Gift-giving holidays stress me out. Rob just doesn’t want for much (that we can afford, at least – boats, cars, vacation homes, riches and luxuries aside), so truly pleasing him requires a lot of thought and creativity.
My brilliant Christmas-gift idea came from a late-night conversation we had. He complained about needing to shave yet again, and I asked a totally honest question: Isn’t there a better way to do that?
He hates shaving because his Sicilian genes granted him with thick, coarse facial hair. The 3-4-5-6-more-blade razors, no matter what the deep, manly voice says in the commercials, did little more than tear his face up, especially with drier winter skin. My poor stud either had to grow a beard (which I’m not fond of) or routinely torture himself.
He shrugged and went about his torture, accepting it as part of what it meant to be a man, and I went to Google.
My search produced a Today Show story that I skimmed then read aloud while Rob stood at the sink, torture device in motion. Rob said it sounded interesting and terrifying at once – single-blade razor? Was that like those switch-blade looking things you sharpen across a leather strop. I had no clue, either, so I researched more.
It turns out the recommended shaving tools for men – particularly those with thick, coarse hair – is a classic safety razor. It has a handle and a head just like the commercialized numbers we’re all familiar with now, but it houses a single razor blade. I dove into the rabbit hole of the Internet and browsed forums and blogs and pooled together a recommended package to present at Christmas.
Merkur Safety Razor, Vulfix Shaving Brush, Feather blades, Proraso Shaving Cream
A few YouTube searches for demonstrative purposes later, Rob tried out his gift.
“I really like shaving with these.”
I’ve since added Burt’s Bees Rosewater Toner to his toolbelt – deemed on shaving forums as a decent stand-in for a more expensive miracle aftershave. Not only is his face smoother than ever, but the painful razor burn he always fought is basically gone.
Nearly a month later, he’s still perfecting his technique, a task he happily performs in 15-20 minute sessions. No longer the torture, it’s become a pleasant routine. He says he’ll teach Toby to shave this way when he’s older and wishes he’d known how different shaving could be when he was younger.
Last night, we wondered why men strayed away from this classic performance. Why did razor companies drop a tool that not only works better but is more cost efficient?
Rob says it’s strictly money. They found a product they could fancy up and convince everyone was great while gobbling up consumers’ money and leaving many with wounded faces and disdain for the often-necessary product. I don’t want to think it was all for the sake of money, that they initially had efficiency at the product’s root.
It really is a shame, though, that no one really openly advertises single-blade razors and the shave men get from one blade that doesn’t jack up their faces the way five or more in one shot seem to.
If it weren’t for knees and shins and ankles, I’d get an old-school razor like this for myself, but I honestly think today’s plastic, several-blade razors with pivoting heads truly are built best for women’s legs, no matter how close that single-blade shave may be.
Hobbies. Something you do, right? I’ve always struggled to list my hobbies. Reading (quiet, solo, lonely – is it an activity?). Shopping (greedy, shallow). Then the list ends. To be honest, I don’t know what a hobby is. Collecting things? Traveling? Visiting microbreweries? Playing chess? I’d call those hobbies, but how are those interests more easily labeled than mine? Surely my interests are interesting enough to share.
I don’t know that I’d call anything I enjoy a hobby, and I think that’s always been my problem. I have things I love doing, things I’d rather do more than any number of things when I can choose. I have passions, not hobbies.
I love to laugh so hard I need to cross my legs and pray. I love to tickle my babies and make my husband smile. I love reading a great book and discovering a piece of me that was always there but never quite understood or falling into pages that take me somewhere I never knew I needed to be. I love feeding my loved ones food that makes them smack their lips and hope for more.
Maybe I’ve never properly understood or appreciated the word. People who list playing chess as a hobby surely find passion in that. Or maybe it’s the hobby list that forms request. Ticking off a short list of key words seems to rob the things you love of what makes them special. Whose bright idea was it to try boxing up such wild, unique, dynamic pieces of a person? I think it must have been a person who loves math and hates words because surely I’m not the only reader/writer/daydreamer type to (mentally) smack down my hand and shout, “YOU CAN’T LABEL MY PASSION!”
Or maybe I am.
I’m one of those weirdos who rarely changes photos out of frames. I don’t know if I’m afraid of offending a photo or a memory or if I’m just stuck on idea that only that photo belongs in that frame, but it’s a tired problem. It could also be that I’m lazy about editing, ordering and picking up photos. Who knows?
I’ve always been a photo-snapping fool with the majority of my images being admired then forgotten on my hard drive. Owning an iPhone only stepped up the sad ratio of digital images to physical images. I’ve taken so many photos, but I’ve done hardly anything with prints.
A number of things have happened lately that just made all that change. Christmas gift cards, new year goals, IKEA and the Mpix iPhone app are the major players.
I started with a plan to make a four by four photo-block collage in our entry way. I wanted to do it inexpensively and easy to change out so I could continually rotate current photos for older ones. That idea got pushed out of the way by the idea to use magnetic strips for Stickygrams. But while I was searching for not-industrial-looking magnetic strips, I found curtain wire at IKEA for $6.99, and it included 12 clips. Stickygrams were out, and I set out on the hunt for the best deal for prints. Enter Mpix, the site I prefer to order all my photo prints from, regardless of size or amateur/professional status.
I’ve had the app on my phone since the recent release of 4×4 inch prints, but I hadn’t yet pulled the trigger. While other Instagram-printing sites are selling their 4×4 inch prints for prices like 24 for $12, Mpix sells their prints for $0.29 each, and you can upload and order directly from your phone using the app. I ordered 42 prints for $16 (including shipping) on Friday and hung them up today, Monday.
I decided on three rows, our wall studs set the wire length at 32(ish) inches, then Rob’s practiced eye took over for the spacing (and hanging), setting each row about 8 inches apart. Because the clips rotate a bit, I decided to double up on the photos, placing them back to back on 12 clips per row. That also lets me hang twice as many without overcrowding the wire – win!
I couldn’t be happier with my new display and am so happy I was able to spend less than $40 to bring my idea to life.
We all recently came down with the crud – first a stomach virus, now a cold – and finally, the only lingering symptoms are drippy toddler noses and coughs.
Toby has been cracking me up lately, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on why. Every time he asks to have his nose wiped, he says, “Wipe my/the nose,” but it comes out sounding more like “Wipe-a-noose,” or “Bup-a-noose,” depending on his pronunciation, my ears or the amount of other noise around us. The second funny pronunciation scratched at my memory, tickling at something from my South Park watching days in college.
YouTube, I love you (but why don’t you allow username/email changes?).
***
Eleanor put me in my place today. I was sitting in a chair with one leg outstretched and the other tucked underneath me. She pointed at my foot, said, “Sock off,” and proceeded to yank off my sock (a shea-infused lounge sock from Bath & Body works – my girl knows luxury when she sees it), sit on the floor in front of me, yank off one of her own socks and replace it with mine. She then plucked my pants on the leg I had tucked till I offered up my other foot. Yank. Yank. Pull on.
Then she got up and walked off with the socks I had just been wearing. I was robbed of my socks by a 2 year old.
***
Callista is now spending half her day asking, “How [you] doing?” You can sometimes make out the “you,” but she mostly omits it (which is tricky for the 25 percent of her day she spends asking “What [you] doing?” You need to be a close listener around here). She sometimes asks several times in a row and often several times within just a few minutes. That’s understandable considering toddlers’ moods change at the drop of a hat, so we’re all placating her questions with honest and various answers. Today, she was pretty excited to learn and repeat, “Fantastic!”
Next up: emphasis on the “you” in “How YOU doing?” I plan to raise second-generation Friends fans. Till they’re old enough to enjoy my favorite pop culture treats, I like teaching my kids phrases and songs purely for my own entertainment. Why else would three 2-year-olds need to hear the music in their Harry Potter snow globe before they go to sleep?
***
These all just happened today, so you can imagine the amount of funny/cute that happens here that I struggle with oversharing for the sake of every parent having funny stories and for the sake of my children’s privacy. Does the world really want to know these things, and will my grown-older kids appreciate their mama giggling about them with the Internet?
I don’t know the answer to either, so I tend to hold back a lot. I’m still new at this, but I’m not sure I’ll ever know the answer to those questions. It’ll either go unsettled or come down to a simple matter of how much I care to share/hold sacred.
Big news, blog friends! What the blog? and jennandtonica.com have gotten a skeleton lift (face lift will follow as time and creativity provide). I’ll now be filling your eyeballs with blather from Actual Jenny, located at – wait for it – ActualJenny.com.
That’s right, my URL and blog title finally match, and my blog title doesn’t have punctuation that makes it ugly when used in a sentence. Both of these things have bothered me since Day 1, but I didn’t have any better ideas or care enough to think up something with which I’d be happier.
While “Jenandtonica” (I had to add an extra N when I purchased the domain) was around long before I purchased my first domain or joined Twitter (hello, AOL Instant Messenger!), I’ve long since outgrown it, but it’s like a kiddie nickname I just couldn’t/wouldn’t shake.
It’s time.
If you’re an e-mail subscriber, I’ll manage your new subscription (if you aren’t, just enter your info into the fields on my sidebar). If you’re a follower via RSS feed, um, I’m sorry. If I can redo your RSS on my end, I have no idea how, and I can’t promise I’ll soon find time to research that. There is an easy button you can click on to add ActualJenny.com to your RSS feed, though, just there at the top of my sidebar.
This is going to be a change across all social media as well – my handles on Twitter and Instagram are now @ActualJenny, but you don’t need to change a thing there (unless you don’t follow me – you totally should), just pay attention to the name if you mention me.
Oodles and bunches of thanks go to you, dear readers, as you’ve been patient with me through these last several months of quiet. I hope this change inspires me to come outside my head and write more. As always, my blogging doesn’t cover just one topic unless you consider “Jenny” a topic. I pretty much do.
