How often do you floss.

Usually when you’re talking to a stranger you’re not allowed to ask them many personal questions. 

You can ask a stranger what time it is, you can ask them for directions or how soon the bus is coming. That's about it.

But everything changes when a stranger asks you a question - then you get to ask it back to them. It’s a free pass and I love it. I love when people ask how many siblings I have, because then I get to find out how many siblings they have. I love when strangers ask where I’m going, how I cut my hand, or what I’m ordering at a restaurant. The best thing a stranger can ask me is how much I pay for rent.

But the worst thing is when there’s a reason that stranger is asking you the question, so you can’t ask them back, even though you feel like you should be able to. Like when a nurse asks if the veins in my arm are close to the skin. Suddenly I want to ask her the same thing, so badly. It only seems fair. 

Or when my hairstylist asks how long it usually takes for my hair to air dry, I can feel my mouth wanting to say “What about your hair, how long does your hair take to dry?” and I have to bite my tongue to keep my mouth from asking. Biting my tongue reminds me that I never got to ask my dentist how often he flosses.

Bouncers at concerts ask my age, police officers ask where I’m headed, my credit card company asks me my salary, and none of these questions are questions I can ask back. I’ll probably never know what kind of veins my nurse has, where my pharmacist stores her medications, or if my doctor has had any unexpected weight loss recently. 

If my landlord is reading this: Ever since you asked if I own an aquarium or a keyboard I have been dying to know if you own either. And if you own a keyboard, how many keys does it have, and do you use headphones with it or not? Also, this weekend I noticed a new closet in the apartment that I have never seen before. It sounds crazy but it's probably some sort of portal or maybe the previous tenants held a seance. Did the previous tenants own an aquarium? Please respond ASAP.

While I wait I'll be watching this.

Mothers Day however many days late

Lately my hair has been getting longer on one side than on the other. I think it's because I sit by a window but other people said it was because I did a bad job cutting it.

Everyone says I should get it cut by a professional hairstylist but the problem is my hair acts more like a liquid or a gas than a solid - it fills whatever space it's given so the size and shape and texture and molecular breakdown depend on the day. It seems more like a job for a scientist than a hairstylist.

I went to a professional anyway. I brought this list of things I wanted changed:

I DON'T WANT TO LOOK LIKE: Someone who owns a minivan, a child under the age of six, someone who doesn't shave, a talk show host, or a drug addict.

I DO WANT TO LOOK LIKE: Someone you would be fine with sitting by on the bus.

My hairstylist said that was pretty helpful. Feel free to copy/paste that and bring it to your next haircut.

My hairstylist has cut John C Reilly's hair before. What are the odds? John C Reilly sounds like someone I would love to meet.

My hairstylist says that since my hair is closer to chinchilla fur than human hair, hair products are all going to be pretty hopeless so should just mat it down with a generous amount of hand lotion every morning until it's small enough that I can walk through doorways.

"Any brand of hand lotion. But really massage it in," she said. "Your hair's going to fight it."

Considering my other haircuts have been zero dollars and this haircut was many dollars I thought it would look pretty good but instead I look like a bombshell. It's incredible how great my hair looks. It looks so small.

I am smiling in this photo but this is important: the smile is for MY MOM'S EYES ONLY because she hates that I don't smile in photos. But look at the haircut part - does this look like the hair of a five-year-old van-driving drug-addict talk show host? Definitely not as much as it did a week ago.

I'm out of chinchilla photos but check out these rats playing instruments:

And sit by me on the bus, this seat's totally available. I'm just a friendly-looking girl who's real into rats.

Another dimension another dimension

Every time I walk into the locker room and don’t recognize a single person in there I panic. 

Because the last thing I want is what happens in level three of Chex Quest, which is both the only game ever released by General Mills and the only video game I’m familiar with. In level three there’s one door you walk through and instead of taking you to the room on the other side of the wall it takes you to an entirely different part of the video game. Everything looks the same, but it’s slightly different and wrong and you’re lost. 

Then I have to think back of all the doors I went through that day, and figure out when people stopped looking familiar to me. Did I recognize anyone at the grocery store? The coffee shop? Did I walk into another dimension sometime last night? And I have to look in my locker to check if in this dimension I have better shampoo than I do in my regular dimension. 

At this point I assume the only thing making my hair look like a sad electrocuted dog instead of a wet glitter supermodel is that I can't use Bumble and Bumble's new Cityswept Finish Spray. The main ingredient is gluten. The packaging says it makes you look street-style ready in a New York Minute. No one's ever said that about the way my hair looks.

I would put up with a bit of alternate dimension weirdness for some really nice shampoo.

Everything I don't love not about biking

“Last week I started biking to work” I’ve been saying to any person who stands still long enough.

“How do you like biking?” ask people who know me, or who feel like talking to an enthusiastic stranger.

That is a great question thanks for asking. I LOVE some things about biking to work. I love the biking part. But there are a lot of things that aren’t the biking part. 

There’s the getting the bike down the stairs part. I noticed last week one of my legs is covered in bruises and I assumed I was growing muscles so quickly they were pushing through the skin. But this morning when I fell down the stairs holding my bike it hit me, it’s got to be the falling down the stairs that’s causing the bruises.

The front handlebars always twist and my wrist gets stuck, and the bike pins me against the wall and I’m just sort of standing there sweating and brainstorming but soon I’m out of my apartment and biking and that part’s fine. 

While biking there are a few bad things I have to do at the same time, like trying to unzip the armpit zippers on my jacket. If you ask if I enjoy unzipping the armpit zippers I will say no, but if you ask if I enjoy biking I will say definitely yes.

When the biking stops things get really bad. That’s when I have to get my keycard out of my backpack, and decide whether to try and carry my bike up the stairs or get my bike into the elevator and deal with the keycard again. I have to get the lock out, and I have to figure out how to use the lock, and at this point my nose is always running so I have to keep my head up and manage just by feel instead of sight.

Then I take my helmet off and I have crazy wind hair. If I could leave my helmet on all day it would make it all worth it.

But I love biking. Thanks for listening, woman in line next to me at the grocery store.

And thanks infinity to Krissy for loaning me the bike. Without her who knows what my hair would look like.

hair story

So far every day of my entire life has been the part of the movie before the unpopular girl gets the makeover and is suddenly smokin' hot.