hair: a Monday tragicomedy

This morning, when I brushed my hair, a hank of it came smoothly off in my brush like it had been lying in wait for me.

I had a feeling something like this might happen because of last night.  When I undid my hair from my mother’s gorgeous French braid (it lasts two days, honest, that’s how good it is) because I was in the bathtub drowning my sorrows in Epsom salts and I wanted to lean back without dipping my paintbrush of a braid in the water.

As I took it out and tried to maneuver it into a neat bundle on top of my head, many tiny pieces of hair sprinkled down into the bathtub.  Ew, I thought, gross.  And I proceeded to try to fish them out with my fingers, which was surprisingly difficult because they were only about three inches long.  Bummer, I thought, I wonder how bad this is.

Then I fished most of the pieces out of the bathwater, stuck them to the wall (also more difficult because of the truncated length), and forgot about it.  I finished bathing, arduously lifted myself out of the bath (hard when your legs don’t work), toweled off, took 800 mg of advil and headed to bed.

I don’t mean for the new year to consist entirely of Shannon’s staircase adventure, but I didn’t ask for 2014 to start this way!

This morning I woke up to a much happier alarm noise.  I had, last year (hah) been using a song off of one of Journey’s albums called I Can See it in Your Eyes.  It starts very loudly.  I thought to myself as I was resetting my alarms last night that I did not want to wake up to that because I am a bundle of pain.  So I chose one of the ringtones that Apple so kindly provides me.

I don’t hate iOS7, see, I just hate how slowly it makes my phone run.  iOS7 cannot keep up with my texting fingers and that is very irritating to me.

I woke up, I groggily and delicately pulled myself out of bed, I decided that my leg hurt less today and I examined myself in the mirror.  Bruises so far are unsatisfactory.  I expect more from you, bruises.

And then I started to brush my hair and I looked down and a thick hank of hair about three inches long was just sitting there.  Hmm, I thought, I wonder where that came from.  I couldn’t tell after half-heartedly examining my hair, so it’s probably from the back.  Good thing I never wear my hair loose.  And then I braided my hair and went to work.

And at work I installed some updates on my computer, restarted it, and then began the very arduous process of checking email and my RSS feed and whatever all else, and eventually I discovered that JACS and the ACS journals think I’ve been diabolically “systematically downloading papers” and my IP access has been revoked!

So I sent a polite, inquiring email and in the meantime I’ve hooked up a VPN client and I have access again.  My antivirus software hasn’t turned anything up, so I’m hoping everything will work out.  Happy Monday.

2014, I’m trying to love you.  Why won’t you love me back?