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The season for hand cream | Lisa Scottoline

Hand cream is annoying. It gets on everything, and allows things to get on you.

Hand cream is annoying. It gets on everything, and allows things to get on you.
Hand cream is annoying. It gets on everything, and allows things to get on you.Read moreNataliia_Melnychuk / Getty Images/iStockphoto

To me, there are four seasons of the year: Spring, summer, fall, and hand cream.

Yes, it’s that time.

But I’m starting to wonder whether there’s enough hand cream in the world to keep me moist.

Well, not moist, but at least not the Sahara.

Moist is a fond memory.

Moist might be in my rearview mirror.

In fact, the gynecologist told me so on my yearly visit, last week. I always schedule my annual exam at the holidays, because that’s the only time I can get an appointment.

Everybody else has better things to do during the holidays.

I, however, do not.

My idea of a good time is a pap smear.

I have a blast at my annual.

I wear my red Santa socks on the stirrups.

I’m a laugh riot on the examining table.

Anyway, my gynecologist gave me a clean bill of health, but also said, “If you want to have sex again, you have to call me first and I’ll give you a cream.”

Is that too much information?

Welcome to Chick Wit. I specialize in too much information, but it’s actually information that I wish someone had told me.

Who knew that in the seasons of your life, there would be a time when you will need not only hand cream, but vagina cream?

Because evidently everything dries up, even on the inside.

It seems uniquely unfair.

I mean, imagine what’s next.

It falls out, so you have to drag it along like a broken muffler.

Sparking as you drive.

Yes, I’m pretty sure mine would spark.

Yours would, too.

They used to, didn’t they?

Anyway, back to hand cream.

I wait every year to start with the hand cream, because hand cream is annoying. It gets on everything, and allows things to get on you.

Read the paper after hand cream and you’ll have fingerprints like a felon.

It greases books.

Dishes slip through your fingers.

You’re a walking oil spill.

Every hand cream commercial claims it sinks in immediately, but none of them do. And I’m not the kind of woman to wait 20 minutes or spend all my time holding my hands in the air.

Even manicures make me antsy.

I’m annoying. I mean, busy.

Anyway, hand cream never sinks in.

And even if you think it does, you’ll find out it didn’t the next time you wash your hands, which will be in 10 minutes. Everywhere you go, people tell you to wash your hands.

We wash our hands constantly, now.

So our hands get drier, and we need more hand cream, and our hands get dirtier faster because of the hand cream, and then we have to wash them all over again.

It’s a suburban nightmare, friends.

I used to buy expensive hand cream, but I don’t anymore since I’ll be washing it off in 3, 2, 1 …

Hand cream is the making your bed of personal grooming.

Yesterday I started using hand cream, and I’m already typing worse because my keyboard is slippery.

And I’m so dry I have to use leg cream or my skin gets itchy, and then I started noticing the other day that I should put it on my arms too, so now I need arm cream.

And then I just saw a commercial about crepey arms, so now I need cream for my crepe.

Crepey arms are creepy.

Who knew?

I’ll tell you who, the commercials on cable.

The cable commercials are all about crepey skin, catheters, and reverse mortgages.

Everybody watching cable needs vagina cream.

I just saw my umpteenth commercial for a facial hair remover, designed to give you flawless brows.

Flawless.

And then there’s a commercial for strings that will give you a face-lift on the cheap.

Wow.

If there’s one thing I want to skimp on, it’s surgery.

Who wants to go under the knife when you can go under the tape?

I’m actually thinking of getting some Scotch tape and giving myself new cheekbones.

Of course, I’d use the invisible kind, so you couldn’t see it at all.

And imagine what you can do with duct tape.

Or ask your gynecologist.

I mean, after all, it’s a duct.

Look for Lisa and Francesca’s new humor collection, “I See Life Through Rosé-Colored Glasses,” and Lisa’s number-one best-selling domestic thriller, “After Anna,” and her forthcoming “Someone Knows,” in stores April 9. lisa@scottoline.com.