If you wear gloves and scarves and are as covered from head to toe as you possibly can be, certain thoughts pop into your head a lot. It's one of those things I've become used to. Some of the thoughts are even kind of funny.

For instance, typing and gloves do not mix. Not unless you're a really great typist and you know the keyboard so well you don't have to look at it. Which isn't me. Or if you use the hunt and peck method. Yeah, that's more my style. If you want to be a moderate typist and stay that way, I suggest that you don't wear gloves.

Buttoning, zipping, and various other ways to fasten clothing on one's body are incredibly difficult undertakings. Unbuttoning, unzipping and unfastening clothing is just about as bad--no, not just because Logan and I like to get it on with just a thin sheet between us which means that we have to get *out* of our clothes first. I'm talking practicality here. I've really taken to clothes I can just slide into these days--warm-up pants and shorts, plain tops and tee-shirts, sandals, all of these have become a large part of my wardrobe. Yes, I have cute clothes, but they're really not worth the effort of every day life.

Do you have any idea how strange it is to have little balls of material resting on the tips of your fingers? Just think about it. Gloves require two pieces of cloth shaped like a hand to be sewn together, which means that there are seams. There are places where seams just are not comfortable, and the tips of my fingers are one of them for several reasons. See typing reason above.

Summer is hot. Summer is a very hot season, even here in what is known as the New England area. I don't care how cool you think 70 is. You might come from Texas where it's 80 degrees in the winter. That doesn't matter a bit. 70 degrees is pretty hot when you're wearing gloves, a long sleeved shirt, pants, socks and a thin scarf that really does keep in more heat than you'd think sheer material could.

Speaking of scarves, they get caught on everything, and I do mean *everything*. Going through doorways is a hazard 'cause your scarf can get caught on a splinter of wood and nearly choke you to death. Zippers are things to stay away from when we're talking scarves, so that just makes me loathe and despise jeans even more. And when I do wear the occasional pair of jeans, I'm very careful when using the restroom. Oh, and you always have to make sure your scarf is *not* long enough in the back to actually touch the toilet water. I cannot begin to tell you the squickiness that feeling brings up in my stomach. No, it only happened once, but still...

Scarves can be a pain when it comes to other things as well. I'll cut it short and go to what pops into my mind the most. That'd be making out with Logan. I mean, it's all good that they help us get past the whole my-skin-can-knock-you-unconscious-for-days thing. Sheer, filmy ones aren't even that bad. But, really, I'd just love to feel his lips on my skin once without my instant mutant whammy kicking in, you know? Plus when we kiss I want to be able to look into his eyes without a layer of black or white or red or purple with white polka dots between us.

It's really hard to cook without getting the gloves dirty. And a cheap pair is about $15 here. I might not mind spending the Prof's money--which he's so generously offered over the past five or six years--on my gloves and scarves and certain other items which Logan insists we need to have a fulfilling sex life, but I draw the line at going through fourteen pairs of gloves just because I want to bake a fucking batch of cookies or mix a little stir fry every once in a while. Washing these gloves is not an easy process, and in many cases its not even an option anyway.

Another messy part of wearing the gloves and scarves is having a pet. Sass is the best cat in the world, but she's gray. She sheds. She tends to like sitting in my lap and then standing and rubbing all against me. I can't stop myself from petting her. This all adds up to much fur-coverage for my gloves and scarves, and a lint brush doesn't always pick up all the hair. I know everyone here who has a cat will be saying, "So what? My cat does that so often I'm thinking of just telling everyone I've decided to wear faux fur over every inch of my body." But didn't I just mention the washing issue? I can't afford dry cleaning for gloves and scarves every day. No, I don't want to get rid of my darling little Sassyums. Just making a point here.

Gloves and scarves and general coverage also have the distinct disadvantage of reminding everyone around me who knows me exactly what my mutation can do. There are times when, yes, I'm sure everyone would be safe with me removing one or both of my gloves. Like when I'm playing cards and wearing long sleeves so the only thing bare would really be my hands. Or when I'm cooking with Jean, 'Ro, Jubes and Kitty and it's so very tempting to not use the latex gloves Jean has always held out to me since the time I threw a stainless steel mixing bowl out one of the windows--one of the *closed* windows.

Of course, when I get thoughts like these, it's always easy to remember those first days after I came back from my little excursion to the Statue of Liberty. When I stripped one of my gloves to eat an apple without getting the juice all over it and Jubes, Kitty, Bobby and St. John all sort of inched away until I was done. When I was washing dishes barehanded one night and Jean walked up behind me and laid a pair of latex gloves on my shoulder. When I wore a tank top the first day that I was at the mansion and it was over 75 degrees outisde and no one came near me until I went back inside and put on a sheer long-sleeved shirt.

But there are short moments in time when those days don't bother me at all. Like when Logan looks at me and brushes a piece of hair out of my eyes with his bare hand while we're watching TV. When I wear my little white tank top and matching thong to bed and his eyes light up, and I know he's not thinking about how deadly my skin is but how much he wants me. When Jubes, who's now my best friend, suggests that I model a bikini while we're out shopping.

You asked me what I thought about wearing all this shit. I've given you my thoughts. Now I'll sum it all up in a few sentences. Wearing gloves and scarves and being covered almost all the time can really suck, especially when people first meet me. But I can tolerate it because the people who love and support me are all around, making sure that I can take off the gloves once in a while, shed the scarves and the suffocating layers, and just be me.