Uncle Jake’s Guide to Aging Gracefully

Tip #1: Don’t trim your nose hair with a disposable razor.

Getting older is not for the weak. You creak in funny places, you jiggle in not-so-funny places, you have to pee more … and you suddenly sprout weird little patches of hair where you really don’t want or even need weird little patches of hair. Like on your shoulders. And down your back. And in your nose.

I usually trim my nose spiders with a pair of scissors at the sink. Interesting story: The scissors I use are all that’s left of my pre-med aspirations; they were a part of the dissection kit I had to buy for my college biology class, and I’ll be damned if they aren’t still as sharp and precise today as they were the first time they cut into a cow eyeball.

But this morning when I was shaving in the shower, I noticed some spider legs hanging out my nose and I was already running a little late so I just grabbed my nose and made a quick little swipe with my razor … and I shredded the heck out of my right nostril. And since extremities like noses have lots of capillaries near the skin surface (I’ll be damned! I did pay attention in biology!) and they don’t clot well in steamy environments like showers, the fluffy white towel I used to dry off this morning now looks like something that dreamy Danny might bag-n-tag at a CSI: New York crime scene.

And despite the gob of Neosporin I tried to stop the blood with, my damn nose is still bleeding well into the afternoon today. Which is making me feel very sexy in meetings.

I tried to discreetly take a picture of it on the bus this morning, but my stupid camera phone suddenly developed wound-healing powers – at least as far as photographing carnage is concerned. Which is probably for the best; the boyfriend routinely shields his eyes with his hands whenever they show fake carnage on CSI, so a picture of my real blood might push him over the edge. Unless Danny was there to tell him it’s OK, of course.

In any case, here’s a cell-phone picture looking up my nose on a bus. Maybe it will start another blogwide meme like the time a couple summers ago I posted a picture of my scabby foot in a flip-flop and tons of other bloggers posted pictures of their feet in flip-flops in mockery of homage to my wide-reaching creative influence. Or not.