Sunday, June 7, 2009

The wrong side of the bed?

There's an old saying about 'waking up on the wrong side of the bed' that serves to tell others you're having a bad day. It's always been a bit strange to me. I mean, even when I was single I had a double bed all to myself, I don't recall ever having woken up on the other side of it. How does that happen exactly? And if it did happen, I'm not sure I'd have gotten out on that side, I would've just shimmied my way over to the 'right' side and went about my day. Now I share a bed, and now it would be virtually impossible to wake up on the wrong side - I mean, seriously, what kind of sleep are you getting if you actually switch places at some point in the middle of the night. It's not like Ole gets up to go to the bathroom and comes back and shoves me over while I'm sleeping. Zoe does try to shove me over, but not to the wrong side, she's just shoving me OFF the bed more than anything. So, no, I don't wake up on the wrong side of the bed.

Based on personal experience, I think a more accurate description of a day filled with confusion, is one described as 'having showered out of order'. Let me explain. Unless I'm the oddball (no worries, it's happened before), I'm assuming that most people have a routine when it comes to showering. Something you do every day (or at least most days) and probably something you do in the same order, each day, without thinking. Mine has always been:

  1. Get wet
  2. Apply shampoo, rinse (no need to repeat, those directions on the bottle serve only to sell more shampoo)
  3. Apply conditioner
  4. While conditioner soaks in, soap up and rinse
  5. Shave legs
  6. Rinse out conditioner
  7. Stand under hot water and contemplate the meaning of life (optional - depending on time)

Then it's time to move on to the drying stage of the routine. So I reach for the towel (mine is furthest from the shower, and no, I don't know why, considering that of those who use towels in this house, I have the shorter arms, but oh well, it's not like I'm bitter about it) and once I have grabbed the towel, the face is dried first. The rest is a bit tough to describe, because I'm not really conscious of how it's done, it's just done. However, the last step of the process involves turning around to face the shower, followed by flipping the head upside down, throwing the towel around the shoulders, then wrapping said towel around all hair and turning right side up again so that I end up looking a bit like a naked Carmen Miranda minus the fruit basket on top.

There have been days that, for inexplicable reasons, things suddenly get out of order and that out of order-ness, in and of itself, can throw off everything that happens for the rest of my day. Like accidentally grabbing conditioner before the shampoo. Or applying shampoo for a second time when it was actually time for the conditioner. Or suddenly shaving my legs before having shampooed. Any of those things will cause not only the rest of the shower to be in a complete state of disarray and confusion, but the rest of my day!

In the past 3 weeks I have gone from thick, curly hair in need of deep conditioner, to short hair I wasn't sure what to do with, to short hair being pulled out in seemingly bizarre clumps, to no hair. For the 3 weeks that I had short hair, I didn't know what to do with it. Seriously. How much shampoo do I use? Do I even need conditioner now? Does this shampoo make my hair spike a bit more or lay down flat (I was going for the spiky)?

Through all of the short hair phase, I kept my drying routine, and dutifully kept doing my big hair flip only to be suddenly reminded, each and every time, that there was nothing left to flip. Really cuts down on the drying time but (til gengæld), added to the styling time because I couldn't figure out what the heck to do with the hair - gel, no gel, mousse perhaps, hairspray, what to do, what to do - each day became a new experiment. Some were successful, but were doomed not to be repeated as I couldn't quite figure out by the time the next day rolled around, what exactly I had ended up doing with the hair the previous day.

And then, the short hair exploded in hand fulls. And finally, I pulled out the clipper, and took off what remained. Yes, it was an extreme move, but quite fun actually and what was left was nothing short of irritating and no longer necessary. Now I'm just a stubble strewn head in a world full of hair. If you think going from long hair to short hair messed up the shower routine, try going to NO hair! I'm no longer quite sure what to do with myself in there. I've officially moved on to the Reader's Digest Condensed version of 'how to take a shower':

  1. Get wet
  2. Soap up and rinse
  3. Stand there dazed and confused wondering if that's all there is to it
  4. Stand under hot water and contemplate the meaning of life (fully dependent on the length of time spent on #3)
So, what do you think? Are you a wrong side of the bed person or shower out of order person? Or are you now just shaking your head trying to figure out why I'm so strange?
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