Jeez. How do they allow me to raise children?

The saga of the cougar dress continues. I took it over to my dear friend, who would never lie to me, no matter how often I might want her to. She told me that the dress was cute, didn't scream "cougar prowl" but that I needed a tan. This has been her mantra for the whole 18 years I have known her. Listen, Ms. Native American, quit trying to shove your skin-ist agenda down my throat! I glow in the dark, and I'm proud of it! However, it is a sundress and the tan lines from my bathing suit when I was in the Caymans didn't look all that great to my way of thinking. Plus, in an effort to find out just what the hell is wrong with me (physically that is; we are all aware of what is wrong with me mentally. I am nucking futs and some day I will slip into the abyss of insanity and be found frothing at the mouth and biting the furniture.), my fanTASTic family practice doc, who is a god among men, drew some lab work on me and found that my Vitamin D level was quite low. Shocking in the Pacific Northwest I know. So, I rationalized that buying a tanning package would actually be beneficial as it would be vitamin D light therapy not unlike what they do in Finland. Hey. I have an English degree, I can bullshit with the best of them. I happily, and cautiously, started tanning. The "areas to be lasered" are strictly off limits as far as UVA/UVB rays are concerned so I wore a thong in the tanning bed, so as not to piss off my aesthetician and have her turn into the laser Nazi. "No, hair removal for you! Come back 2 months!" The shindig for which I bought said "might be a cougar" dress is tomorrow, so I was tanning daily and increasing my time by two minutes a day, as is suggested by the tanning company. Two days into this, I realized that parts were getting tanned that I did not wish to be. Namely, the nippies. I couldn't care less if carpet matches the drapes, but I'm adamant that the nippes match the lipstick! Unless the lipstick is bright red, cuz Flaming Red Nipples is only good for a punk rock band name. But I digress. Really the only cure for tanning the nips is to cover them. Which I think if I came up with a handy dandy nip tanning cover, I could make some serious bank. Since I have yet to invent such a cover, I resorted to the old standby: the little round band-aid that are good for nothing. Except covering your nipples. The only problem with this is, you know how it feels to rip a band-aid off? Try taking off a band-aid that has been baked on to a fairly nerve-ending rich area. Good times.

Now, the kids are out of school, and I have been working everyday, so the only way to get this needed vitamin D therapy is to tan after work and then go get the kids. The tanning salon is out by my house and daycare is way the hell out on the other end of town. This is a lot of running back and forth, for which I just do not have the energy. So, I asked if I could tan at the salon, close to the daycare. Fortunately, they are owned by the same person, so I was welcome to tan either place. Yeehaw. Yesterday before I left for work, I gathered my supplies and went to get the little round band-aids. I didn't have those. In four different boxes of band-aids, I was out. What did I have? The knuckle band-aids. Well, those ought to work. After work I went to the new place, and asked for 2 minutes longer than I had tanned the day before. These two minute increments in the place by house had resulted in a nice deepening of my original tan and a slow fade of the dreaded tan lines. I got into the bed at the new place, and the first thing I noticed was this sucker sure closed a lot further than the other beds. I already feel like I'm in a lighted coffin but this was like being buried alive. My solution for this problem is like my solution for most problems. Ignore it; it will go away. (Not really helping for the pulled muscle in my shoulder, but I still have faith.) After my time was up, I peeled off the nip covers (labor breathing all the while), got dressed, and collected the offspring. I noticed nothing amiss. Until this morning. First, I don't know if it was the bed closing farther, stronger bulbs or the 2 extra minutes, but I look like Lobster Boy in the Freak Show at the circus. Second, remember those knuckle band-aids? Well, I have a very definite outline of those band-aids. Most people put little heart stickers to have a design when they tan. I basically ended up with what looks like the Rebel Alliance X-Wing fighters across my nipples. Awesome. It really speaks to the Star Wars geek inside me.