HAIR!

I have this weird hangup from childhood. Thanks to my sister, who has an amazing head of hair, I cannot stand hair once it has removed itself from the source.

Let me illustrate further. I have thick hair. Like, the kind of hair on which my stylist always comments, "Wow, you have a lot of hair, don't you!" Yep. That's why the floor is covered. And why my head feels about 3 pounds lighter. Thank you very much!

But my sister - now SHE has a mane. Almost inhumanly thick. When we were little, and we played "beauty parlor", I couldn't get her hair into an updo, because it was too heavy. And people with a lot of hair -guess what?!- they lose a lot of hair! We had a hardwood floor in our bedroom, and I have a very distinct memory of vacuuming that floor. When I'd get to the area in front of the mirror, where she combed her hair in the morning, the floor appeared to move, so much hair was being sucked into the vacuum. Hair was everywhere - in all the drains, in the washcloth in the kitchen sink...everywhere.

But it's not like the rest of us were bald. My parents informed me of this in a conversation when I moved back in with them for the summer before Aaron and I got married.

Me: I was so happy to have my own bathroom! At least I knew that the hair on the floor was my own.
Mom: Yeah - and we didn't have any hair on the floor.

Oh, SNAP!

After getting married, Aaron took on the task of cleaning out our shower drain, because it practically made me gag. Yes, even though it was almost entirely my own hair.

And now? There's this aftereffect of pregnancy that is just lovely. You've probably heard that your hair gets thicker and fuller during pregnancy, right? Well, that's because you don't lose the hair that you normally would. It just hangs out on your scalp, waiting for....oh, about 4 months after you've had the baby, to drop out en masse. But not really, because the hair loss continues for several weeks.

Even Aaron noticed. He noticed because all of a sudden he was cleaning out the shower drain every other day, instead of once a month.

Because I have an issue with hair, I generally make it part of my getting-ready-for-the-day-routine to remove as many loose strands as possible. And lately that process has added about 5 minutes to my morning routine. And those are a precious five minutes when you are trying to get yourself plus 3 children out the door on time. Sometimes 5 minutes is the difference between breakfast or starving, feeding the baby or waiting until dropping of the kindergartner, putting a hat & mittens on the brother or telling yourself that he'll just be sitting in the van anyway...

Thanks a LOT, hormones. The next morning I'm hungry, Adam's hungry, and Ben's freezing, I'm blaming YOU.