Adventures in the Pointless Forest

Shining, gleaming, streaming, flaxen, waxen.

Have you ever wondered what personal Kryptonite might drive you stark raving mad? Not ordinary everyday crazy, but utterly lunatic, skin crawling off batshit? Well, I have found mine. It is hair.

To be more accurate, it is HAIRS. Post-partum shedding continues apace. Hundreds of hairs detach from my head every day. They do not "fall out," exactly. Instead they creep through the thicket of their still attached brethren and slither out the bottom in horrible grotesque clutches. Or they escape some other way when I am not looking and attach themselves to everything. EVERYTHING. 

Hairs twined around my arms and legs as I shower, hairs stuck wetly to every sink and faucet, hairs meandering across the furniture and wrapped around the baby, hairs clinging limp but tenacious to anything made of cloth. On the back of the sofa, draped over the stack of clean onesies, wound around my toe, in fat hamsterlike wads in the shower drain. 

It is repulsive.

La la, you may say if you know me in real life, the grass is always greener, because normally my concern is a surfeit of hair. Well, I suppose it still is, but you know. My usual complaint is a mop of hair rendered so enormous by humidity that no clip on earth will contain it. How happy I would be now to trade such a problem for a tiny shred of sanity.

Also, we will soon be moving. HAIRS, DO NOT FOLLOW ME! How sad I will be when we unpack box after box of our possessions, only to find that they are all covered in gross old hairs. And what will our car be like after I have shed inside it for a week straight?

Have I mentioned that we have decided to drive across the country, us and our four-month-old and our cat? I don't expect the arrival of that shred of sanity any time soon. Please send Valium.

Fair weather.

Our neighborhood has a street fair every June. Normally we avoid it on the principle that people are annoying, and densely packed people standing in one's way in the middle of the road are even more annoying than the regular kind. Because we are about to move away, however, we felt we ought to give it a chance. 

I have been growing fonder of our neighborhood the closer we get to leaving it. It is unpretentious and pleasantly full of people who vocally admire our infant. I especially enjoy our many non-English-speaking Russian neighbors. When our paths cross they make burbling happy noises to convey the depth of their baby joy. Really, I think every child should be doted upon by old men and women with walnut faces full of gold teeth, crying "Er ha oh? Woooo? Ah!" like so many ancient Mr. Beans.

(Incidentally, am I the only person who thinks Rowan Atkinson is rather dishy? Think particularly of the Elizabethan series of Blackadder. Who's the queen? ME.)

It turns out that people are indeed exceptionally stupid under fairgoing conditions, but there were surly small humans to make up for it. There is something cheering about the silent fury of a child who is deeply but resignedly Fed Up, lips pressed together and nostrils flared in profound irritation. Smile and the world smiles with you? Bah. What warms the cockles of my heart is the sight of pure unadulterated PEEVE, glaring out from under the canopy of a stroller.

There was also a spice stand, which was convenient because I had accidentally bought two containers of cumin when shopping last week, instead of one of cumin and one of coriander seeds. Why was there a spice stand at a street fair, between the lemonade and the balloon animals? Who knows. They were doing a pretty brisk business though. Party people want their packets of sea salt and cubeb.

Also, apparently, giant American eyeballs.

 

Hypnotic.

F made Jane a bonnet, to protect her tiny nose from the sun.

I made her an animated gif, to embarrass her when she's older.

 

Number of times

...that I have sung the "doodle-oodle-oodle" bit from A Bushel and a Peck today: approximately eight million.

Habitation.

Last week Steve flew across the country, where he labored nobly and alone to the dispiriting tune of 

Oh, what a lovely house! Oh, it's already rented. Oh, what a lovely house! Oh, no cats. Oh, what a lovely place! Oh, it's only available starting immediately. Oh, what a lovely house, aside from the incredible hideousness. Oh, what a lovely apartment! What a pity that it is the horrid one which is actually for rent. Oh, what a lovely apartment! How unfortunate that it has no kitchen. Oh, what a lovely house! I will wait to hear back from the landlord... forever. And so on.

He phoned and we worried together that his expensive trip would be pointless. Landlords were generating creepy scammer vibes, and demanding deposits in cash. Perhaps we would be so lucky as to NOT ONLY fail to secure a place to live, but ALSO be ripped off for thousands of dollars!

"How would you describe the state of your house hunt?" 

"Sisyphean. Gloomy. Overcast and ominous."

Then a stack of books fell on my head. Morale was low.

Twenty minutes after Steve had hung up, he emailed me. "Tomorrow will be a brighter day!" he lied.

Then, all expectations to the contrary, it wasn't a lie, after all. Well, here it was not so bright; it was very wet, and my main entertainment for the day was to get caught in a rainstorm with an infant strapped to my chest, with no umbrella, while shopping for a toothbrush. But there, Steve found us a house.

It has toilets and everything!

I like textiles.

Thank you for all the suggestions. I will take them up in good time. Just now Steve has gone out of town to find us a place to inhabit next year, so for the moment all I will be making is myself slightly insane, plus the usual thousand mats a day of post-partum shed hair. Do you need some to fill your hassocks with? I have plenty and am not feeling stingy.

So in the meantime it is just me and Jane and the entire last season of Lost. 

Jane naps and hangs out and gets changed on a stack of rectangles. This lovingly constructed pile of fabric exploits some of wool's finest qualities, and then switches it up with the fine contrasting features of cotton. Observe:

 

The bottom layer is the mock shearling blanket mentioned here. It showcases wool's talent at being fluffy and insulating. On top of that is a tightly woven and super-lanolinized wool mat that I bought off the internet. It demonstrates wool's ability to repel water, or more relevantly, baby piss. To soak up that which has been repelled we have a lovely cheap hand towel, showing off cotton's aptitude for absorbency, laundering, and cheapness.

The structure as a whole highlights my champion skills at being a dork. QED.

I am also fond of my Bensimon tennis shoes. They would be fashion forward if it were three years ago. I find them charming, anyhow, and they are some kind of limited edition in linen.

Have I convinced you yet that this is an aspirational lifestyle blog?