Curiouser and Curiouser

So, turns out the vintage dress was a scam. Someone called it on being a rip-off of a current designer's gown, and a cheap one at that. Needless to say, I am no longer interested in a cheap-looking knockoff made in China from a photo.

The upside? I like the actual version even more than the eBay rip-off. A current dress means that bridal salons will carry it, and I can try it on. And get it professionally tailored without freaking out about ruining a vintage dress.

The downside? Price hike. Went from $200 to about $1k. Still very cheap for a wedding dress (especially one as complicated as it is, with tiers and area-specific lace) and can be found brand new for about $800, but still. I was psyched about it being so cheap. Ah, well - not a bad bargain, considering that it'll be two dresses if I modify it the way I plan to. And the wedding is low-budget everywhere else.

And I can always troll ebay or other sites to see if it pops up. I did a quick search on Craigslist, but no luck. And 90% of the wedding sites online are run by the Chinese sweatshop knockoff makers, which is frustrating because there's no way to filter them.

I have an appointment to try it on in a salon on Wednesday. Maybe I can get the sample cheap?

As some of you may know, I'm a closet dirty blonde. I've been dumping dye into my hair since high school, and only now have given in and am letting it grow out naturally. Trouble is, the same genetics that gave me light hair and light eyes also gave me (shock and awe!) light skin.

Which makes body hair look even darker.

Now, I'm obsessive about my body hair. Even if I'm wearing pants, I have to shave my legs. But I always hate the day-after stubble, not to mention the fact that I have to do it every couple of days. Same thing with bikini line and underarms. I've never shaved my arms, mostly out of fear of how it would grow back, but I've always been super self-conscious about my arm hair.

I tried a hair remover cream on my arms. It did a decent job, except it burned a few little holes in my hyper-sensitive skin. No thx.

Then I heard about epilators from a coworker who has one. The concept was both horrifying and intriguing - a series of tweezers that systematically plucked hair in large areas and by pulling from the root, kept it at bay. Theoretically, the hair that grew back would be finer, slower-growing, harder to see, and easier for future plucking. I did some research, decided that it would be worth it to at least try, and picked a model I liked.

It arrived, and I saw something like this.



And I turned it on, and it SPUN and made this awfully intimidating mechanical keening noise. I thought to myself, where have I seen this before?

Oh, right.



Okay, so. On to the results.

Arms: The main area I was worried about. Last thing I want is tiny black spots all over my arms from half-plucked hairs. Besides, finer hair on arms means less pain, right?

FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF.

Now, I understand the logistics here. The first time, you're plucking full-grown, thick hairs, not the tiny little sapling hairs you'll be sprouting later. You're ripping up planted roots here, so it's going to hurt like a bitch. And everything I read unanimously agreed that the first time is a thousand percent worse (or more) than any subsequent epilations. And even the little, wispy hair on my arms felt like burning. Seriously. Dozens of simultaneous short, stabbing pains made me take a second, brace myself, and dive back in.

I finished one pass, admired the results (an angry-looking skin pattern, but no stubble whatsoever) and with enthusiasm returned, took a second pass.

OH MY GOD SO MUCH BETTER.

The second pass was infinitely better than the first. I rubbed some lotion on my skin, watched my blotches visibly relax, then moved on to the second arm.

FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF.

Underarms: I knew this would be worse, seeing as the hairs are in a thicker, low-contact zone. Also, from what I understand, underarm hair growth patterns tend to resemble fractals in their directional pattern, so going with the grain in any given section would go against the grain for at least half the hair. Encouraged by the success on my arms, I took a hot shower, lightly scrubbed off any dead skin, let the area thoroughly dry, and then started slowly.

Holy. Mother. Of. Fuck.

Seriously, after 30 seconds, the pain had me lightheaded. I had to sit down and catch my breath. It was incredible. Every individual hair killed me. Pulling the skin taut, changing angles, shorter strokes - everything led to a world of pain. But I persevered, eventually just hacking away at tiny sections that pushed my pain threshold until it looked pretty clear, then cleaned myself up and went to work. After my shift, I came home, washed up, and braced myself for round two.

Amazingly, similar results: pass #2 was infinitely better than the first. And the angriness and tenderness in the skin had dissipated, so the nerve endings weren't primed for more pain anymore. But the results were well worth suffering through that first pass: much less pain, and not a single black spot of stubble to be found. They look great, and subsequent touch-ups have been minimal.

Bikini Line: No way. No freaking way. Not touching that with the epilator unless I see that the results are GODDAMN worth what I know I'm going to have to go through. And that day may be never.

Legs: It took a while before I could do these. I definitely had a moment of "This worked! Let's keep going!" but the pain that hit was similar to that of the arms, except worse and pricklier. So I waited a while, then sat my ass down and did them section by section, wincing over the more sensitive parts. Ankles and side-of-knee tended to be the worst, but it followed the pattern: horrible the first time, barely flinched the second.

The verdict? So far, it delivers on everything it promised. My arms look the same as they did five days ago without a touch-up yet, legs are too soon to tell, and underarms look and feel great. The epilator I got can be used corded or cordless, and seems very durable and easy to maintain. I think that if I kept this up, I might never have to shave again.

I'd recommend it to everyone if it wasn't for the pain of initiation. The results are fantastic, but my pain tolerance is pretty high and even I had to stop for hours at a time because of the amount and type associated with this little thing.

Meme answers to come tomorrow - sleeping off my body's endorphin overdrive now.

So, I did it!

I put my first item up for sale on eBay. It's the steampunk Cinderella gown - I don't know if it'll sell or not, but I've never sold anything on eBay before. It'll be a learning experience!

Also, they calculate the shipping for you. Win.

I'm worried about going to Vestival for a number of reasons.

One, all we have written for the game is the bluesheet, which, admittedly, is the only thing we can write without knowing how many players we'll have. At least with Intercon, you can assume a full game, but Vestival is hard to fill. elenuial will be freezing the numbers soon, so that will help somewhat, but it'll still be difficult.

Also, an issue I had with our Intercon game, Leash, was that because I was all for talking about it and advertising it, everyone just referred to it as my game, and not my and elenuial's. I made an effort to correct people who came up to congratulate me on it, but it was still kind of disheartening. I don't know what the middle ground is, though, since I'm so enthusiastic about the games I help write/run, and toning myself down seems like the only option. Now with Pop Diva on the docket, I'm making it clear in all my posts and tweets and to everyone I speak to that while I think it'll be awesome, it's elenuial's game. I'm just helping write it. I know that he tends to fall into the background roles a lot, but I also know how validating it is to be praised and congratulated. No matter how much he tells me otherwise, I know how happy it makes him when people tell him how much they enjoyed things and he gets to be in the spotlight. (His J-z game was awesome, as I heard from lots of people - why did no one tell him this to his face? It would've made him so happy.)

The main thing, though, is the social aspect of it all. I spend way too much time with creatures with four legs and not nearly enough time with two, and the parallels between the social structure in both species' worlds leads me to observe a lot of things that I don't think I should notice or take too much stock in. After all, a lot of humans don't function as dogs do.

( How I'm half-wolf. This got long, but I couldn't stop. )

elenuial is dating a dog. Honest to god - it's clear in everything I do, the poor guy. I hate asking anyone to babysit me socially, but I suppose I do need a lot of help.

Like a trainer on how to be a normal human.

Do I get biscuits?

Emotional fail.

I am now going to scrub and reorganize the entire kitchen, then go grocery shopping and do a ridiculous amount of cooking.

As stated in twitter, apparently I'm one of those women.

I'm coming to think that I'm a pretty relaxed gamer. My object in games (tabletop, LARP, even board games) is to make it interesting to play. If my character gets horribly boned but totally had it coming or it was in a spectacular way, I'm good. Or even if it's something otherwise mundane. It sucks if you have to retcon to make the players happy. What happens happens.

One of the major rules of improv: "Yes, and..." = You take what happens, and go with it. There's no "no, I don't like that, I call mulligan" in improv, which is the major way I like to game.

So when other players express butthurt over something I'm cool with, it takes me a minute to understand why.

Maybe I'm just easy.

(no, not in that way. ask your mom about it.)

...in which I almost get asked out over crickets.

So, this took place a little while ago, but I forgot to post about it and was reminded today.

Once, when I was working Petcare (the shift in charge of critter upkeep and the aquatics/feeders desk), I was chatting with some of the regulars who come in for hundreds of crickets at a time to feed their bearded dragon/leopard gecko/what have you collections. As I handed off the bag to the woman waiting, she shuddered and asked me how I could stick my hand in a big enclosure full of crickets. I just told her that I found bugs fascinating and, when she gave me that "you're a crazy person, aren't you?" look, that I thought of them as lizard-sized turkeys that jumped. Her husband/boyfriend winked at me as he took the bags away and said something to the effect of "See? Told you you were being a wuss."

I began to protest that it wasn't a matter of being a wuss, but rather that I found them pretty neat, but another customer came up and asked me to bag a dozen or so of the big guys. When the guy from the couple asked him why so few, he just shrugged and said "She only eats every couple of days, anyway."

Intrigued by this subtly cute and softspoken guy with a sleeve tattoo that called his nonmammal pet "she" rather than "it," I asked what he was feeding.

It took him a second to answer, as if he was often asked this question and because of experience was considering lying, but he rubbed the bridge of his nose and said "Tarantula."

"Fun!" I said as a few hapless little hoppers freefalled from my scoop into the bag. "Pink-toe?"

He started, looking at me in genuine (albeit pleased) surprise. "Rose hair. You like tarantulas?"

Then the woman from the couple made a face. "Tarantulas? Aren't they spiders?"

At this, the tarantula guy seemed to shift a little - like he was used to this reaction, but not about to say anything. So I did.

"Actually," I said, "A lot of people that keep reptiles keep arachnids like spiders and scorpions. They're tamable, and females can live upwards of ten years."

"Females?" she asked. "What about the males?"

"Males live maybe a quarter as long," I said, counting the squirmy little entrees, "maybe because they're useless outside of mating, or maybe because they're a lot smaller and easier to squash."

Tarantula-guy grinned, and the woman turned pointedly to the Man Who Was Muscular. "Huh," she said thoughtfully. "I think I like these spiders."

"You're not getting one into my house," he said as they left, and she started poking him in the ribs and calling him a wuss.

I finished bagging the crickets and pulled out my trusty sharpie to label the bag for the cashier to read. You usually memorize the cricket UPCs after your first day on register, but still.

Since it was pretty dead, tarantula-guy stuck around for a bit as I did paperwork on the desk, swapping tarantula stories and telling smug one-liners about the doomed fate of the helpless crickets.

After a while, he looked at me - still with the remnants of what looked like surprise and wonder on his face - and said "You know, this is pretty new. I don't really meet a lot of girls who like tarantulas, even when I come to get crickets."

"Well," I said, "They're small and furry and eat things that are noisy. I keep an open mind, but that one's easy."

He laughed and agreed, then said his farewells and turned toward the registers. A few steps away, he paused and turned around to look at me thoughtfully, as if considering something bordering on very important, but shook it off and waved before heading out.

Later, it wasn't until I was retelling the story that someone pointed out that he was probably going to ask me out, snag my phone number, or something like that. I wouldn't have blamed him if he had - it's not every day you meet someone else into the hobby that you love, yet most of the population considers freakish.

I hope he finds a nice girl.

One who likes bugs.

-H