How Much Does A Woman Cost?

This past Sunday, Life in the Boomer Lane’s friend Roni and LBL were driving to Baltimore for the annual ACC Craft Show (“Our motto: We have amazing crafts.  You can either buy one of them or make your mortgage payment this month.”)  Roni was regaling LBL with the latest romp (in the salon, not the bedroom) she had with her hairdresser.  Two hundred dollars later, she came to the end of her story.  Roni added, “Then I had to have a manicure.  How much does a woman cost?”  LBL immediately started rooting around in her purse.  “I need a pen!” She shrieked. She found only used tissues and a Metro fare card that still had 15 cents on it.  “That’s a blog post!”  Roni grabbed a pen from the driver’s door and handed it to LBL, all the while staying completely focused on trying to getting them lost.

Roni’s comment started LBL thinking.  She realized that if you posed the question “How much does a woman cost?” at random, you would get an unlimited number of answers, depending on where you were and if you included Charlie Sheen in the survey.  LBL started to mentally review all the things that she does and purchases as required normal maintenance vs the same things that Now Husband does and purchases.  Here’s what she came up with:

LBL: hair cut and color every six weeks: $200 plus tip

Special discount haircut $25

Cute hat purchased to cover the bad haircut  $39

Emergency haircut to repair the bad haircut  $55

NH: hands LBL a scissors every few weeks and instructs her to “Trim, please.”

LBL: Manicure every few weeks  $12 plus tip/occasional pedicures $20 plus tip

Mani/Pedi for daughter every time she visits $60 plus tip

NH: cuts fingernails and toenails in private.  LBL thinks.

LBL: eyebrow waxing every couple months $20 plus tip

NH: cheap tube of mustache wax that lasts forever and doesn’t work anyway

LBL: body lotion: $26 a bottle (caused by addiction to The Thymes and Moulton Brown), one bottle per month

NH:  Eau de Pinot Noir

LBL: facial moisturizer with sunscreen/under eye moisturizer $50 per year

NH: goes outside on the first sunny day in spring, gets a tan, stays that way until the end of October

LBL: special “keep the color in” shampoo and conditioners $300 per year

NH: whatever is around, including those little shampoo bottles from Motel 6

LBL: hair gel and hair product “enhancer” $18 every few months

NH: maintains the largest selection of hair gel products on the east coast but none cost over 99 cents.

LBL: make up purchases amounting to approximately $100-$200 per year

Spontaneous cheap lipstick purchases of ugly colors while waiting for prescriptions to be filled  $100 per year

NH: She doesn’t think so.

LBL: dainty unmentionables amount to about $500 per year

NH: uniquely patterned and colored Euro-briefs from the dollar store

LBL: annual pelvic exam, mammogram, bone density scan, calcium pills

NH: all medical concerns handled by Google and Pinot Noir.