The Grooming Grind
Way back, pre-kids, I tried to do the bulk of my grooming the same way I tried to do laundry and other chores: once a week. I’d reserve one day, usually Sunday, for a long shower, exfoliation, shaving, plucking, clipping and even sometimes finger- and toe-nail painting.
Those days are gone. Now I feel lucky if I get a medium length shower twice a week, and anything else is gravy. The fatigue of parenting plus the additional work makes it harder to muster the energy for maintenance work: ah, I’ll just get dirty again, why bother? Yet ever-increasing levels of filth (on me, rarely the kids) weigh upon my psyche. They’re like a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Showering, then has become another of the several things (like writing and naps) that I have learned to shove to the top of the list. Because there’s not much that kills the simple pleasure of a shower like knowing Drake has the run of the house, or listening to the escalating screams of Guppy, who decides that shower time is EXACTLY when he wants to be held, or fed, or whatever.
And all that other stuff (shaving, et. al) just has to get worked into the crevices, like most things these days.