I spend $80 every five weeks to get my hair to look like this:

Wait, no, like this:

Okay, no, really, like this:

And in hindsight, it makes me wonder why I’m dropping all of the cash I should be saving for my education her education hookers and blow a rainy day fund. ¹

And then, a visit to the local Starbucks and an evening spent on Youtube gave me a new idea.

I hate my natural hair colour. On me. Anyone else, fabulous, but on me? Ew. Exhibit A:

It’s orange. It’s very Scottish looking. It’s the reason that gingerism exists.

But, what about:

Because, by god, if I can’t have the woman’s ass and boobs, I might as well have her current hair colour, right? ^{2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9}

Well, one more thing: I’m barely sleeping as another manic swing is starting.

Starbucks. How I love that place after November’s start. The red cups, the wishes of joy and hope, the seasonal offerings. Give me a peppermint brownie and I’ll consider licking you. Put some eggnog in my usual chai tea latte and I’ll swirl my tongue around your mouth a few times.

Or, you know, pay you $4.15. Either way.

My fondness for tall, reduced-fat eggnog chai lattés knows no bounds. They’re never bad. It’s always fanfuckingtastic in that Meg Ryan Sleepless in Seattle When Harry Met Sally way, except it’s totally not faked. But is just as loud. And prone to producing writhing. And staring. Because of the writhing, you know? Occasionally, there might be second degree burns, too. Again, because of the writhing.

So, when people ask me what’s so great about them because they’ve never tried one, like your grandmother with the forcing of the eating and the ‘you’re so skinny‘, I hand it over and demand they try it. As they take the first tentative taste, I say, “it tastes like Christmas” with a glee-filled smile.

They, of course, become an immediate convert – and assume that I’m smiling so much because I’m just so gosh darned excited about the holiday. But it goes but deeper than that. Gutter-deep.

Because when I say out loud “it tastes like Christmas,” I’m really thinking – inside my brains – “it tastes like Santa.”

And if that didn’t immediately make you mentally compare frothy eggnog to certain body fluids, I should jump right over the line by adding that I have a hunch Mrs. Clause swallows.

I am Terra’s self-fulfilling prophesy.

Last night, I couldn’t sleep. Probably because I slept until 2:30 yesterday afternoon. Regardless, there I was at 4, 5:30, 7:30am, reading and sketching out new possibilities mentally while I absorbed the novel resting at my breasts.

By 8am, I decided that I would have to scrap what I’d written thus far, all three days of it, and start fresh.

I don’t write fiction. It gets stuck under my nails and between my teeth, leading to the kind of creative decay that precedes root canals and the type of forensic evidence that points a reader directly to my crime: a lack of attention span, the violent struggle to maintain a story without just quitting it, a murder of compositional hygiene.

I can write fiction, I just can’t finish it. I can weave plots and characters on the fly, throwing in dramatic pretense and foreshadowing at what I think are the right points, starting chapters with the correct amount of hook necessary to pull a reader further.

Then I just stop. Loose ends flap in the breeze, characters fade and become as weak as the two-week old celery in my crisper. I’m done, even though it’s not.

So, I don’t write fiction because the only kind of failure I can handle is self-created; and if I wanted to create writing failure, I’d blog somewhat unsuccessfully for five years.

Oh, wait.

So, tonight, after my newly re-energized not-a-baby-anymore baby is sleeping, and while the rest of the world is, too, and I’ve put in a respectable amount of time on the work that actually pays bills and buys food free of wheat gluten, I’ll sit down to write, from the beginning again.

Fiction, that’s not really made up.

During the week, I get 2.25 hours, twice, while she’s at preschool, but that doesn’t take into account the half hour each of walking to and from it.

This weekend is her second sleep over with her Grandma, and by extension, her father – something his mom’s proposed take place once a month. She left at 10:30 yesterday morning, glowing with excitement after I gave her an extra-squishy hug and two extra kisses.

Today, I slept in until 2:30 in the afternoon, essentially negating the sleeplessness that going to bed at or after 4am usually leaves me running dead on my feet with. Today, I’m mild-mooded, even mellow.

Yesterday after they left, after my nerves had returned to full strength from the mild disagreement her dad and I had, and before another disagree ensued over text messaging – because once again, we’re back to that place wherein me not sleeping with him equates to be being the enemy – I got things done.

I, like everyone I know, especially single moms, have a backburner list a million fucking miles long. I started dealing with some of the things on that list. I got some paperwork done that’s been begging for my attention for months; I washed dishes without needing to occupy a child to do so, or concurrently while making dinner; I went Christmas window shopping, sending myself text photos of what, where and the prices of things we would want to buy in the coming month.

I felt like a million dollars, more so than keeping up with the daily to-do list, less like I was merely treading or suffocating under a tide. I felt manic.

I joked over dessert with friends at 11 pm that the medication I’ve been taking to help manage the mania might be failing in that regard, but that it was okay with me, since it was managing the lows. And all win with little fail is about as perfect an existence as I can imagine living.

When I woke up this afternoon, I looked at the clock and cringed, thinking of the hours lost, the lack of productivity. Until I realized that sleep was productive. Until I rolled off of the futon and immediately started cleaning, and then got dressed to go outside.

Once I saw that I had an intrinsic drive to keep going, to shop with laze and enjoy the taste of my eggnog chai latté, not to hurry or become harried with should dos, a new thought occurred to me:

Being relaxed means I get more done, better; being stressed leaves a bad taste on my tongue, regardless of how many check marks are on my list.

I should be sleeping more.

These guys.

I thought that November 9th was my due date – that in three days, if I’d had the baby last year and he or she’d been born on its due date like Zoë was, it would have been one. I’ve been preparing myself for nearly two months to feel as if my heart was melting out of my eyelids on November the 9th.

But no, it’s November 25th.

On one hand, it’s a good thing because my sister’s due date is today and selfishly, I really hoped that her first baby wouldn’t have the same birthday as the one that I didn’t get to have would’ve.

Sadly, I think my next appointment with my shrink is on that day. Poor psychoghandi’s gonna be stuck with a locked-up tight, angry, argumentative and weepy emo.

Painfully, this time of year, the space between Halloween – which I wouldn’t be sad to lose out of the calendar – and Christmas – which I hope that every day could be like – is also when The Ex gets older by a year, and when I get to celebrate a birthday and all of my sisters and mom do, too. It’s when I fantasize about the perfect whatever to give Zoë, a best friend, a puppy we spend time with. It’s when glee is shared over Starbucks’ return to eggnog beverages, I might go up to a size 1 and I start thinking about all of the resolutions I could have and my motivation for damning conformity and boycotting resolutions (just like nearly everyone else). It’s when snow flakes fall and The Ex calls me, from where ever, regardless of our current level of hatred and squees “snow!” into the phone, just like I always used to do.

This is the time of year when potential is huge and it’s usually the space between reality, if you know what I mean. It’s fucking magic, November 1st to December 24th.

And now, and forever more, I have a not-baby anniversary during the middle of it.

The thing of it is, maybe getting the date wrong is bad of me – I had to look back through my archives to find the post when I announced it – but…caring, and being sad and being okay with that, with a couple of tears running down my face and a will to hug Zoë and a spine-chilling fear coupled with an intense need for another baby? Might just be a good thing after all.

But because of how I grew up, how many times I lied to child protective services, or withheld information about the agents and associated staff I worked with during my short modelling career, the fact that nearly every single person who knew me didn’t know what powders I was snorting and cooking up in my early teens and what I was chugging in the late ones, I’ve taken the opposite approach for the past few years.

Now, I rarely, if ever lie. I can’t do it without feeling as though another piece of my soul is being bitten off, you know?

I have my personal policy about not lying to Zoë for that reason, but also because I don’t want her to come to a point in her life where she feels as though she can’t trust me or I didn’t respect her enough to be honest. I don’t want this kid waking up and saying, “You lied to me about A through J, and now, I don’t know if K is true or if you just think I’m too dumb, naive or immature to handle the truth.”

Plus, you know, there’s factors like a) when you’re always honest with people and they come to expect it from you, they tend to return the gesture, and b) if you spend your moments being upfront about everything, whether good, bad, ugly or completely batshit crazy, people should, in theory, rarely be surprised or confused when something organically you comes about.

Even if it is completely batshit crazy.

I think NBC would call this ‘the more you know’ campaign. I just consider it a respect thing: for you, the people I care about, myself.

However, a tiny offshoot of reasoning also falls within the don’t give a shit spectrum, because to this girl who is just starting to learn how to feel and process things and what expectations might be right and which are often constructed out of isms, everything, every piece of information, is just as equal. (Now you know why they were considering a sociopathic diagnosis for some time when I was younger. Wait, you watch Dexter, right?)

I could tell you that my first sort of boyfriend died of an overdose and it was a little bit my fault and it would be as hard for me to say as explaining my new-found love for baking soda, or tell you about the time that I slept with two guys in the same day, even though I didn’t want to sleep with either of them, or describe my lack of relationship with the mom who was gone for most of my life.

I’m so practiced at what I should be portraying and not what I may have inside, you see, that it’s not the telling that’s the issue, it’s the perception of whether people will like me more or less or judge me monstrous afterward that determines how I tell what.

All of this lead in is to say one simple thing.

I tell you everything, blog reader. Except now, there’s something I’m not.

I’m holding my cards close to my chest, not letting you know if there’s a full house or bupkis for the simple reason that I want to not exploit something. It’s not that new, this unexplainable, and for that, I’m kind of sad because I sure could’ve used the ventilation of energy about it for a while.

But instead, I’m going to keep my damn mouth shut and nourish this secrecy. Because really? This kind of covertness seems a bit unique, inside of me, and not at all wrong, for once.

For the last couple of months, I’ve been calling her a teenager. Truth is, lots of people, even her pediatrician and a friend of mine that had never met her before have remarked about her moodiness. Add in her recent affinity for slamming doors in my face, draining all of my vodka bottles and filling them with water and shouting “I hate you!” as she stomps away in a huff because I won’t let her get her belly button pierced and you have all of the makings of a truly exceptional mother-daughter relationship.

Not.

She’s always been rather abrupt and transparent in her moodiness – much like I am. And if some thing’s pissing her off, it’s generally certifiable that she will attempt to ruin your motherfucking life until you remedy the situation. This is the real reason I keep the knives out of reach.

Honestly, I’m ill- (yet, maybe best) prepared for when she surpasses three-teen and actually enters tween status or, shudder, the gaping mouth of hell I estimate her early teens will be. I can fantasize all I like about her being Rory and I being Loralei, but it doesn’t mean that we’ll sip coffee together in a run-down diner where I may or may not meet the man of my dreams (and I may or may not be able to accept the fact that he wears a baseball cap backwards. [But may still wanna nail his nephew next to the doughnuts. {ahem}]).

More so, even though it’s all fun and games until her father has an anyeurism for me to joke about her becoming promiscuous and a ball-busting sexual force to be chased after in her early twenties, I don’t really want that for her.

I want her to fall in love, organically. To feel some level of comfort, or at the very least, exhibit the intelligence needed, to come to me when it’s time for the deed to be done so we can discuss her options as far as wrapping up whatever tool may be coming in her direction. I want her to be happy with the choices she makes about lovers and those she loves. I want her to crush hard on boys who she thinks might not give her the time of day, just simply because if she doesn’t become comfortable with the leap, she might never know what it’s like to float when they do like her a really lot back.

Like her mother has.

Kids grow up earlier and faster and by the time I’m arguing against her having a cell phone or a wrist phone or a mind-chip, sexting will be a thing of the past, considered tame. So, I fully expect it to start sooner than I expect it to start.

But not this soon.

I have this little problem that causes a secondary problem, which begets shame and affects such stigma upon me that sometimes I’m just not comfortable having people over to my home. I can’t believe I’m about to admit this on the Internet, but…

Because I quit drinking coffee eight months ago, I replaced it with tea. Really, horribly, strong enough to put hair on your chest tea. In addition to an oral fixation for liquids is the fact that I am nearly always cold, or avoiding a meal, or sitting at the computer doing absolutely nothing IMing downloading celebrity sex tapes surfing sites to tell me how much more popular your blog is than mine working and in need of some reason to get up to wake my bony ass from its prickly slumber. So, I’m always drinking tea.

This caused all of my mug collection (I collect big, fat, latté mugs that can hold more tea than an average person should want to drink.) to become frequently rotated; however, since I’m often finishing the last gulp whilst making more, I use the same one. Over and over.

And I conserve spoons, too.

I faced such humiliation every time a friend would stop by and I’d offer them some tea (or water or soy milk, because that’s all we have around these parts.) and serve it up in a supposedly clean mug with 18 rings, despite it only being two years of age. Those. fuckers. would. not. wash. off.

And all of my spoons were starting to look like I’d been experimenting very liberally with the notion of hot knifing, but doing it very very verrrrrrrry wrong. (Please pass the Doritos. Heh. Ever say knife really slowly? Try it. Okay, now fast. Okay, like, 12 times in a row. Hey, what do you think double-amputee stoners do when they wanna get high? Do they, like, learn to hold a joint with their toes? Wouldn’t that burn all of their toe hair off? Fuck, I love the smell of singed hair.)

And thus came Doctor Google’s proclamation that my salvation depended upon my acceptance of the lord Baking Soda as my one true deity.

Suddenly, I have sparkling clean mugs and spoons, I have accepted condiment religion into my life, and I’m looking forward to clean and shiny pastures after my soul passes from this mortal coil.

The teeth whitening was a bonus divine deliverance.

I go, I get the roots taken care of and I get an hour-long flat ironing that I will indubitably attempt to stretch out for as long as is possible. That’s where the brows come in.

Five weeks is about as long as it takes me to go from hair-matching, smooth and sculpted to blonde, 80s Brooke Shields brows. With unibrow for good measure. I always go to the same place, a block from my apartment, and I drop $25 to get cleaned up and tinted. Today was the visit from hell, leading to the following helpful list to estheticians who might come across this.

1. When I ask for a specific technician, tell me that you’ll do it and you’ll do it well and then try to colour-match my hair to a Redken book so that fear sets in immediately.
2. Ensure that you have me lie down, against a sink. Which was just used and is covered in water. With a comfy towel behind me. That you took off the floor.
3. Apply enough wax to the 1/4″ area above my eyes to take off a 70s bush, become confounded when the hair doesn’t rip off easily. Repeat. Several times.
4. Drip said wax onto my eyes, nose ring and mouth. Then for extra measure, make sure you get some on the back of my head, too.
5. Suggest removing said wax from said nose ring with alcohol.
6. Make sure that you remove the hair in patches, paying absolutely no attention to the natural brow line or really whether you’re removing brow hair or, like, eyelashes.
7. After I tell you that I have really sensitive skin and so need the tint specifically designed for brows, mix up some hair colour, willy-nilly, and attempt to convince me that ammonia-based cream won’t irritate my skin.
8. After it starts burning and I’m feverishly fanning my left eyebrow, try to put some more on my right eyebrow.
9. Suggest that a darkened room might make me more comfortable during the 20 minutes that you suggest the flames of hell sear my eyebrows off.
10. When I again say that I need the authentic stuff, tell me about how your manager says that costs more, so you’re not supposed to use it. Even though you’re dangling it in front of my (now pink and puffy and fucking livid in your direction) eyebrows.
11. Decide with a sigh to give me the good stuff, moving me into the afore-mentioned darkened room.
12. Onto a table where some one’s just had their lady-bits decluttered. And you haven’t changed the cover. Suggest I lie down where unknown vagina just was.
13. As you’re mixing up the good stuff, go to grab a tissue in the darkened room where you can’t see properly, thus knocking over my freshly-procured soy rooibos chai tea latté. On to my coat.
14. Tell me that I don’t have to tip, to cover the cost of my turfed tea and dry cleaning. Since obviously, I was planning to at this point, anyway.
15. Tint me, baby.
16. Remove the tint. Decide it’s too light, even though I say it’s perfect. Tiny me, baby, redux.
17. Remove the tint, which is now way darker than I wanted. Ensure you rub with the franticness of a 14 year old girl in the company of her first boyfriend as she’s trying to put out just enough and his parents could come upstairs at any point.
18. After I tell you that the tea tree oil you’d like to slather my brows with will further inflame my face because I’m highly allergic to it, douse everything above my nose with it, letting me know that it will soothe my skin.
19. Send me off into the world with brow bones that resemble Angelina Jolie’s lips, brows that look like they belong to a scary Sesame Street puppet, and $30 less dollars in my wallet because you’ve apparently raised your prices.
20. Make sure you fucked up so badly in every brow-related spectrum such as tone, shape and symmetry, that I spend the next 45 minutes lying on my daughter’s toddler bed with a compact mirror cleaning up after your professional capabilities.

So, how was your Sunday?