Morning Has Broken

I woke up this morning with a thick trail of dark red – brick, if you will – streaked along my pillowcase, and for a brief moment, was thoroughly convinced that I’d been shot in my sleep and well, this was it. It wasn’t until I rocketed bolt upright in bed and felt up my entire body (lingering for a little too long around my left boob, which was, I was sure, the source of the wound because it hurt like hell) that I considered that there may be other possibilities other than, you know, a stray bullet screaming through the bedroom window.

I got my hair cut and colored last night (until 11freaking30 p.m.), and I get most of it done a couple of shades of reddish something, and I guess it all didn’t sink in, because I am now resting my head (yes still, because I haven’t done a damn thing about it) on a pillowcase that is exactly the same shade as my hair. And you know, I was so, so close to having a normal haircut with my hairdresser, until I told him the condom story, which in retrospect was an obvious pitfall I could have avoided. When I mentioned that I made the grievous error of taking a whiff of my slippery fingers (SORRY SORRY SORRY), he agreed wholeheartedly and said, “Oh yes, you can’t help it! Like when you accidentally scratch your anus in public and you want to make sure you didn’t pick up any odorous remnants!”

Uh, yeah. Like that. (I am not making this up, and believe me, I wish I was.) After I finally managed to steer the conversation away from male genitalia and anuses (it can’t be anii, but I want it to be), we ended up debating whether I should get the peach fuzz on my cheeks waxed (I brought it up, and it’s very pale, okay, but GAH, it’s there, and what am I going to do? When the light shines behind my head, I AM FUZZY), he proceeded to tell me how he gets the male equivalent of a Brazilian every three weeks, and God, it sure is painful, given his hemorrhoids (that reside, conveniently on his sphincter muscle. He was sure to detail what that means in vivid terms). And just…Jesus Mary and Joseph. This is getting out of hand.

And yet, bloody panic aside, my hair is as good as ever.

The gunshot wound happened, incidentally, at 7 a.m. and this time, because my heart was going about a frillion times per second (you know, because someone SHOT ME), I decided to get up and start my day all fresh-like and put on some coffee. From my embarrassing stash of deeply-discounted and discontinued Green Mountain grinds, I selected French Toast (mmm….buttery!), and was knee-deep in a beatific General Foods International Coffees moment when I came upstairs to take a shower and found my husband lying in bed, all rumpled and awake, glaring at me and hissing “URINE” in a very angry tone.

What? I was baffled.

PISS, he insisted.

I guess the maple syrup accord in the French toast coffee smells like day-old urine if you’re not drinking it, and what better way to wake up, I say? Except that he’d just spent the last 10 minutes in a half-awake stupor convinced that I had peed the bed in the night, and left it for him to fester in. Nice. (Incidentally, syrup is a word that irritates me immensely, because there are people who say seer-up, and then there are sirrup people. I’m a seer-up person, and I’m rapidly learning that I am in the minority and to that, I say, pshaw! And also, you’re all wrong, sirrups!)

And separately, I didn’t shower today, and well, I probably should have, it’s just that I got all distracted by the piss-talk, and my hair had just been done at 11:30 last night after four hours with the Lenninator, and hell, I opted for playing with the dog instead. Except that around noon, the ammonia from the dye in my still-unwashed hair started to smell like – you guessed it – urine! Only I thought it wasn’t ammonia, but was in fact, maple syrup, after this morning’s fiasco (I don’t know how I made that leap, I just don’t know), and I spent an inordinate chunk of my lunch hour Googling “maple syrup smells like urine” and convinced myself for a few moments that I had (oh my God) maple syrup urine disease. Which, uh, it’s a DISEASE. Maple syrup urine disease is an actual disease and oh, it’s genetic! So then, of course, I was sure that not only did I smell like piss on a day that all of my coworkers are in the office, (all because I am a sad, lazy sow) but P.S., my kids were going to die as infants while smelling like caramel and syrup (seer-up!) from some sort of amino acid deficiency or mutation or whatever, and great, just fucking GREAT.

And then I thought: the boobs, the shooting, the syrup, the panic, the dates. Ahhh, the PMS. And all is right with the world. There is an explanation for the madness.

And so, I hope you all have a fine weekend, full of French toast and pancakes and blueberries and…syrup. But if you plan to serve sirrup, don’t tell me about it, okay?

*Cat Stevens. I love Cat. Don’t make fun of me.

25 comments October 5th, 2006