Warning: embarrassingly shallow moment approaching. should be blogging about world hunger, genocide, or animal welfare. But no. Here’s what you get:

You know personal time is at a premium when you finish the one shower a week when you can actually shave, you dry, you dress, you begin your day, and hours later you notice a full forest of hair that has grown beneath the surface of your shin, left untouched by the razor. Not infected ingrowns. Long, half-inch hairs thriving between layers of keratinized epithelial cells.

Now, I wish I could reject society’s ideas of beauty and let me legs go. I wish I could deny the ridiculous pressures put on women to fit a twisted, pedophilic ideal of hairless shins. But I really, really like the way naked legs feel. And I like shaving, more now, because it represents a self-involved indulgence I rarely get. Shallow, I know. I’ll work on becoming more liberated next year.

With a small creature running around my house I don’t get to shave often, and when I do it’s quick, half-assed, and usually grossly incomplete. But this week I took my time. I used a foaming product (albeit organic and vegan) instead of soap. I felt for stragglers.

But I missed at least three dozen hairs that have grown half-an-inch long beneath the surface of my skin. And what really impresses me is that I didn’t notice before the shower, I didn’t notice after I shaved, I didn’t notice in the four-second lotion dash, and I didn’t notice for most of the morning. Only when building a block tower did I realize I looked like I hadn’t shaved at all. And that got me thinking two things–why the hell bother? and, how is it possible to have so much dead skin built up that hairs can’t even break through? How long had it been since I dragged a washcloth over those shins? Seriously, people, what has my personal grooming regimen become?

Don’t answer that. Thank goodness I don’t blog on YouTube. Or Smell-o-vision.