Now Closed to the Public

After being married for a time, and definitely after having kids, you come to realize that a general lack of privacy has now become a way of life.

You do things, almost daily, to a crowd of onlookers that you once would never have dreamed of doing in front of another living being… EVER.

Yet, there are some things that are better left behind closed doors, don’t you agree?

There are some activities I stealthily carry out in total privacy, if not absolute secrecy. These may or may not include: waxing the upper lip, occasional trimming of certain (ahem) stray locks, and anything involving feminine hygiene (usually).

Apparently, I must now add to the list: using the Neti Pot.

Have you seen one of these? It’s a little pot with a spout that you fill with a saline solution and use to clean out nasal passages. I bought one last winter when I was pregnant and suffering from sinus congestion and allergies and didn’t want to load up on drugs. It does clean out your nose better than blowing, but it is kind of a weird apparatus. You lean forward, with your head bowed, put the spout in one nostril and tip your head to one side. The saline solution goes in one nostril and comes out the other. Doesn’t it sound lovely?

My husband walked into the bathroom the other day while I was using it (I have had a cold for a few days). He stopped dead in his tracks and asked with a look of disgust: “WHAT are you doing?”

……as if he were looking at a total freak.

THIS, from the man who eats cow udder and blood sausage and pulls out stray nose hairs with a pair of pliers.



On a somewhat random, but somewhat related note, one of the conversation topics around our New Year’s Day dinner with a neighbor family we love just so happened to be some of the “interesting” (i.e. disgusting) things my husband and other Chileans have been known to eat (No offense, of course, to my husband or other Chileans—and to be fair there aren’t THAT many things). The conversation ended something like this:

He: I have never tried testicles though… “Rocky Mountain Oysters” you call them?

Me: Wait a minute… you have eaten udder at numerous occasions but you have never tried testicles. That is so sexist!

He: That is not sexist! I have just never had the opportunity…

Me: Oh please, your whole country is sexist then. You get served udder at any respectable “parrillada” (BBQ joint) but no one would dream of serving a testicle on a platter?


That IS sexist, right???