The Pale Blue Egg

In The Before, I cut my own hair anyway. My hair is a boring brown and grows past my shoulders. It’s not that hard to just snip the ends myself. And it’s much cheaper. At my last haircut before I took matters into my own hands, the hairdresser was unbelievably young and kept putting her blue metallic scissors in her mouth.  I don’t have hair scissors like everyone online says you should. I have fabric scissors that I got with a coupon at Joann. When I feel like it, I play hairdresser, dropping my uneven tips into the plastic garbage can that I prop up in my sink.  Now, in The After, people are obsessed with the idea of cutting their own hair. New listicles pop up every day, proffering the sweet, sweet schadenfreude of pandemic haircut disasters. I spent ten real minutes of my actual life watching a video of a teenage girl cut her hair in big chunks down to her scalp. (I envy her.) I told Connor that if he wakes up next to a bald-ish version of me, that he should know it is...

I installed our new air conditioner this morning. The more details I include, the less impressive it sounds. It’s portable, it even has little wheels, and I made Connor carry it up the stairs for me. I “helped” by putting one hand tenderly under the bottom corner and asking the whole time “Are you sure you’ve got it?” It is not a window unit, so it wasn’t even a balancing act. I really only had to follow two and a half pages of directions--with pictures-- and click a couple of plastic pieces together so that the hot air could be pumped out of our window. The only tool I needed was a single screwdriver, which I immediately dropped out of the second-story window. Connor asked where I was going and laughed very hard when I told him that I had to go outside to get our screwdriver. He said I could have killed somebody, and oh boy, trust me, I’d already worked that all over before the stupid thing even hit the ground.  I fell asleep sweating and woke up sweating, so I knew today was t...