The Ninth Child Syndrome

 I save my hate for Hitler, but getting my hair cut is a close second. Not the actual cutting process - that doesn't bother me at all, and I like to remember how my old high school chum Chris said he loved the feeling of getting his hair cut more than just about anything else - but I (almost) hate the required small talk. The chair chatter. The snip-n'-gossip. That bland, meaningless conversation fills me with this freakish performance anxiety, like I have to be a good customer, I have to be easy, I have to be a delight. Why is it that salon names are so often cheesy puns? It's because hair puns are irresistible: I have shear fear. (There's also a little childhood trauma connection, if you're into that sort of thing. When I was little sometimes when my four brothers and I needed haircuts, Mom would bundle us up in the station wagon and take us to the barber shop. And the barber was an older dude who was apparently so delighted to have a little girl in his chair that...

Either work is ridiculously stressful right now or something has shifted in my brain that has turned formerly mountable things into insurmountable ones. (I'm giving you the side eye, menopause.) I have gone from smacking my to-do list down like I'm a spandex-encased pro wrestler (Tell 'em Large Marge sent ya) to dashing behind the partition in my doorless office so nobody can see the tears rolling down my face. More than once, I haven't even had time to make that dash, and I've sprung a weakling-leak right in front of a coworker who does not have anything to do with what's vexing me, which just intensifies the humiliation and self-loathing. Plus, two real live panic attacks, which are new to me and have me searching my brain for the UNSUBSCRIBE button. The worst of it all, though, is noticing that my very occasional intrusive thoughts have shifted from "it would solve a lot of things if that semi would suddenly hork over into my lane" to "golly, I...

  I said goodbye to my best friend Bo today. We adopted Bo in June 2009, and from the very first moment he hopped in the car until I held him at the vet's office as the life slipped out of him this morning, he has owned my heart.  I don't know if I've lost a husband, a child, a brother, a best friend, a hairy roommate, or a soulmate, but it feels like all of them at once.  Bo was not what you'd call well-behaved, but what he lacked in manners he made up for in personality and devotion. At times, I suspected he was able to unhinge his spine in order to reach things waaaaaaaay back on the kitchen counter and snarf them up. Like the holiday treats I'd spent days making for my coworkers and had nestled into cunning little paper boxes before leaving for five minutes to drive the boys to their father's house less than a mile away. While I was gone, Bo devoured everything but the candied orange peel, so the coworkers got a dog-shaming video for their gift that year.  H...

There are two charming young baristas at the cafe at work who make me laugh every time I see them, and when I confided to them that I'd be off for my very first colonoscopy last week, they demanded that I live blog the whole thing. I barred myself from my phone, however, fearful that I'd send work-emails in my propofol haze, so they'll have to make do with my rear-view synopsis. Rear View Mirror, available at Advance Auto Parts. My clever plan to use Tinder to find someone to drive me didn't pan out, so I rescheduled it for last week when my older son W. was home on spring break from college. I  felt bad because check-in was scheduled for 6:15 am, which qualifies as cruel and unusual punishment to a college kid who's trying to soak up all the fun he can on his week home, but at least I knew we'd get it over with early and could enjoy the mother of all naps afterward. He hasn't been staying with me, so I messaged him the evening before to remind hi...

I'm re-watching True Blood while I knit lately, not because I loved it but because it's entertaining and I can divide my attention between Eric Northman, Lafayette, and my yarn equally without missing too much of any of it. But because of that limited focus, I can't remember which character responded to a question about whether they were grossed out by staying in a house where people died, but the paraphrased answer is what twanged through my head like a banjo string this weekend. "I don't figure there's anywhere on this earth where somebody hasn't died." I was back in the town where I grew up this weekend for my 30th high school reunion, and my brain was a constant flickering filmstrip of memories. D.N. peed against that church wall when we were walking the dog once. That's the playground where S.B. ran to turn the car radio up in the dark (Manic Depression came on!) and slammed face first into the monkey bars, resulting in immediate buzz-kill a...