Ephemeral Top 5 : 2/07

Tend Skin Lotion : this is deeply odd stuff. It purports to eliminate ingrown hairs, redness, bumpiness and other agonies associated with deflocculating one's hide. It's clear and slippery and stings like a swarm of attitudinal hornets. Kind of like what you'd get if someone dissolved Charles Bronson in a vat of Astroglide. It isn't sold in many places. It's expensive - at over a buck an ounce, it's pricier than Maker's Mark, and not nearly as tasty with diet Coke.

However... I'll be damned, but the stuff works. A recent round of overzealous epilation left my girl region in an alarming state. Tend Skin to the rescue! My post-bathing regime may now involve more cotton balls and shrieking, but at least my triangle is no longer of the terrifying Bermuda variety.

Jones Sugar Free Black Cherry Soda : it's four cents a can cheaper than mega-brand sodas. It has hep minimalist packaging. It's sweetened with Splenda, for those of you who haven't learned to love aspartame's special, dangerous-to-one's-health zing. How does it taste? Oh, I dunno... vaguely sweet and fizzy. Not noxious enough to cause one to do an inadvertent spit-take. Certainly not delectable enough to explain why I've consumed three cans of the stuff tonight alone. Which might make for a good tagline... "Jones : Addictiveness Not Commensurate With Quality!"

Cozy : which also happens to be the kid's new favorite word. He says it whenever I tuck him into his Graco Pack 'n Imprison... "Coh-see!" No, you may not have him. Selling babies is illegal in this country. Also, I've grown somewhat attached.

In any event: I am all about the cozy. Quilts and toast and tea and sweaters and such. I've also been cooking a lot, which is unusual... I tend to shun food-preparation methods more strenuous than "1. Remove wrapper from granola bar. 2. Insert into eatin'-hole." But nay... as of late, I have baked and basted and broiled and bound with yards on end of butcher's twine. I may enjoy the latter a little TOO much. Hopefully this fascination will grow old before I'm reduced to trussing individual grapes with dental floss.

Lean Cuisines and Possible Free Sterilization : I cracked. I bought a microwave. It's sleek and red and freaks my tech-savvy ass right the fuck out ("Does that mushroom shape mean popcorn or new game of Global Thermonuclear War?"). It also means that, when feeling lazy, I'll now have the option to eat things other than those which are, A. Shelf-stable, B. Granola bars, or C. Impaled on a fork, as they are still frozen.

Mile Marker : when I first started running, I was in wretched shape. I couldn't run for longer than thirty seconds at a go. Since I was measuring my progress in seconds, I began timing myself via music. If I managed to run through the chorus, I'd vow to keep going until the cool "deedle deedle deedle deedle DEEEEEE" guitar riff the next time. A single song was usually good for two or three walk/run intervals.

At the very end of tonight's run, I managed to plow through Clap Your Hands Say Yeah's "Over and Over Again", Flin Flon's "Floods" and Sparks' "Perfume" without stopping.

For those of you keeping track at home, that's ten minutes and forty-two seconds.

For those of you considering running [for fun/fitness/because those ominous howls seem to be getting closer]: when I finished, I didn't think, "Owie owie ow!", or, "Wow, that sucked a metric ton of ass," or even, "I wonder who would win in the Ultimate Smackdown of Catchy Songs, 'Perfume' or the Kit-Kat jingle?"

Nope. First thing that popped into my mind was "Again again I wanna do it again!"