I know you're supposed to switch out your razors every 3 or 4 times you shave, but razor blades are expensive!—especially for someone who shaves EVERY. SINGLE. DAY. This is a quirk, mainly because I don't have very much hair on my legs to begin with, and it grows in very slowly...but hey, it's part of the daily shower routine so I go with it. Yes, Brenda, even in Winter.

It's always been this way, and I can tell you that the majority of the marks on my legs are from shaving incidents of years past, all except the nastiest one on my knee—where my lovely brother hit me with a gravel-filled snow ball in elementary school. I remember once, my aunt, Debbie, remarked how she didn't know what would possess someone to continue shaving after they had cut themselves. I replied that you never know when someone's gonna up and touch your leg.

Well, yesterday, I switched out the blade on my razor for the first time since, oh, I don't know, September? I was feeling a little down with the whole Mother's Day thing and decided to treat myself—with a super sharp razor blade. It seems not a little messed up in retrospect.

But, I went about my routine...and once the steam had cleared and the mirror had revealed, I realized that my armpits were smooth enough to show my reflection, and life was good.

Well, I've had this phantom subscription of Shape magazine for a very long time.

(excerpt from Friday, March 24, 2006)
I love SHAPE. Love it. Imagine my delight when February's issue was delivered to my home! Masterful! And then March!—it happened again! You're not nearly wide-eyed enough at this double proclamation...perhaps I've left out the most supernatural part: I've never subscribed to this magazine. I've never paid for it. I mean I would, and gladly, but if it's coming for free, why?

Well, we've since determined the subscription wasn't coming for free at all, and it was probably a late coming last Christmas gift from Mom, being that the subscription ran from 11/2005 through 11/2006 and she would have probably noticed that I always inched the latest month's issue on the belt behind her groceries at the store. I renewed it for 2 years, and it's just one of those things...I don't know...I'll probably always have to keep that subscription going. Don't make me try to explain my neurosis...you're saner without knowing.

But last year, while I had a very exhausting dual residency between my aunts' and Nick's, I had subscriptions at both locals, so I could prove that I lived here or there if some random person should get in my face and ask. Right about now, two fitness magazines should be expiring...they were too much, and held the same info as Shape anyhow, but less of it. Last Summer, I started a People subscription which will continue on because, well, it's a big picture book and in a house with two pairs of artistic eyes....and all the gossip is addicting. I wanted to cancel Cosmo, too. "I only need Shape and People," I'd protest...and Nick would give an ultimatum.

"If you don't renew Cosmo, I'm going to subscribe to Maxim again." And, truly, I hated seeing the smuttily clad girls on the glossy cover month after month...Cosmo girls may not be all that covered up, but at least their nudity is meant to appeal to women and not men and therefore the smuttiness is lost to me. Days ago, the latest Cosmo came.

Last month's issue was "on deck" beneath the coffee table and Nick asked coyly, "So, since the latest issue came, can I take [the one beneath the coffee table] to the bathroom?" He has a little basket of Cosmos in there, along with kayaking and biking trail guides...and I think even a book on how to make more money. Quite the library—and apparently he needed his latest fix on how to avoid cravings for junk food or how to find the right pair of blue jeans to fit his curves properly.

Nick is a bit clumsy on the stairs. Similarly, Sophie is a bit clumsy on the stairs. I chided him last week for teaching her how to use the apparatus, and cautioned that she better not be learning anything else from him. He replied that maybe we should set some old issues of Cosmo near the litter box.

Our kitten has taken to sleeping with us—or, rather, flipping, flopping, and squirming erratically while she plays with the covers (or Nick's feet). The sounds from her prolific little collar bell chatter with her metal tag, and Nick and I were both awake and groaning at 3:30.

Nick sat up to look at her, and she sprinted away (to return moments later once we were settled in again). He mumbled grumpily, "She needs to be taught that the bed's not a play area." I wonder if she'll pout and start looking at personal ads like I did when he taught me.

In church, Nick's mother leans across me to ask Nick why he's wearing his glasses instead of his contact lenses. He comes clean, telling her that he has a blemish near his eye, and how the frames of his eyeglasses camouflage the unscrupulous beast (really, to attack on EASTER SUNDAY like that...just terrible!).

In a gooey Full House moral-of-the-story moment, one wherein I heard, there in God's house, Michael Jackson singing, "You are not alooooone..." I whispered to him that I had an upsetting discovery of the same sort that very morning, in the hollow of my right cheek. We bonded...I thought we really bonded. I thought I shared something deeply personal to help him deal with his own troubles.

Then, later, in my grandmother's assisted living suite, he sat behind me—me on the footstool, him on the corresponding glider. Leaning forward to kiss the right side of my neck, he caught sight of my cheek and jerked away...spitting in his hysteria, "MOUNT ST. HELENS!"