Wax on, wax off

By the time this post is up, I will be on a plane to California to attend a conference. This is pretty amazing, considering the budget cuts that have been made and the fact that most of the departments at my college had their conference/travel budgets slashed to zero.

The other amazing part is it is being held at Biola University (located outside of Los Angeles), which just happens to be where my sister Andrea works. Woohoo! I get to stay with her for the week and am going out a day early to hang out with her.

Last week it hit me that I really am going. To a professional conference. In Los Angeles.

As this reality sank in, I suddenly felt very Mid-Western. And a little frumpy. And more than a little mom-ish.

For three years things like painting my toenails and having perfectly groomed eyebrows have not been at the top of my priority list, and I felt a pannicked need to move them back to the top. How could I have let these kinds of things go? When did I fall into that mommy slump?

I've spent the rest of the week reevaluating my clothing and shoes and jewelry and purse and sunglasses and what ever else I could possibly find to be insecure about.

(It doesn't help that Aunt Flo was visiting and brought along more than enough hormones to skew my ability to rationally evaluate the situation.)

Yesterday I pulled out the nail polish and proceeded to paint my toenails. Kaitlyn, of course, walked in and wanted to know what I was doing. She proceeded to get in the way, and I suddenly remembered why painting my nails had gone to the bottom of the priority list.

Today I opened up the new waxing kit I picked up at the drug store earlier this week. My eyebrows and upper lip were in need of some attention.

Unfortunately, Kaitlyn was more than willing to provide me with plenty of attention as I tried to read the directions for melting the wax in the microwave. And melting the wax turned out to be much messier and more complicated than what the directions indicated.

After spilling wax on the kitchen floor and spending several minutes stirring/melting the sticky, gloppy mess, I proceeded to the bathroom for the next step.

I managed to do my upper lip and had started to get the wax spread around my eyebrows when Kaitlyn found me. She was being a little high maintenance, so there I was, trying to concentrate on finishing the job and keeping an almost-three-year-old from spilling the wax or grabbing the tweezers or getting into anything else destructive.

(In case you were wondering, this is not the ideal situation for practicing your multi-tasking abilities.)

I thought I had succeeded and was about to rip away one of the wax strips when I heard her say "uh-oh" and looked down to find a suction cup in the toilet. She seemed facinated by this, and I caught her arm just before she threw a second suction cup in. (The suction cups are ones that keep falling off our shower organizer.)

I took the suction cup away and turned around just in time to see her begin to reach her hand towards to the toilet.

"Oh no. No no no. NO. You do NOT need to get that out of there."

After convincing her that the suction cup would be okay (until I retrieved it later), and a discussion about how you never throw things in the toilet, and you never reach in the toilet, I finally was able to finish the waxing job.

I also realized why, like the nail polish, waxing is something that hasn't been at the top of the priority list.

Then I went out into the kitchen and had to have a discussion with Kaitlyn about why we don't reach into the trash and take things out.

I'll miss her, but I am looking forward to not having to deal with this kind of stuff for a whole week!