Right. So the last post was admittedly self-centered and incredibly ME ME ME but remember: this is a blog after all. Nonetheless, I feel the need to readjust the karmic scales with one of those posts that really take me down a peg or seventy-two.

I know that I went to Africa and it was all amazing and I was all Angelina Jolie (in my head) and I’m basically going to be the next Mother Theresa of our generation (or I would be if I weren’t about to spend so much time in Hell just for saying that)…but ever since I’ve come back, I’ve had this weird problem. No, I haven’t rejected the notion of First World Society and yes, I can still totally go spend $5 on a latté without feeling the weight of the world on my Irish Catholic Guilt Gland: it’s a sweat thing.

Just like my mother, I basically hadn’t sweat since the seventies. This is due to a unique combination of a fervent stubbornness that allows our kind to ‘will’ away just about anything that doesn’t quite suit us (an admission of the importance of science, comes to mind), and a keen avoidance of activities that would invite the opportunity to produce sweat.

It certainly helps that I live in a Canadian city best described as Forks from the Twilight series if Forks were to swap all of its overcast days with hell on earth days for about seven months of the year. Still, even on those rare days when I would come close to sweating, it would be nothing more than my brow area pulling a bit of a Whitney Houston upper lip rather than a full-on junior high locker room dealie.

Right before I went to Ethiopia, I bought the wrong deodorant. Which, CAN I JUST SAY, is the worst thing to ever happen in a drugstore besides maybe realizing your pregnant which doesn’t count because it’s more of a You People problem than a My People problem. Anyhow, I got my deodorant in the gel format instead of the stick but since I was more worried about Malaria and Famine (because I’m a humanitarian now, donchaknow) I figured I’d roll with it and everything would be fine. And while I was away? Everything was fine.

Yes, I had to get used to doing everything whilst covered in a thin layer of sweat but I figured this was what most commoners felt like all the time. I never really smelled bad, I never had those uncomfortable dark stains that everyone pretends not to see when watching live television…I was just always a little sticky. I figured it was no big deal since I’d be back in the cold in no time.

Wrong. I came home and now I kind of smell all the time and I can’t figure out why. Not like, people running from me in the street ‘smell bad’, or even sitting next to people and having them flash back to seventh grade ‘smell bad’, but I can smell something whenever I shove my face in my own armpit (I realize maybe I should just stop doing that) and I’m not really okay with that. I’ve switched back to my old deodorant but I’ve heard that sometimes it takes weeks for the body to readjust and frankly, that’s just not going to work for me.

So if you’re looking for me, I’ll be sitting right here, willing my body to go back to halting any bodily functions that could be seen as less than sexy. It worked for 25 years and it’ll work again, goddamnit.