"Does This Make Me Look Fat?"

My wonderful husband, Mulletman, is a nurse in a large hospital. As you can imagine, he is rather outnumbered in his career field - by women. These women are strong, they are fierce, they are "empowered", and they are engaged in a never ending quest to help my man discover and enhance his "feminine side".

Now Mm is a nurturing person, so he's a marvelous nurse. He's also a terrific husband and father who will play Polly Pockets with his little girls and indulge his wife's occasional needy whims. BUT, he is also all man. He is not some sleek metro-sexual pantywaist.

This mix of manliness really seems to disturb many of his coworkers. He came home from work one evening just shaking his head.

"Wassup?" I asked.

"The women at work are mad at me."

"Why...what'd you do?"

"Nothing. They're upset because I don't let you work."

"You don't LET me work?"

"Nope. Seems I'm a cruel, chauvinistic tyrant who keeps my poor wife subjugated as my house slave."

"Aaaaah. I see. And I thought I liked staying home. Silly me!"

The subject has been brought up several times since then, but now that Mm has been reassured that I am quite happy and fulfilled where I am, he stands his ground and the she-hounds of popular feminism quickly back off.

So the battlefield subtly changes. They can't "empower" me, so they seek to feminize him.

Poor Mulletman is invited to every baby shower and bridal shower. He catches flack for rarely attending these landmark events, and when he does make a ten minute appearance, he is berated for not bringing food or cards or gifts. He's just so darned insensitive!

Mm is also inundated with Avon catalogs, Longaberger Basket order forms, Girl Scout cookie offers, Pampered Chef invitations, and Tupperware proposals. He has bought an occasional box of cookies (what man could resist!), but the rest he promptly trashes.

Just this week he came home with samples from a coworker. Wisely, she asked him to give the samples to me, otherwise they'd have been thoughtlessly filed away with all the others. This particular nurse apparently doesn't make enough money and is attempting to supplement her income by selling skin care stuff.
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Side-note: Mm and I find it interesting that the majority of his coworkers make the same (or close to same) salary that he does. Almost all of them are also married to men who have steady jobs. Yet they complain constantly about a dearth of money. Mulletman and I and our kiddos live quite handily on his single income. We have two vehicles and our only debt is our mortgage. We have savings, we eat well, and we can afford everything our family needs plus many of the extras we want. We have money to give to the Lord's work and money for fun.

For a few years we were supporting four children on that income and doing just fine. How can these folks have so little, when their income is so much higher? Hmmmmm.

When they start bellyaching about their financial woes, Mm usually just tells them to shut up and quit whining and sell their satellite dishes. Ah, ya gotta love a man with a practical mind like that!
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Anyway...this fellow nurse sent Mulletman home with a nifty little packet of skin care samples for me. She is sure that I will try the products and be dazzled by how much more beautiful I am after 3 uses. She is sure that I will spend BIG bucks to continue to feel like I look younger. She thinks I'm going to actually follow a six-product, five-step regimen twice a day every day so that I can look like I'm 35 instead of 42.

She definitely doesn't know me!

Hi. I'm groovyOLDlady and I'm proud of it. I am not particularly vain and I AM lazy.

I purposely keep my hair long and straight with bangs so I don't have to mess with it. I don't curl it, blow it, perm it, dye it, or style it. I only get it cut twice a year or so to keep it from getting ratty. My hair is the ultimate in "comb it and go". My husband likes it long. The silver streaks are cool. We are quite content with my definitive lack of style.

And as for my face, well, I've always had fairly decent skin. My current regimen is to wash my face with Burt's Bees lemon poppyseed cleanser and then slop on some Burt's moisturizer. It's all natural and it smells good enough to eat. Best of all my $16 gets me about 2 months worth of products!

However, it's a rarity for me to use my Burt's more than once a day. In fact, to be honest with you, there are some days when I don't wash my face at all. I just use a damp washcloth to wipe the sleep outta my eyes and the dried drool off my chin and call it "good".

I'm also pretty sparing with the make-up. I own 1 mascara, 1 small blush compact which is, quite literally 10 years old, and some liquid foundation which I replace approximately once a year. I have a 6 year-old lipstick that I can never find and rarely wear. And, sadly, I've been frequently known to wear make-up and forget to wash it off in the evening. Bad Groovy!

Needless to say, the thought that I'd embrace a fancy, expensive, multi-step, twice-a-day facial routine is ludicrous! Mm only brought it home because it was free and we're cheap. Maybe I'll use it once before a hot date with my manly man. Or, maybe I'll wrap it up and give it as a Christmas gift to someone who's a little more insecure about their appearance. Anybody got a teenager?