Monk Moment #2......

Has anyone else out there noticed a rather disturbing trend lately in the shampoo and conditioner department?

Hello? What do you mean, you don't think about these things? How can you NOT think about them?

I'm not talking about the vast array of products available and how some of them smell like you should be eating them instead of putting them in your hair.


I'm not even talking about the exorbitant prices they charge for something you're just going to wash down the drain, because as you can see, it doesn't bother me one iota to buy the cheap stuff.

Every now and then I go the lazy route and buy a shampoo-and-conditioner-in-one, thereby saving approximately 30 seconds off my morning routine. That's another 30 seconds I can spend reading blogs. Or watching Dancing with the Stars (I have to record it and watch it the next morning.) Or ellipticalating. (I made that word up, but by God I maintained parallel structure.)

My hairdresser, however, said that the shampoo-and-conditioner-in-one products create more build-up (is there a limit to the number of hyphens one can use within a single blog post? How about parenthetical expressions?), so I try to avoid using them except when I'm on bike rides. In those situations, how my hair looks is the least of my worries. How about that sunburn that goes around the middle of my thigh? Or the sunburned face that Sweet Girl calls my raccoon look? Or the attractive bandana I tie around my head to keep the sweat out of my eyes?


So I tend to buy shampoo and conditioner separately, but THEY MUST BE THE SAME BRAND. If a brand has different "flavors," they must also be the same "flavor." And they must be used in equal amounts so that both of them run out at the same time.

I have a bottle of shampoo sitting in my shower right now that has about an inch and a half of shampoo left in it. But the conditioner is gone. That was two shampoo bottles ago. I know I will eventually pour it down the drain, because I don't have any more of the matching conditioner. And I can't just go buy a bottle of conditioner because A) they probably don't have that same kind anymore, because shampoo and conditioner "styles" seem to change with the moon's phases; and B) it would just start a vicious cycle of the shampoo and conditioner amounts NEVER matching, and I'm certain I won't live long enough to see them cycle back to both being empty at the same time.

Why, oh why, do I admit these things about myself?

This, however, is the disturbing trend to which I referred at the beginning of this epitome of journalistic importance.



I realize there's a glare on the picture, and a good blogger and photographer like Pioneer Woman would have performed all kinds of actions to make the picture more attractive. Screw that because A) I don't have the nifty seven-hundred dollar program that Pioneer Woman uses, and if I did I wouldn't know how to use all the actions; and B) I have already spent the better part of tonight NOT packing, NOT reading, NOT crocheting, and NOT playing with my awesome new gadget. Taking the pictures was a stretch, but I realized that without pictures this post would have even less importance than the none it already has.

These bottles are shaped the same. They are the same size and color. They hold approximately the same amount. Why, then, is it necessary to stand one on its bottom and one on its lid?

I could stand them the same, but then one of them would have the words upside-down.

How am I ever going to be able to tell if I'm using them equally each time? I know the bottles appear to be opaque, but if you hold them up to a really bright flashlight and measure to the millimeter, you really can tell how much has been used each time. I'm going to leave it to your imagination as to whether or not I actually do that.

These bottles are going to drive me insane. Insaner?

Maybe I'll take them with me to the Dominican Republic next week and accidentally leave them there.

And next time I'll shop more carefully.