"Hey, don't give me no lip."

When I have a dry lip that is already starting to crack, I immediately discard any hope for fixing it with chapstick. My natural reaction is to start picking away at it, ripping little patches of dying skin off my lower lip. People like to see immediate results; and with these "lip-fixes", the reward is immediate. The feeling of a smooth under-lip beneath the drought-that-was is wondrous.

I use a slow Pick-and-Pull^tm technique. It's effective. Seldom done with only fingers, I usually pick with my top teeth - pulling the lower lip in to get a firm grip between the top and bottom incisors (occasionally assisted by the tongue) - and then activating the slow pull sequence. Finally, I take the liberated piece into my fingers, and flick it off like a booger.

Actually, it's funny that even though the piece of lip is only between my index finger and thumb, the flick must be performed through rapid movements of my thumb, index, middle, and ringer fingers - with my pinky standing relatively still and out. I digress.

Once in a while, I don't sense the pull correctly, and it results in a bleeding lip. This happens when the dried patch doesn't feel its ready to leave the motherland, or holds onto the lip and says to its comrades "hey, let's go together!" But you can't stop in the middle of a pull, because you'll end up with a little flap of lip which teases you every time you close your mouth - and then you're compelled to play around with it with your tongue. Now, when a small wound opens, my eyes give that look that says "shit.", and the lower lip automatically disappears into my mouth where I can taste the blood and assess the damage.

But when it's done right, the feeling of a raw underlying layer is almost erotic. Soft, smooth, and moist like the back of a salamander.

Just wanted to leave you with a nice note over the weekend, so have a good one.