Holy Flaming Cats!

Let's just get down to brass tacks here...

I hate makeup simply because it makes my face itch.

While I wear it on Sundays and special occasions, I do so more because it's considered a female thing to do than out of some sense of cosmetic devotion.

I like my face with or without the stuff.

However, over the last couple of years, I have been using a 'liquid age defying' potion that allegedly reduces the appearance of fine lines and wrinkles.

Whatever.

I mostly use it so my face doesn't take on the consistency of the dirt in the Sonora desert. I haven't exactly seen age receding from my face by decades like the advertisement claims, but at least my skin is more moist than the leathery penny loafers I wear.

But no story would be complete without tragedy and triumph.


With all the construction and pounding that has been going on in our house, I had put all of the contents of the medicine chest into a small hard side luggage piece and set it alternately on the side of the sink and the lid of the toilet, depending strictly upon what was being used at the moment.

The aforementioned "youth in a bottle" cost about $20 bucks. Anyone who knows me for longer than 5 minutes knows that I don't toss out that kind of coin on makeup or female preparations of ANY kind, much less 'age defying formulas'.

But I did.

Now, my sorrow runneth over due to a crappy shelf in my medicine chest. I was carefully replacing my items since Rick said it was now declared safe to do so. The shelf upon which I put the GLASS bottle of rejuvenation and restoration collapsed. Yep. Right out of the cabinet.

And the stupid bottle not only broke, it shattered.

A million pieces doesn't begin the countdown of giblets and shards that littered the sink, the counter top, the side of the toilet, the wall and the floor. I nearly cried.

Not just because I watched the $20 winging out the window, but because I was barefooted.

I never wear shoes if I can help it, and last night was no exception. But being caught in the delicate predicament of having glass everywhere and goo coating various locations like sap droplets from some exploded tree, I had to call for help.

Rick came on the double and brought my sandals and I cleaned up the remnants of my one vanity beauty treatment and attempted to hold back the stream of expletives that hovered near my lips.

Careful examination said that the bathroom finally was good to go, so I tossed the last dribbly, gooey, glass encrusted tissues into the trash.

That was last night.

This morning... well, let's just say it was a different story entirely.

I had somehow "conveniently" missed a shard of surgically sharpened glass in the night but by dawn's early light I discovered that pesky shard ... with my foot.

Holy flaming cats... that age serum stings like pure alcohol on an open wound with fire attached!!! I think the nerve ending that got fried was connected from my foot directly to my eyeballs and on to my brain.

The tears began to flow. I sat down on the toilet lid and began to pick at the glass Clovis point puncturing my delicate and tender foot. I hate the sight of my own blood and this was no exception. Prying the offending projectile from the pad of my foot, I got a bit woozy just thinking about the continuing wave of pain and red stuff that roared through the seeping hole.

The more I blotted at the blood, the more 'age defying serum' got rubbed directly into the hole. I thought at one point that I was going to have to die to feel better, which would have been kind of embarrassing since I was standing there in my drawers.

It's truly sad to think of that lovely money going right into the trash since nothing was saved of the serum. It's even sadder to think of the vanity induced semi-self- inflicted wound that made my foot feel like a participant in some tribal ritual of purity and fire. The worst part was that I couldn't keep the naughty words from springing forth like dandelions on a summer lawn.

But the good news is, my foot has never looked younger. It appears that the serum has rolled the clock back for the sole of my foot.

I may be wrinkled, lined and flabby everywhere else, but my foot is ageless, timeless and beautiful - at least it is until the serum wears off or I wash my foot...whichever comes first.

I wonder how long I can stand on one foot while I bathe...