“And then you tell me how they remove hair. Those black strips of cloth,” he said.

“No they’re not black,” I said with a chuckle. “They’re white. Well, they’re neutral colored typically. So you can have the right picture of this. They paint the wax on in the direction the hair grows in then lay the linen on top. It adheres to the wax and then they rip the cloth up against the grain of the hair and this works.”

“Oh my God. My God, P, that’s sounds horrifying. I’d rather have mortar fire raining down around me. I’d rather be shot at. This reminds me of the delousing at concentration camps. That’s how bad this sounds to me. Hair removal. They send you in and have you come out looking like a woman. I can think of nothing worse that could possibly happen.”

I didn’t say anything.

“I’m gone for 20 years, come back and they want me to be hairless. Leave for another 20, come back and I suppose they’ll want me to have a pussy.”

I snorted. ‘You don’t have to do this,” I said. “You can keep your hair.”

“Good. I will fight to the death before I let someone take the hair off my body. And that people do this voluntarily is beyond my comprehension. As far as I am concerned, this whole world has gone to hell.”

Today I took my daughter to the pediatrician for a routine physical. My son had his physical last month and apparently has not forgotten. The doctor walked in and he looked her right in the face:

“I don’t you looking in my pants ever again. Next time I’m having a boy doctor,” he said.

She just stared.

“You’re to never do that again,” he said. “You shouldn’t have done it last time…”

My daughter and I burst out laughing.

Now tell me there are not parent-child themes in relationships of Saturn types… ha ha ha.

I was on the road, meeting the soldier after a 7 hour drive. I was driving state highways through sparsely populated states with no cell phone coverage. I finally emerged from the blackout about 15 minutes from where we were going to meet an dialed him.

“I’m 15 minutes out. Sorry about that, no cell phone.”

“That’s okay, P. Glad you’re okay. Are you hungry? I’m hungry. I am waiting for you so we can eat dinner. I’m starving”

I looked down at the pajama pants I was wearing. “Dinner? Okay, but I am in my pajamas.”

“Pajamas?”

“Yeah, pajamas. I decided to drive here in these because it’s cold. No skirt to drive in like normal. Pajamas!”

“Okay. Well then you’re going to want to…”

“No, I said. You’re starving. You don’t have to wait. I can go to dinner in my pajamas. I look good in these,” I said. “I look great, I look grand in pajamas, even coming off the road.”

He laughed.

“Yeah, don’t worry. My pajamas are red and it’s just the pants. I have a normal top so we can go straight to dinner. I’m going to look better than anyone else there anyway, pajamas or otherwise so don’t worry about it. You’re hungry? Then we’ll got straight to dinner and I’ll look terrific. Whet your appetite, I’ll be there in 10.” *click

The soldier talking:

“Yeah, P, my friends are dead. My compatriots, almost all of them are dead. They went to manly man heaven and they left before the big change got here.”

“Change?”

“Well, yeah. Things have changed all right. And now they’re gone and I’m stuck down here with all these metrosexuals.”

I laughed.

“Yeah, I bet they’re laughing too. Probably think I deserve this.”

I roared.

“Well at least someone thinks it’s funny. I don’t think it’s funny. To me, it’s hell on earth. I don’t know what to do. I just wish I could find me a war. Something regular like some fightin’ going on. I want a war, P. Get me a war to fight and then I’ll be happy. I’m supposed to be fightin’ not gettin’ my hair done.”

This is my manicurist. She’s a textbook Sagittarius. I can relate…

“Oh good you wore sandals,” she said. I was back today for a pedicure. I can’t do all this salon stuff in one day. It’s too tedious, “I know how you hate to sit. I’ll just put your sandals on your feet, paint your toes with them on and you can be on your way.”

“And so can you,” I said. ‘I know you like to move as well.”

“I do like to move. I go crazy when I’m cooped up. I’m always having to go somewhere.”

She has 4 kids (3 of them Aries) and a husband she has loved for 16 years. She works piecemeal in between their schedules to help support her family.

“I have just got to get away. So I come here… I leave by myself as much as I can. I tell my kids, you have no idea how much you ask of me. It’s mommy, mommy, mommy, mommy. I get so tired of hearing, mommy!”

I laughed.

“So I get out as much as I can. I clean houses for people too, you know. And I tell them, yeah I charge by the hour. But I am in and out just as fast as I can be. I am good and I am thorough, but I can tell you right now I’m going to clean just as fast as I can because the last thing I want is to be cooped up in your house! I want to get done and be on my way.”

“Yep.”

“When I was younger I worked in a bank. I worked in the drive through no less and I hated it. Here I was cooped up in this little booth all day watching all these people out and about. I thought I’d go crazy.”

“Yep. When I was a kid I tended bar. Day bar, always. I am a morning person. And every year the good weather would come and the bar would empty out. People would come in wearing shorts. They would be getting stuff to go rather than coming and staying and I would be stuck inside and madder than hell!”

Do you hate being cooped up?