beyond my abilities. What’s within my abilities? Bringing you a little humor, my friends! And since it’s been on my mind over the last few weeks, I thought I’d overshare a bit with you about my latest ‘concerns’. What has left me feeling anxious and worried and has me constantly looking in the mirror and rubbing my chin? It’s all thanks to ‘the power of suggestion’. I had an appointment with one of my kidney specialists recently and he switched my medicine to see if it would help with my hair loss as well as the tremors I’d developed. At the end of the appointment, he said that the tremors should stop but I might grow a beard. A what???!!! A beard???!!! Excuse me? “Yes,” he replied very matter-of-factly. “Your new medicine stimulates hair growth. It should help restore the hair on your head, but you might grow a beard.” If my doctor had a sense of humor, I would have thought he was joking with me. But I have yet to see the man joke about anything.

Thanks, Doc! Because you shared that little nugget of information, I have become obsessed with looking in the mirror and watching for a five o’clock shadow. I’m already hairy enough, thank you very much! I actually won a contest several years ago for having the hairiest legs. All I had to do? Not shave for a week. That’s the one and only time I’ve won something for doing absolutely nothing. Now you want to add insult to injury? Will the excessive hair growth stop at my face or will it slowly start to stimulate the hair on other parts of my body (including my legs)? Am I going to have to start waxing my chest at some point?! I saw that scene on ‘The 40-Year-Old Virgin’ when they waxed Steve Carell’s chest and although I found it quite amusing, I think I’d rather not subject myself to that treatment. What if I decide not to take the medication because I don’t want a beard or a hairy chest or woolly elbows or furry knees or legs like a Sasquatch? Death? That’s great! Can’t you come up with another option? You’ve got to do better than that, Doc!

This is the stuff of nightmares. I’m not kidding. I literally had one two days ago. In my nightmare, I walked into the bathroom and looked in the mirror and I had, to my horror, a very healthy beard growing on my face! When I awoke, I went directly to the bathroom to see if it were true. It did appear that I had some hairs that were ‘pokier’ than usual but I’m not sure if that’s due to the medicine or menopause. I’ve tried to think of the benefits of growing out a beard, but there are few. Aside from the career option of joining Barnum and Bailey and becoming a ‘Bearded Lady’, I can really only think of two others. Wait! What? Barnum and Bailey is no more? When did that happen? Ok, scratch that. What are the two other benefits of growing out a beard? One is for vanity and one is for convenience. For vanity’s sake, I’d grow it out to cover up my neck because much like Nora Ephron, I feel bad about my neck, too. I’m not sure what’s going on there, but it ain’t pretty. For convenience’s sake, a beard might be useful for storing things, such as snacks. I imagine I could tuck a couple of protein bars in there in case my blood sugar gets low and I don’t have my purse handy.

During dinner the other night, I told my husband that I was considering going back to my old medicine because I didn’t think I could handle growing a beard, even if it meant my tremors returned. “You’d rather have your hand shake all of the time because you cannot live with facial hair?” he asked me incredulously. Yes! I would. To me, it’s the lesser of two evils. I know it seems ridiculous, but it’s true. If you haven’t figured it out by now, I am not a fan of beards. No offense bearded guys, but I like the clean-shaven look. I don’t know if it’s all that ‘fur’ that troubles me or if it’s all of the stroking of the ‘fur’ that seems to go hand-in-hand with growing out a beard. My most recent boss, the one I had before the business closed and I got laid off, grew out a beard (for the first time!) right before Covid-19 became a part of our daily lives. I tried to have a serious conversation with him during my last week of employment, but I could hardly concentrate because I was so put off by watching him continually stroking and petting and playing with his cotton-picking beard! What is that all about? Every time my husband decides to grow out his facial hair, he does the same thing. It makes me absolutely bananas!

Where do I go from here? I am still waiting to see if the medicine does leave me with something similar to what David Letterman is ‘sporting’ on his face nowadays. And he’s clearly fond of it, he cannot leave it alone. When I watch his show, I find myself shouting at the TV, “Sit on your hands, David Letterman! Sit on your hands!” Seriously, I haven’t started shopping for electric shavers yet, so that’s a good sign. And my doctor did use the word ‘might’. There’s a chance it may not happen. I might get lucky. But if it does? “You can always get electrolysis,” my husband said the other day. Great idea! But do you know how much electrolysis costs? I’d have to set up a GOFUNDME account to make that happen. I doubt I’d get too many donations if any. I would most assuredly get trolled. “You pathetic little human! There are all of these folks who need important stuff just to survive, like food and medicine, and you’re asking people to give you money because of excess facial hair?!” Nope, I’m not touching that with a 10-foot pole. But maybe I could work out a trade? You know, I scratch your back, you scratch mine? Ewww! That sounded creepy. No, it wouldn’t be like that! It’d be more like, you use an electric current to blast my hair follicles and I’ll paint your basement. I think that sounds reasonable, don’t you?

Do you happen to know someone who doesn’t mind blasting my hair follicles with electricity in exchange for mowing their lawn or painting their basement or cleaning their bathroom? I’m not beneath scrubbing out a toilet. But I draw the line at ‘pest’ control. You’ve got rats? You’re going to have to call a professional for that! And on that note, I am going to wrap this up. I was up until 3:30 in the morning working on my blog and once I went to bed, the dog kept farting and waking me up. I am so fried, the fact that I am upright and typing is pretty miraculous. I’m not pushing it tonight though. This ol’ gray mare just ain’t what she used to be. I need my sleep! And sleep I shall. I bid you adieu and I hope to see you again very soon.

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