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You're reading an old entry from Michelle "Lexi Kahn" DiPoala's online diary, formerly called Jungle Sweet Jungle. Blog name changed to Low Budget Superhero in October 2005. Now I mostly go by SuperLowBudge. You can call me Lexi, Michelle or SuperLowBudge, or if you're my mom, then Shelly. Enjoy these old posts (except if you're my mom.) Please follow on Blogger at superlowbudge.blogspot.com. From there you can follow me on Twitter and some other platforms. Thanks!



Christmas: Part the Second

(December 31, 2000)

Christmas: Part Two
(or, Exfoliation Nation)

Though there's nothing so mundane as a salt shaker in my parents' kitchen or, say, a lamp to light your way anywhere in the half-built erector set they call home, by some miracle their bathroom still resembles a Health & Beauty emporium. Yes, my parents are Bath Product Whores. The sight and smell of Louie and JoAnna's bathroom is as familiar as my own hands, but visiting only a few times a year, I forget all about it until, as was the case on Christmas morning, I take a shower while I'm there.

So it's Christmas�er, early afternoon, my parents are gone and Hub and I are due at his parents' in a few hours. I'd skip the shower altogether except that I'd been to my grandmother's house the day before, so I reek. (Long story). I dust off a change of underwear and stumble to the bathroom. After I cajole all the dogs out of there I find there's only one (slightly damp) towel, but using it is preferable to grappling with the dogs again on a towel-hunt. I have no clue where they'd be, but they'd likely be sawdust-y.

The chipped and dented shower stall is temporary, as is the particle-board counter top and exposed sink plumbing. Yet, there are literally hundreds of bottles, jars, tubes, and boxes containing soaps, powders, conditioners, pastes, scrubs, moisturizers, astringents, and one dried-out pungent sorta thing that looks like tree bark. In the old place they had a deep linen closet where they stored all their shit, preferring to keep the actual linens in a closet in the hallway. But here there isn't so much as an "under the sink" to hide anything. The effect is fascinating.

You can tell who's shit is who's as surely as if their names were inscribed across the label.

My mother's takes up the most space by far. Everything is represented a few times (apparently she'd feel naked with just ONE kind of toothpaste) and everything is either European, organic, or "for women," and generally infused with skin-softening berries or healing leaves or essential fruit oils. But mainly it's the product-per-body-part extravagance that yells "mom" to me. Citrus Cleansing Grain Facial Mask. Tiberian Hot Springs Facial Scrub. Dead Sea Mineral Eye Gel. Stimulating Peppermint Foot Soak, not to be confused with Sage Peppermint Foot Balm. Lavender-Cucumber Elbow Moisturizing Cream (this contains, among other things, frankincense). Tom's All-Natural Toothpaste (as described on South Park, "the kind that tastes like ass and doesn't fight cavities"). As I look around for a shampoo to borrow, I realize that the shampoo budget must outshine the food budget. I guiltily pick one that smells like almonds and promises a glossy shine. Since it costs more than the silk dress I'm planning to wear that day, it frikkin' better repair my split ends and give me Nicholas Cage's phone number too.

Louie's got a weird thing. He uses products meant for one use for something else, and it grosses me out. Like baking soda. In my apartment the only place you'll find baking soda is in the kitchen cabinet with the flour. Louie's been using it to brush his teeth his whole life. I tried it once in high school when we ran out of toothpaste. That stuff is nasty. Good god man, you can scour your oven with Arm & Hammer Baking Soda. And he uses Bag Balm. Bag Balm. It's for cow udders. Yeah yeah, people do use it too and you can buy it in the drug store, but how can a person dip his finger into that slimy gunk and smear it across his lips without thinking of chapped, sore cow titties? I don't borrow anything of Louie's�

Now that my "baby brother" is 27, he's flexing his own Bath Whore muscles, and to such a degree. On the shower stall floor I kick over a few curiously shaped little bottles of unlikely-hued stuff. Squinting at the labels through the steam I see they're Bed Head shampoos and conditioners. They have names like "Self Absorbed" and "Control Freak" and "Manipulator." The tag lines for this product include, "Only for the coolest people!" and "It's not about breaking the rules, but realizing rules don't exist for you." Neither does sensible judgment, apparently...1.25oz costs $17.95. My overly practical inner judger mentally calculates that a 16oz bottle would be around $230. Whew, talk about the apple falling within the shadow of the tree.

Two hours later...

...I'm ready to go visit Hub's family. I'm pink and steamed, exfoliated, scrubbed, smoothed and moisturized, I smell like every fruit and vegetable at the market...and I'm exhausted.

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