Two things I don’t do very often, at least in the winter:

(1) shave my legs

(2) wash my hair.

I can almost feel everyone cringing, but seriously? Just stop. It’s totally cold right now and I’m not wearing shorts, so nobody knows about the legs except me (and maybe Katsumi, but he’s been know to eat week-old borscht without batting an eyelash, so probably just me). As for the latter, my hair is curly and dry, enabling me to pull a 14-day run of anti-wash without too much hoopla. That only happened once, and it was when both my wrists were broken, but I’m just saying that, technically, not washing my hair for two weeks is within the realm of possibility.

Given these admittedly unflattering facts, it should come as no surprise that I flew to North Dakota with a limited amount of hair products and no razor. My plan was to wash and deep condition the ol’ mop the night before I left, once on the trip, and immediately upon my return. The shaving I didn’t think about too much until I went to Wal-Mart and went completely apeshit all over the “travel size” section, walking away with melon-scented Skintimates, whitening toothpaste, hand sanitizer, and a tiny tiny tube of Eucerin. I hate melon-scented shit. Wal-Mart sucks.

Over the last three days, my hair has spent most of it’s time matted down under this ski cap I’ve been wearing like a second skin, and as such I’ve discovered that my North Dakota hair is quite different from my Boston hair. Where my Boston hair is happy to be washed and styled once a week, my North Dakota hair eschews product and wrangling (did I mention that I also neglected to bring, or purchase, a hairbrush?), preferring instead to flatten and bend in hideous ways under the ski cap. Where my Boston hair could go an easy week without flagging, my North Dakota hair, by day three, was starting to get ripe.

This is boring, and I am exhausted from endowing my hair with personlike qualities, but all this is to say that I had to make a strategy move and shower at midnight so my hair wouldn’t freeze while walking to the car in the morning. And I don’t really know what all that shit was about the shaving, but I’m pissed because now all I can smell is that disgusting faux-melon leg gel crap. And since I didn’t bring a hair dryer or a flat iron, I look like Carrot Top. Except with huge bags under my eyes. And with smaller biceps.