What does 'biki...' spell?

Last week our Grands were off on spring break. I am still trying to recover.

On Friday I took the younger two to get pedicures.

Hey, don't give me that look. I'm not turning them into pampered princesses like Tom Cruise's daughter. I thought they would think it was fun AND I am not capable of painting zebra stripes on toenails...although now I think about it I probably could have accomplished it with a black sharpie.

However...

They had a ball. I had a ball. The middle one had a big grin on her face the whole time and ended up with hot pink fingernails and black and white zebra toenails. The little one worried a lot about a boo-boo on one of her toes but eventually ended up happy with ice blue nails layered with glitter. I was happy with just plain pink...on my toes only, thank you very much.


Just as we were finishing up a customer walked in and asked for a brow wax and followed the tech into a back room in the salon.

I've had a brow wax before. Yeah. It wasn't fun, but when the customer walked back up to the front only a few minutes later with a smile on her face I decided to give it a go.

I went back to the 'waxing' room and climbed up onto the table and laid down. Four big, blue eyes watched intently from inches beside me. I realized the error of my ways the minute they both started asking questions... "What are you doing now?" "Why are you putting wax on there?" "Why are you putting that white paper on there?"

There questions swirled around the room and the technician patiently answered by saying, "I'm going to wax your Grandma's eyebrows and in a second she's going to say OUCCCCHHH!"


And I did.

She did a few more strips and the little girls watched totally mesmerized.

As we were walking out, the middle Grand asked me, "Why did you do that?"

I explained that sometimes the hair on our eyebrows gets out of control a little bit and sometimes waxing is a quick way to take care of it.

She thought about it.

She said, "What else can they wax?"

I said, "Oh, some people get their legs waxed. I think some people get their arms waxed. Upper lips."

She thought about it.

"Grandma," she said, "What do you get waxed that starts with the letters b-i-k-i? I can't remember the rest of the letters. It was on the sign. Do you know what that word is? What is a biki wax?"

I was silent.

Thinking fast.

"What was the word again, Riley?" I asked her.

She repeated, "B-i-k-i and some more letters, but I can't remember what they were."

I was silent.

I was saying a prayer of gratitude that she hadn't learned the word bikini yet on a first grade spelling test.

I was hoping she wouldn't remember the last two letters. I was hoping she wouldn't ask any more questions.

I distracted her by reminding her that we had to draw some pictures when we got home to send to some people that needed cheering up.

She didn't bring it up again.

However, when she showed me her first picture it was of me laying on the table getting my eyebrows waxed.

"Riley, why did you draw this?" I asked her.

"Because it funny every time you said 'ouch'! Grandma!"

I was silent.

I was too busy saying prayers of gratefulness that she didn't know what a bikini wax is so she couldn't draw a picture of that particular 'ouch'!

Sigh...