mama cass’s melancholia

The editors behind me are going mad for rickrolling (which made it into the Metro last week) and trying to convince themselves it’s a good idea to have an actual rickroll on the homepage to support the article. Way to catch up to last month, guys.

We’re supposed to be taking off from Terminal 5 later this week, and I’m coming down with the mandatory pre-holiday cold. Starting to wonder if our occasional extensively planned, budgeted, and clung-to weekend holidays are dooooooooooomed.

I’ve also had most of my hair cut off. For the trauma and liberation of cleaving away the long curly hair that too easily becomes part of a woman’s identity, I’ll refer you to the Rotund, who also underwent the big chop last week. I wonder what possessed me to get a cut that requires I break out the straighteners every time I wash it or risk the Lyle Lovett effect. Still, when I’ve got straight long bangs falling in my eyes, I look like someone else, someone fast and sly who probably jogs.

Someone who could pick the lock of her boss’s storage locker in under 20 seconds.

(In my defence, he did leave his virus-infected laptop in there, giving me instructions to get it reformatted, but no key.)

So that’s me now, and fairly accurate. Plus, my head is lighter without the hippy-mop-cum-Victorian-corkscrew-curls, and I don’t need a bagful of products just to get a shower at the gym...which was 90% of the reason for shifting that heavy mess, actually.

Life at the moment is slow chaos. The sole benefit is that I’ve been writing again, and it’s coming out easily. It helps that I’ve liberated a handful of characters from a long piece that had less chance of working with every revision, and they’re leaping along like Harry Harlow’s control group in a new environment.

At least I’m making fictional people happy, right?

I put in my notice, which turned into an argument (“it can still work” / “no, it can’t” wash rinse repeat)...how can I yell and curse at someone who’s already not happy with me and still not be fired? So I’ve agreed to give it a month, because...just because it’s easier. Like most of my major decisions, it comes down to did my best, now can’t be arsed. Or perhaps I’ve just given in to the overriding meme of my life, that those I try to warn will agree with me after the disaster but never beforehand.

There’s probably a myth like that. Maybe Greek? Nah, Russian. Definitely a Russian outlook.