Let’s Talk About Sweat, Baby

Let’s Talk About Sweat, Baby.  Let’s talk about you and me. (Yes, a shout out to Salt-n-Pepa.)

It’s been butt-hot.  (I’ve been wanting a reason to add butt as an adjective.  All the kids are doing it… butt-awesome, butt-cool, or butt-hurt, which is a slang term used often, meaning-offended, upset, or angry, usually by a small slight or a friendly insult. ) I’m offended by this heat so I’m coining the phrase butt-hot (and you can’t stop me)!  So here’s your new expression, which means-offended, upset, or angry usually by temperatures that reach above 85 degrees. Maybe your butt-hot definition is above 90 degrees, nope, mine, a firm 85.

Sweat beads pour from every pore on my face.  Joy does not glow, she sweats.  Thanks dad, for the DNA that made it so I could expel toxins from my face, in way less than 0-60.  It’s a lovely womanly trait.  I feel like a freak show when I sweat like this.  It’s okay when it’s expected, like then you’re in a Spin class or jogging, but when you’re standing in line in air-conditioned environment, it’s not cool people, not cool.  For the record, I am not happy with the Sweat DNA.  “Raise your hand, raise your hand if you’re sure!” the jingle for the brand Sure deodorant.  “Never let ’em see you sweat.” Another deodorant commercial.   I obviously am not living up to America’s expectation of non sweaty behavior. Deodorants have never kept me from sweating and neither have antiperspirants.  And who puts antiperspirants on their face?  (Uh, no one.)  I think maybe my body knows that the commercials have been wrong all along.  (American deodorant companies, you have failed me. <<Insert Darth Vader voice>> You have failed me for the last time.)

I’m only Sure of one thing, when the temperature is above 85 degrees, I WILL SWEAT, above 90 degrees, and I WILL DRIP.  Getting nervous and obsessing about it, only makes my sweat instinct worse.  I wish I could be like one of those rockers at an epic rock show where the hair is soaking wet from sweat, and it’s dripping down their face and neck and they look, sexy, and in charge of the world.  In contrast, I just look like a wet cat, pathetic and miserable.

Here’s how it happens: it starts above and below my lips, in the what would be the mustache and goatee area if I were a male.  (I can vividly remember the sweat beads welling up in Texas in the mid-80s.  The humidity. For the love of God.  All summer. So much humidity. Picture me in a light blue velour shirt.  Nell and I used to swap shirts and the velour was in, so we wore it like it was 1999, rain or shine.  Sweat was an event. It even happened back then, when I was in 3rd grade.) It progresses underneath my eyes, then at the border of my hairline on my forehead.  It beads, and then drips. **Sigh**  The dripping.  Dripping is for faucets, not for faces.  (Repeat after me.  Dripping is for faucets, not for faces.)  The dripping, then the obsessive wiping, so as not to appear to be dripping.  Ugh. Repeat.

I think I was made to live in a different environment, like the coast of Scotland for instance.  That sounds like a place that would be my perfect environment.  Anyone want to move with me?  Or maybe we could just relocate and Summer in Scotland?  Good. Sounds like a plan.

So, what’s the lesson here?  Patience.  Patient, I am not. (As Yoda would say. What’s with the Star Wars references? It works, okay.  Leave me alone.) I will never embrace my sweatiness. Never.  Remember, I’m a menopause-lifer (the hot flash part).  Sweat love, can I do it?  Can I love the sweat?  Nope, not yet.  Bikram Yoga would be my hell.  Sweat is  like a plague. Like grasshoppers eating the harvest, or a virus that refuses to be expelled.  IT RETURNS, every year when the temperature rises above 85 degrees.  I always catch this terrible plague.  It embraces me with arms wide open.  Sweat is my eager lover.  My unwanted lover.  It’s like Pepe Le Pew and the cat girlfriend that he smothers at every turn.  She just wants to be rid of Pepe, but he always finds her.  Sweat is my Pepe Le Pew.  Do you see the kitty cat? She tries ad nauseam to escape from the embrace of Pepe, to no avail.  He keeps finding her and squeezing her and leaving his scent on her, in spite of her constant escape maneuvering.  That’s me, the wide-eyed girlfriend.  Always uncomfortable and looking for a way to move away from the events that lead to sweat.

It’s fairly simple.  I walk from my classroom to the office.  Sweatastic.  I load groceries into my car.  Sweatastic.  I sit in an uncomfortably stuffy room.  Sweatastic.  I AM SWEATASTIC in all of July, August, September and part of October, every year.  Like a splinter that can’t be extracted through layers of skin. Like the woman in Sam’s Club who insists on multiple transactions and rescanning of her precious bagels while my ice cream is melting the cart two carts back (this happened today and I didn’t buy the ice cream for me, in case you were wondering).  Like skin that touches skin or any other surface.   Like Heather Locklear in the hair commercials, “Don’t hate me because I’m beautiful.”  Turn and glance back at the camera with wet-cat-face-and-hairage, and change to, ” Don’t hate me because I sweat.” (It doesn’t roll off the tongue in same way. Oh well.)

I sweat, therefore I’m human.

Sweat, my nemesis.

Sisters in sweat.  I’ll be your friend, no matter how schweaty you be.

I’m a Sweat Saint.

I’ve earned my Sweat Badge.

(The picture doesn’t accurately picture the sweat I felt along my hairline.)

 

Love me.

I love youse.

Until next Friday.  Sweat on peoples! (I’ll be searching for fans, drinking ice cold drinks and finding the closest air conditioning vent.)  Love you loves.

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Gastric Bypass Update:

I’m inching closer to 60 pounds of weight loss, depending on the day I weigh myself.  I’ve been sick this week. The first time in a long time. It was my time to break down, while on vacation.  When else?

I’m struggling with, The Acceptance of Weight Loss.  I’ll explain more next time.