The Left Side of the Moon: Contemplating My Armpits

Do you ever feel like the universe is trying to tell you something? The same unusual topic coming up repeatedly in your life in the course of a week? I'm not a superstitious person, but logic rather defies just chalking repeated happenings up to coincidence. I'm not watching for signs, but I will start to notice when bludgeoned over the head with them.

I sweat like a fat Italian. Now, I am part Italian, just an eighth, and certainly not exactly thin. But it's never mattered how in-shape I was. I sweat. ALOT. I get it from my dad, which is not where I get the Italian. Silk blouses are absolutely out of the question. Even cotton blend blouses can be embarrassing. I get huge sweat marks if I overheat the tiniest bit. We're talking sitting at a desk, people. No physical exertion required. And I get those lovely yellow stains after a few wearings. Stain remover doesn't help a bit with those. Before the breast reduction, I couldn't hardly wear a blouse anyway. It'd either be several sizes too big and make me look enormous, or it'd pop around the buttons. Now that my boobs aren't a problem, I can wear the blouse, but have to worry about sweat marks and stains. Yuck. I've been thinking there's got to be a better way of dealing with this.

How exactly my hair dresser and I landed on the subject of deodorant a week ago, I'm not sure. She uses an all-natural product, aluminum free, from Whole Foods. I'm not thrilled with my deodorant. Never really have been, and I've shopped around. Currently, I've been using one of those "prescription strength" numbers. I'm not impressed. It's way more expensive than the "regular" and doesn't seem to be doing much for me. After our conversation, I decided to try one of the natural varieties. I've always rather thought that seeing the most powerful (according to marketing ploys, which are more than dubious) didn't do much for my way-too-frequently-sweat-soaked pits, that the natural brands would be like using nothing. At this point, I'm willing to give it a shot. I bought Trader Joe's brand, unscented with cotton for absorption. Not sure about the unscented thing. My hair dresser says I should just drink pineapple juice to keep my sweat smelling sweet. Right now, it's much more rank than sweet. Too bad chocolate doesn't help with that. I got nothing against pineapple juice, so I might as well give that a shot too. As far as the sweating, I'm undecided. Definitely not any worse, but I'm not sure that it's better, either.

So a few days after my trip to the hair dresser, Blackstone tells me he's thinking of using an all-natural deodorant. Something aluminum-free. I explain to him how strange this is, seeing I've just switched. He still seems to be contemplating what he's going to try. Guess we're going to be getting use to some new smells around here.

Just to drive the point home, in case I'd somehow missed it, I picked up the latest issue of Mental Floss, Blackstone's favorite, which has an article dedicated to deodorant this month. The universe must have missed the fact that I've already purchased the all-natural deodorant, but I appreciate its persistence on my behalf none-the-less. But I did learn something interesting about this darn aluninum deodorant. It's not my sweat turning my shirt underarms yellow, it's the aluminum in the deodorant. Maybe this isn't news to the rest of you, but it's certainly news to me. What the hell is up with that?!! Why would anyone buy your average deodorant once they knew that? I can guarantee you this, whether I like this particular deodorant enough to stick with it or not, there will be no more aluminum deodorant for me. I may or may not be able to resolve my sweat and odor issues, but if that's all it takes to keep my shirt pits from turning yellow, that's a huge incentive for me to go all-natural. Maybe I should just start rubbing cinnamon under there like the Egyptians used to do. I bet it freakin' worked better than our "prescription strength" which likely has extra aluminum and is probably ruining my shirts even faster. Newer is not always better.