Skyped with Druncan (I did not give him the nickname but it fits) tonight for a long confusing time before I realized how lit he was. He was all filth and bullshit from the minute he saw me until I pushed away from the table and left his view, frustrated. Loch took over with his soothing Scottish lilt that he uses when he's really mad but using it as a Teaching Moment. Duncan got all sorts of made-up curses hurled his way and then was told to pick himself up and pull himself together so sweetly I almost wished I was the one in trouble.
But I'm not because I dyed my hair red and made a last minute save.
Or rather, Daniel dyed my hair for me because the appalling nature of the gold and silver was beginning to tip more toward silver in the sunlight but milky-dishwater under harsh fluorescents and I stood in front of a mirror in a Target store for twenty minutes yesterday imploring the boys to look at me and tell me how they let me out of the house looking like this.
For the record, they all deferred nicely and insisted they don't notice it at all because their wee little minds still see Bridget at the tender age of eight forever and ever but I still went sprinting back down the centre of the store to buy a box of something or other and Daniel did the dirty work and now I look human at least but still like a total stranger in the mirror as always. In order to look like myself I need the torn-out braids and the enlarged sugar-pupils and the lips stained pink with cotton candy and total glorious fear written all over my face from riding the octopus one too many times.
Oh, and in a clean t-shirt because Loch insisted on it. *rolls eyes*.
For the record, he LOVES my hair. It's lighter than his by miles thanks to the February aspect of things and all the time indoors this winter thus far. And it makes my eyes explode in a sea of green. I would love to keep it but my hair always makes up it's own damn mind and begins the easy fade back into silver and gold despite protests, always. Even when it was blue. Or green. Or pink. Two weeks tops and it will look like it always looks. That's why I don't bother with it very often.
I feel tired still today but the pain is sort of easing up again. I'm still dividing my time between a couch or a bathtub mostly and I refuse to apologize for either. I think I have mono again or total mental exhaustion. The vapors, maybe. Something. PJ's death-plague cold. Schuyler's ennui. Sam's overwrought concern.
(No, wait. I don't have that, that's his albatross, not mine.)
In any case, I have two days left to enjoy my couch because after that the Olympics will be over for another four years in which I will be closer to Lochlan's age now than I will be to my own and that will be strange. Ruth will be eighteen and Henry sixteen by then and by then my hair will probably be completely white and I'll have had my precious lombotomy that will make me not care so much about all the stupid little things that I worry about but will never be able to change like the color of my hair or the condition of my outfit in the middle of a Midway in July or the amount that Duncan drinks when he's lonely.
