Femme Gyver

Today we stopped at a fancy yoga boutique so that my fiancé could get a bag for the gym.  There is this one lovely bag that is pewter with lots of pockets (I am told) that she really wants.  It even comes with a secret brownie recipe tucked into one of those pockets. The bag she has now, a nice little Under Armor number, does not work for her because there are no pockets.  I will probably be the new owner of this bag once a suitable replacement is found.  That’s fine by me because I like it, although it is small and my large gym shoes take up most of the bag.  But I digress.  Apparently, it is no good to have everything just thrown into the center of the bag – like I do with my own gym bag.

I ended up getting a cool pair of yoga pants (men’s, obv) and as we checked out, I saw something odd.   Next to the counter was a bowl of black circle stringy things held together by something that I think might be called a scrunchy.  I picked up the spaghetti-like mess of rings and wondered aloud, “What is this?”  The lady helping me checkout answered, “Those are hair ties.  We use them as zipper pulls on all of our jackets and they double as emergency hair ties!”  She was very excited to explain this to me.  Can you hear the inflection of her voice and the requisite head tilt?  Really?  What kind of emergency?  I imagined a female fire fighter about to rush into a burning building who might need to pull her hair back.  “Honey, look at this odd thing,” I said to my fiancé as I held out the black octopus of beauty utility.  “You mean the hair ties?” she responded immediately.  She doesn’t even use hair ties, and still she knew exactly what they were.

Sometimes, it really seems like we are from different planets.  Or, I guess I should say me and the rest of the non-butch women in the world.  Do you all get taught these things in school?  Does someone pull you aside at a young age and explain the world of hair ties and how they might be used during a hair emergency?  Oh, and Splenda packets.

I was driving her car to work the other day and looked down to see a package of Splenda in the center console with a perfect set of lips on it.  At first, I thought she had kissed this packet of Splenda to send me a little love note.  But then, I saw that there was a second packet with the same set of lips on it.  At this point, I realized that the sexy packet was not a special message – symbolic of the sweetness of our love – but rather a lipstick blotting tool.   She does not use Splenda anymore, so I can only assume that she is using found objects (vestiges of our old Splenda days in the glove box) to handle beauty emergencies like blotting – like the zipper pull hair ties.  So inventive.

She is the MacGyver of femmes!  She has found that the all-powerful Splenda is two things:  by day, an innocent coffee additive, by night the secret to beautiful lips bearing the perfect amount of lipstick.  According to her, women are one simple blot away from looking like whores.  Whatever you say, honey.

Be butch.