ETA: whatladder says this is a DO NOT EAT WHILE READING post. I say WALK IT OFF, PUSSY. You have been warned.

I went out to Calgary and I told the story so many times I don’t feel like telling it again! I went, it was fun, the end. You saw the pics, probably. “Critics Declare Buttcon 9 a Success.” Really, the most fun conference I have ever attended. Buttcon 10 is in Iceland, so I had better start saving up now.

I think what I want to talk about what a wreck my skin is. That’s more interesting anyhow. THIS IS MY HOUSE I’LL DO AS I DARN PLEASE. So, I have keratosis pilaris, and pretty much always have since I was a baby. When I was a kid, this affliction was known as “I don’t know why your skin does that, weird, huh?” I didn’t really realize what it was until I read about it on Tomato Nation, and I had that OH moment. The cool thing is that it starts clearing up between twenty-five and thirty, so my skin looks fine most of the time. But if something goes wrong now typically I can’t go, “Woe is moi I have skin affliction,” I have to say, this is a ZIT. Alas.

I have a history of just attacking myself, too. Years of fucked up skin combined with pretty good healing ability has made me somewhat fearless. I used to beg to pull my sister’s teeth when she was a kid and I would do home surgery on someone else in a second, if they let me. So my thing in more recent years has been what I guess are sebaceous cysts, where sometimes I will get a zit and it will just NOT go away.

My first experience was this monstrosity on my back, which was a zit that looked done and felt done, but would refill itself repeatedly. It got larger and larger and I could feel something lurking under my skin. So in the past year or so I got one in one of the worst places–under my BOOB. Right where my bra sits. I would prod it and I could feel something was in it…pirate’s booty? Spider eggs? Jeff Goldblum? Sorry, I am still running that into the ground from yesterday. It wasn’t funny then, either.

I was trapped in the hotel Saturday night with my sleepy kid, kind of bored and knocking around. Lewd texts I sent went ignored. TV was meh, as usual. But I had a pair of tweezers and a magnifying shaving mirror in the bathroom, and I noticed as I took my bra off it was sore again. Hmm…

It was a pretty easy operation as these things go, unlike the first time, which was on my back and very hard to reach. I could see the center and grabbed it after a few tries with my tweezers. What always sticks with me is the feeling of pulling some relatively hard object out of a hole in my body. I can feel it sliding out and then I have this THING that causes me sometimes a year-plus of irritation. I am the princess, and it is my pea. It is HEAVENLY having them come out, no joke.

Then I have the huge hole that goes down to forever and I am like CAN I SEE MY LUNGS through there? GRACIOUS. And it does not bleed. The next morning I woke up and it was a krillion times better, and today it is just a little scar. GO TEAM HOME SURGERY!

In Other News: FUCKING WHOOPS TIMES INFINITY

Franny: AUUUGH, Mom, what IS that at the top of your website???

Me: That. Is a wound. On a man’s. Leg.

Franny: That looks like a BAD one.

Me: Yes, but they sewed it up and he is okay now.

Franny: Okay, good.

FAIL!