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.

Comments

[The Modesto Kid]

hey creep through the thicket of their still attached brethren and slither out the bottom in horrible grotesque clutches

No, this is awesome see, you're becoming Medusa! You get to be immortal and cool stuff like that.

[Cecily]

One time when I moved, I stored boxes in a friend's basement for a few interim months. Then when I unpacked the boxes, there were dead snakes and snakeskins pervading the activity. They snuck into the boxes and got stuck in the tape and invaded taped-shut drawers of toolboxes and died twined around things and stuck to things and wedged between things.

I guess what I'm saying is not that the grass is always greener, but that every cloud has a silver lining a rolling stone gathers no moss a watched pot never boils never mind, I don't know what I'm saying.

You should gather up all your stray hairs and mail them to the oil spill. There! You helped!

[Elsa]

Now imagine the same affliction (not post-partum but constant), and with one twist: you're prematurely gray. You're the only person in your social circle with white hair.

Every time someone finds a white hair --- on the sofa, in a book, in their glass --- they cannot doubt that it came from you. (Unless you can persuade your friends that Miss Havisham just swept unseen through the room. This ploy has been pretty unsuccessful so far.)

[Jessica]

I was so happy when that phase ended! I hated having to pick my hairs off of the baby.

Now if I could just get to the salon to fix what happens when you give birth five days before a hair appointment and then don't get around to having your blonde hair dyed red again...all of the blonde roots look gray in photos next to the ill-advised red.

[Heidi]

I know how you feel. I had the same problem after I had my son. Tons and TONS of hair falling out. It was constantly getting stuck everywhere. When I would wash my hair in the morning I would have to make little piles of hair next to the shampoo bottle so that it wouldn't all get clogged in the drain. It will stop eventually....if you don't lose your mind first!

[Parenthetical]

I once had a roommate whose shedding was of unheard of proportions. I lived with her for a school year, packed up my stuff, brought it 300 miles home, unpacked it, lived for three months by myself, repacked a small amount of my stuff, flew 6,000 miles, unpacked it all, and found one of her hairs two months after that. 7 years later, I would not be entirely unsurprised to find one of her hairs tangled up in a book from that era. It found its way everywhere...

(Good luck abandoning it on the drive.)

[redfox]

Modesto Kid: I am totally ready to be immortal and cool. And stuff like that.

Cecily: WOW. This also combines nicely with the Medusa comment. I definitely prefer dealing with hairs over dead snakes, whether they came from my head or otherwise.

Elsa: Maybe if you started leaving slices of petrified wedding cake in odd corners?

Jessica: Mock-grey hair seems most unjust! I hope the dye at least made the shed hairs feel more festive, somehow.

Heidi: Little piles of hair is exactly it. There is something terribly wrong about hair when it is piled. I look forward to the end.

Parenthetical: UH OH.