♫/I want to hold your hand♪ (but only on my right side, in case you need to draw sword to defend my honor).

Jon and I were walking through Old Orchard Beach the other day and we were holding hands. I thought nothing of it. As we walked, we passed another couple who was holding hands. I noticed their hand-holding, looked down and noticed our hand-holding, and instantly wanted to know where the tradition started.

Jon thinks it's simply human nature--a compulsory action that we make toward someone we care about. An article by the NY Times states something similar:

"To hold someone’s hand is to offer them affection, protection or comfort. It is a way to communicate that you are off the market. Practically speaking, it is an efficient way to squeeze through a crowd without losing your partner. People do it during vigils, marches, weddings and funerals."

I'm not inclined to disagree, nor am I against hand-holding, but I do want to know if there is a reason for it. Everything has a reason. Right? I mean. People invent things for a reason. Maybe the only reason for hand holding was for safety, back in the day when Tarzan and Jane were running from a T-Rex. Or maybe the reason was to display, pardon the wording, "ownership" of one another. But why hands? Why not hold an ear, or something?

As much as I hate to say this. I can't find diddly on the topic. The best guess I've found is from a Yahoo! Answers post where a man makes the point that joining hands was a way of joining two people together when they were married. Obviously symbolic of them becoming one. 

This couple has been holding hands for 1,500 years: 

Photo Credit: thehistoryblog.com

Hand-holding is an ancient tradition. I'm not sure there are any origins. Alas! This post is not a total bust! According to this article by Primer Magazine, the reason that men escort ladies on their left side is also an ancient tradition? Can you guess what it is? Huh? Can ya? Can ya?

I'll tell you!

Back in medieval times, men would escort ladies on their left arm so that if a threat became imminent--or, you know, a lady's honor needed defending--the man's sword arm would be free. He could quickly draw his weapon and slice down a foe much more quickly than if his sword arm had been all tangled up in the lady's arm. I like the way these people thought. 

So I'm Wrinkly. Sue Me.

I have attended quite a few events in the past few weeks and there have been a lot of pictures taken of me. As I check them all out as they come up on Facebook, I think one thing: Wrinkles. Why?

I have one wrinkle that runs horizontally across my forehead and another that runs vertically between my eyebrows and it's only going to get worse and I kind of hate them. I've only noticed them appearing over the past year-ish. I mean, I'm 25 years old. It's not like I think I look like Lieutenant Worf or anything, but still. Wrinkles, really? Why the hell does our skin wrinkle anyway?!

Photo Credit: startrek.com

I've heard all sorts of speculation about the origin of wrinkles, from dry skin to old age, but I've never cared to understand wrinkles. Until now.

According to MSN, dry skin does not cause wrinkles, but it does make them look worse. The actual wrinkles are caused by side effects of aging, not being old. More specifically, what the article said: "Over time, shrinkage of facial bone structure, loss of collagen, skin elasticity and gravity equals wrinkles." What I heard: "You get old; you shrink; your skin gets loose, and gravity pulls it down. Along with all your other parts."

But I am 25. Sure, that's one quarter of a century, but... Wrinkles? Already?

Ah, alas, MSN also says that 90% of wrinkles are caused from sun exposure. Now I understand that they mean years and years, decades, really, of sun exposure. But I'm pretty sure that means my two wrinkles are from squinting in the sun. Light sensitivity is a side effect of bad eyesight (something I learned at college this year so it must be true). I have horrible eyesight and I definitely am sensitive to light, so any time I step out into the world without sunglasses I am squinting like Clint Eastwood. These two wrinkle offenders of mine happen to run exactly where my face squinches when I squint.

Photo Credit: tvtropes.org

How do you fix wrinkles? Well, as far as I can tell wrinkles are like pregnancy: preventing it from happening in the first place is the best way to "fix" it. Okay, the steps for wrinkle-prevention differ a bit from preventing pregnancy, but the premise is the same: a little preventative maintenance goes a long way in avoiding the end-result you're looking to steer clear of. Keep your skin moisturized to help with the appearance of wrinkles, stay hydrated to help the skin not dry out in the first place, stay out of the damn sun--or at least wear sunblock (which I've already decided doesn't work anyway)--to protect your flimsy human flesh, and something else about fruit acids and vitamins.

So what I gather is, wrinkles are pretty much a gamble. You can try to prevent them but there's no guarantee it'll work. "You want a guarantee, buy a toaster." 

Garlic Clears Infections. And the Room.

So I'm one of the bazillion Americans who doesn't have health insurance and works two part-time jobs so she can't get health insurance because her hours don't exceed 29/week at either position. I also have impacted wisdom teeth. I think. I don't know for sure because I refuse to go to the dentist. I've never had anything but a cleaning done and I haven't been in probably a decade. But I read A Million Little Pieces--I have a vivid idea of what tooth work would feel like. You all can't fool me with your comforting words.

Anywho. A couple of years ago all of the wisdom teeth in my mouth got infected and swelled to epic proportions. At the time I had some leftover antibiotics hanging around so I took them and my mouth eventually recovered. Last week the wisdom teeth on one side of my mouth decided to get silly and out of control again. Silly teeth.

Being as I don't have insurance for a dentist. And I don't have a doctor (since I don't ever go) who I can call and beg for antibiotics. And I hate hospitals. I had to turn to the internet for some solution. Because a) I was afraid the infection would go to my brain and murder me in my sleep; b) my mouth hurt and eating and talking was harder than it should have been; and c) Jon was going to make me go to the dentist.

I turned first to Facebook and asked friends what to do. Among the myriad of responses, I was told to try clove oil for the pain and garlic for the infection. Yes, garlic.

I looked it up and found out that garlic is indeed a natural antibiotic. Cool! I love garlic!

Now let me just preface this by saying that I put garlic in pretty much everything I cook. I use so much garlic that if a vampire decided on me for a tasty snack, they'd fly screaming in the other direction with one precious bite. In my home remedy searching, I came across some info that chewing on a raw onion for three minutes helps with tooth swelling/infection. I wasn't quite ready for that step but I figured that if I chewed on the garlic it would have the same effect and it had to be better than chewing on an onion. Right?

Frigging WRONG. The first night, I popped a clove into my mouth and started to chew and ohmygoodgod. Raw garlic burns. It burns so bad. I swallowed it down as quickly as I could and decided to chop up the next clove into pill sized bits and swallow them with a glass of water. I also swished with salt water several times, swished with hydrogen peroxide, and soaked gauze in clove oil and let it sit on my gums for a few minutes. That last bit was challenging--I was drooling like my friend Krista's bull dog by the time I spit it out. After all was said and done my teeth felt much better but my mouth was on fire and I smelled like I imagine the Godfather smells.

So last night I decided that there would be no chewing of the garlic. I chopped up both cloves and swallowed them like pills. I brushed my teeth. I swished with salt water. I swished with peroxide. I swished with mouth wash for good measure. I dabbed a tiny bit of clove oil onto the gums themselves.

I got into bed. I got about 8 inches from kissing Jon. I hear "I smell garlic."

-_-

My advice to you all? If your wisdom teeth flare up and you don't have insurance and you don't like the dentist and you decide to swallow raw garlic to fix the situation: take your garlicbiotic eons before you're about to get into bed with your partner. "I smell garlic" is a real mood-killer.

Photo credit: www.pet-grub.com

I'll Take One Bridesmaid, Extra Crispy Please!

So I was a bridesmaid in a friend's wedding on Saturday. The wedding was on Cliff Island, off of the coast of Portland, Maine. The bride and groom rented a house on the island for the week surrounding the big day and about 3 weeks ago, the weather forecast started showing rain. Not only rain for the day of, but rain for the whole week.

Well, being as the weather forecast often is, it was wrong. The sun managed to fight its way past the clouds and we had gorgeous weather--up until Friday. It rained and rained all of Friday and into Saturday morning. Miraculously, with a little help from the bride's late mother, the sun came out in full force about an hour before the ceremony.

The result? One very happy bride, a beautiful wedding overlooking the ocean, clear skies for gorgeous photos by the fabulous Clare Norton, and several very sun burnt bridesmaids.

As the sun had only shown its face literally an hour before the ceremony was set to begin, not one of us thought of sunscreen. For the duration of the ceremony I could feel the sun beating down on my bare shoulders but the only thought I gave to it was just to be thankful for the warmth after the previous freezing 24 hours. After the vows and kisses were exchanged we were off and moving and I forgot about the sun.

We were running around for pictures and for wine and for lobster and for dancing and for, well, everything that happens at a wedding. For five hours I was grateful for the warmth of the sun at an outdoor wedding. I had no idea that I was burning. Apparently I was.

Making my way home from the island, I noticed that the strap of my bag was hurting my shoulder more than normal. I thought, "Oh, I must have gotten a little sun!" I got to my apartment, removed my jacket, saw that my skin was almost purple and thought, "Holy hell! What happened?!"

Then yesterday Jon and I went to the Wicked Big Meet in Connecticut. He demanded I wear sunscreen. Feeling the crisp on my shoulders, I obliged. We brought it with us and reapplied consistently throughout the day. Okay, I mostly just reapplied to my shoulders because I wanted color on the rest of my body, but still! I definitely put it on my already-burnt parts more than once.

I left WBM with a sunburn on my shoulders that was twice what it was when I had arrived. I got in the car and asked Jon what SPF the sunscreen was--thinking it must be low, like 10 or 15, if the sun got through it to burn me further. Nope! It was SPF 50!! Then Jon tells me that he heard once that any SPF works kind of like the car wash: any package beyond a certain package is the same one with spiffier words and a higher price--meaning any SPF over 30 works just the same as 30 only it costs more.

I'm not normally a wearer of the sunscreen so I must know: Is it really all just a marketing gimmick when you get past SPF 30?

My initial search on Google tells me that this is apparently a hot topic (heh heh) as there are a lot of results. Whether or not sunscreen over SPF 50 works any differently than anything over it seems to be where the controversy lies. According to this article by the NY Times, SPF used to max out at 30, so when higher numbers started hitting the beach, folks were skeptical. It also tells me that the way SPF is calculated is by comparing the time a person usually takes to turn red in the sun with how long it takes them to turn that same shade of red with the sunscreen on (sucks to be that Ginny pig).

What that means, according to this article, is that a person who normally turns into a lobster in 20 minutes in the sun unprotected, should theoretically be able to stay in the sun without burning 15 times longer than that when wearing SPF 15 sunblock. So according to that math, assuming there is no swimming or sweating involved, that's 5 hours in the sun without burning. Right? 15 x 20 = 300/60 = 5. Yeah. 5 hours in the sun without burning while wearing SPF 15 if you normally burn in 20 minutes without it. I can do math!

Well I think that SPF is a big fat marketing liar. Because wearing SPF 50 even applied once I should have been fine being in the sun for 7 hours. I was a good human and reapplied over the course of those 7 hours and I still burnt.

Interestingly enough, the difference in ultraviolet B ray protection between SPF 50 and SPF 100 is barely notable. It's not actually offering you double the blockage. SPF 100 blocks 99% of the UVB rays, SPF 50 blocks 98%, and SPF 30 blocks 96.7% (thank you NY Times). Does Coppertone or Banana Boat tell you this? Nooooo. Of course not! They just go ahead and let you believe you're doubly protected while charging you another $2 and throwing images of little-girl-butt in your face.

A Perfectly Poignant Post About Pee

Sometimes my mouth opens and words fall out and I hear myself saying Why? Why did you just say that? Stop talking! So I laugh nervously when whoever I'm talking to laughs awkwardly at whatever I've just said. Instead of shutting up and suffering in silence while they forget whatever weird words I've just spoken, I keep talking thinking I can smooth it over with more words. My mouth opens and I utter more ridiculousness while my brain screams STOP TALKING RIGHT NOW! YOU'RE MAKING IT WORSE!

Well I just told my boss that going to the bathroom was an important part of my day.

It happened because we were both awkwardly walking from the office to the bathrooms in the hallway at the same time. They're right next to each other and there's really no way to avoid the fact that you're essentially going to the bathroom together if you happen to go at the same time as someone else. It's just weird and I generally try to avoid this but somehow I managed to end up in the hall, headed to the bathrooms with my boss anyway. Of course, small talk is required else you seem odd for avoiding someone you know who is two feet away from you.

He had forgotten he had to go to the restroom earlier and told me this. I replied with a cheesy remark, something along the lines of, "Man I hate it when that happens. Peeing is important." Which was a really weird thing to say to your boss. So he made some awkward remark back and instead of just shutting my mouth, I felt I needed to explain why I said peeing was important (aside from, you know, having your bladder explode if you don't) and that's when I announced proudly that the bathroom was an important part of my day. At this point, I stopped talking. He offered to unlock the bathroom door for me. I silently declined by holding up my own key and stepped into the Women's Room.

The reason the bathroom is an important part of my day is because I visit it frequently. I drink about a metric ton of water every day and as a result, I pee a lot. If I couldn't visit the bathroom, I would be in trouble. After partially explaining this to my boss on the way to the bathroom (in which I left out the why the bathroom is important and couldn't figure out a proper way to include it because that's not information a boss ever needs to have and ended up just being weird) I realized that even if I don't drink a metric ton of water in a day and I only drink a metric yard of water (if that's even a thing), I still go pee a lot. I have a tiny tank.

What I want to know is how many pees a day is too many pees a day?

I have turned to Google and typed in the dreaded phrase "Frequent Urination in Women." I hate Googling symptoms because A) if you're a woman, it seems every symptom in the world means you're pregnant and that will solve everything and B) I leave the computer every time thinking I have some form of cancer, a terminal illness, or a rare and tropical disease and I'm going to have to be poked and prodded in places I didn't know could be prodded or poked in order to find out what's the matter.

And of course, this search hasn't let me down. Web MD says that typically a person goes to the bathroom four to eight times a day. It also says that peeing more than that means any of the following could be the cause: I have diabetes; I'm pregnant; I have an enlarged prostate; I have Interstitial cystitis; high blood pressure medications are messing with my fluids;  a stroke damaged my nerves; I have bladder cancer or dysfunction; I have Overactive Bladder Syndrome; and on and on.

Well. I feel better. Not.

I don't think I pee more than eight times a day. I'll have to start a tally to make sure. But of course now I have to click on all of these other problems and make sure that I don't have any symptoms, which, I'm sure I will because every medical issue I look up has about a billion generic "symptoms."

I have had a tiny tank all my life so I can cross off pregnancy. Peeing doesn't hurt me, so I can cross off cancer, a Urinary Tract Infection, and cysts. I don't think I have diabetes. Apparently if I had OBS, I'd leak pee when I laughed--and I don't. People with Interstitial cystitis pee up to 60 times in 24 hours and I definitely do NOT pee anywhere near that frequently. I've never had a stroke. I am not currently, nor have I ever been, in possession of a prostate so I can assume an enlarged one is not the cause. I've never had radiation therapy so that can't be it. I've had my thyroid checked before so that's not it. I don't have high blood pressure, let alone medication for it...

Maybe I just drink too much water. Maybe I just have a small bladder. Maybe I'm not abnormal--aside from writing an entire post about peeing.

Starting today I will keep "The Water Journal--a Documentation of Going In and Going Out." You know, just to be sure.