Bikinis in Winter~

If there was ever a time where it was glaringly obvious to me that men simply do not think like women, it would when Jack asked me to go swimming. In January. Granted, it was an inside pool with a hot tub and I like water. But I am willing to bet that if you asked any woman to go find a bathing suit to go swimming with twenty four hour notice in the middle of winter….she would react the same way I did in my head where Jack couldn’t see or hear. WHAT?!?!?!?

My brain frantically began cataloguing all the reasons this was a bad idea. One, I am almost albino white by the middle of January once my summer tan is completely dead. Two, my skin is super dry on a normal day – and this bitter cold day that was probably the driest of the entire year had leached whatever little moisture I had left. So I am white, flaky, and dry. Three, winter shaving. Any woman that tells you she shaves the same way in the winter as she does in bathing suit season is either lying or has waaaaay too much time on her hands. Or she is truly Superwoman. So now I piss off my super dry, super white skin by trying to super shave like I haven’t in months – which naturally results in angry red razor bumps that show up beautifully against all the albino that is my skin. Perfect. And I am not done yet.

How about the fact that even though my elliptical machine is in my living room I haven’t used it in probably two weeks? Or that I have ate fat-sucking carbs day in and day out all week in the form of pizza and breadsticks? Or that I recently discovered how much I miss full caffeine, non-diet Coke? Or that Jack and I have been dating almost six months so I was lulled into that comfortable stage where you don’t worry so much over dimples that no one can see anyway? Or that I hadn’t looked at any of my bathing suits in months, much or less looked at myself in one. Bathing suits never look the same from season to season – how in the world am I supposed to have one magically ready in twenty four hours that will instantly transform me from a water-retaining, carb bloated, flaky dry, red bumped, dimpled albino into anything resembling sexy and attractive???

Of course I said none of this to Jack, because that would make me look like the insecure, typical, body conscious woman that I am, but try not to be. Instead I said – sounds like fun! And I pulled out my drawer of bathing suits, braved the mirror in a bikini, breathed a sigh of relief that I could actually wear it in public without feeling like I need a mask to disguise my identity, and I went swimming. And it was fun. And I forgot all about everything that I had obsessed about for the past twenty four hours and enjoyed myself. And later that evening, Jack gave me one more example of how men and women think differently when the only comment he had about the way I looked in my bathing suit was …..hot.