I think I’m going through some kind of post-partum hairstyle depression. The just-became-a-mom custom of chopping off all one’s hair is obviously nothing new, but it’s never really discussed in detail, and I think people come away with the feeling that moms are just throwing up their hands, like, “OK, that’s it! I’ve given birth! I give up on dolling myself up and making an effort to appear attractive forever!” And promptly shave their heads and cease wearing makeup, thereby falling off the grid and refraining from being “noticed” ever again in their lives.

But I will let you in on a secret. It’s remained a secret up until now because most moms are too busy to sit around dwelling on superficial crap (I’m one of the lucky few privileged enough) AND most moms don’t care enough to set the record straight for people who sit around assuming the worst about them.

The secret is that when you have a baby to contend with? Your hair cannot get in your eyes without making you want to shoot yourself in the face.

I’ve gotten my hair cut and/or cut my hair myself and/or forced my husband at scissor-point to cut it approximately thirty-five times since I had the baby last year, and even now I am forever googling newer, shorter hairstyles.

At the moment my hair is the shortest it’s ever been–the stylist literally shaved the back last time, which was a crazy sensation!–but though it starts off super short in the back, it angles to the front to become LONG ENOUGH THAT IT OFTEN GETS IN MY EYES. And we can’t have that.

It’s kind of anvil-shaped. Sometimes when I see pictures of myself, I panic and feel like I look like Kate Gosselin or Marcy from Married with Children or someone.

And we can’t have that. No–no, we can’t.

If I keep the overall style and just shorten the front, it will look stupid, but if I constantly pull the front back out of my eyes, it defeats the purpose of having a hairstyle in general, because that’s the other thing:

I’m starting to be anti-styling. It’s not that I “don’t have time” to style my hair; I just think it’s stupid. I mean, think about it. Think about the freedom of never having to do it again. Think about how 99.9 percent of men have been living since the dawn of time.

I’m even–and this is where it gets a little “Is Bess off her meds again? Maybe she should take a little Virginia Woolf-esque ‘holiday’ to the country”–beginning to harbor anti-part sentiments.

Like, why do we part our hair? Think about it. It’s ridiculous. Think about how free we’d all be if we never had to part our hair again!

Anyway, I’m thinking I’m finally gonna go for a pixie. Not a really short one, but a looser, wispier one. If nothing else, it’ll cool me down for the summer and keep my anvil of big hair out of my eyes so I can see my baby.

My five year-old daughter is an extremely social person, and some of her first peers to become actual, definable, friends, have generalizable, inner-suburban parents. And while I have always been plagued by a feeling of not fitting in, of being a fish-out-of-water, of being completely disassociated from society altogether, or even invisible (at my unmedicated worst, I feel like a Doors song) there are many real commonalities among my daughter’s friends’ parents (DFPs). This is not just one of my depression-induced delusions.

The most obvious one is that 100% of my DFPs are five to ten (or even more than ten) years older than I am. I never considered 28 to be young to have your first child, but apparently in this age of Aquarius, it is the equivalent of having a child before graduating high school. Age differences are supposed to matter less as you get older, but I actually don’t find this to be true at all. Five to ten years is actually a large enough difference to have caused my DFPs to pick up some of the horrifying qualities of professional adults living in the pre-crash society of the early 2000’s (while I was busy prolonging my adolescence by attending graduate school). For example, the need to appear completely put-together and organized at all times. Giving my DFPs the benefit of the doubt, a lot of the other horrible societal traits of the early 2000’s have become less severe, such as the intense material competitiveness (i.e., my ____ is bigger than your ____, etc.); however, the need to appear completely put-together and organized persists.

There are other prevalent commonalities, which likely can just be attributed to my neighborhood, city, and maybe even country (I’m telling you, those über-polite politically correct Canadians are secretly emotionally-repressed passive-aggressive wrecks). But the need to appear put-together is the trait that I am most affected by. If there is one thing I can’t stand is when people act like everything is great and fine and wonderful all of the time AND IT OF COURSE ISN’T. 95% of my DFPs have households containing two parents that work 40-60 hour per week white-collar jobs and have more than one child that participates in more than one extra-curricular activity. One does not have to be a sociologist/anthropologist/psychologist or whatever to realize that by default, these people are not completely put-together at all. Nor do they have their lives organized. Their lives are chaotic and busy, and their insane schedules are sucking any time for enjoying their lives right out of their lives.

My daughter, who is in kindergarten, has a best friend (S—) who happens to be in first grade (or Grade 1, if you are Canadian). They have fairies, jewels, Barbies, diaries, and make-up in common. My daughter has had numerous reciprocated play dates and birthday parties with S—, and S—‘s family even came over for a BBQ this past summer (!), as a part of my vain attempt to make friends with other overbooked parents in my neighborhood. I figured maybe S—‘s parents would have things in common with my husband and I because S—‘s mom (P—) has a nose ring and her dad is a high school media arts teacher with a moustache (I am very superficial, admittedly). However, P— is a lawyer, is five years older than I am, and speaks very logically and calmly all of the time. She also always appears extremely organized and put-together. She rarely talks about herself in terms of her emotions. There is a bit of a projection on a wall kind of aspect to her, but no one is allowed to know what is on the other side of the wall.

Since this past summer, I have sort of come to terms with the fact that P— will likely never invite us over to dinner, and our relationship will continue to consist of short small-talkish conversations at the elementary drop-off area of our local public school that occur on most mornings. Oh well, I think, at least I tried; and I will just continue to obsessively practice yoga, check Facebook, read fantasy novels, play Nintendo, and whatever else I do instead of having a social life.

Breakthroughs always occur when you least expect them to though. Like this morning.

P— and I’s small-talkish school drop-off conversation began normally.

Me: “I couldn’t remember if it was red, green, and white day today. I forgot to look at the calendar.”

P—: “It must have been a kindergarten thing because it wasn’t on S—‘s calendar.”

Me: “Yeah, oh well.”

(Pause)

P—: “Actually nothing is on S—‘s calendar. Just what number day it is.”

Me: “I know, our calendar is blank too, though Mrs. ____ did give us something that said what the kids have on each number day. But that of course requires looking at two different pieces of paper at the same time.”

P—: “I try my best to remember to put S— in leggings and proper footwear when it is gym day, and to return books on library day, but I am having problems with the way S—‘s teacher communicates things this year.”

Me: “Really? I guess all teachers are different.”

P—: “I actually wrote a note to Ms. ____ about it, and considered calling the principal, because I feel like all classrooms need to send home that kind of information. I don’t mean to complain, Ms. ____ is great and everything.” [Note typical example of Canadian passive-aggressiveness].

Me: “No it’s OK, you can complain. That is kind of annoying.”

P—: “And the homework! Oh my God. The math assignments—double digit addition and stuff that takes hours for me to do with S— each night! I don’t have time for this, with work and little J— and the house and dinner and everything. It’s only first grade. And I mean, why don’t the Grade 1’s get agendas, like the older primary kids, it would help them organize everything so much better. S— is really organized, she has a Type A personality, but she is organized about things like her nail polish. It is up to me to remember everything, like, oh my God, she has this project due next week, which I don’t know how they are evaluated on, and S— lost the paper that had the project assignment on it, and I am totally freaking out!”

Me: “Wow, that seems like a lot for Grade 1…”

P—: “Oh my God, you probably don’t want to hear me whining. I am sorry for taking all of your time up and you have had to stand here and listen to me whine. I must sound really negative about everything. I don’t know why I feel the need to take all of S—‘s stuff onto myself.”

Me: “No…It’s OK! You can whine.”

P—: “It is just that all of this is too much, you know? I’m sorry for whining at you.”

Me: “No I know, it’s OK.”

I suddenly realized how relieved I was that P— was whining to me. Excited, actually. Happy, for her whining. To me! Maybe this means she will eventually go from being a DFP to an actual friend.

Isn’t that what people need to do? Especially during parenthood, where no one feels like they are ever doing a good job? Isn’t it comforting to whine to each other sometimes? I listen to you whine, you listen to me whine, misery loves company, and you and I both feel better? Why do all of my DFPs feel the need to act like everything is OK all of the time? Everything is not OK. Especially not all of the time. Don’t stop whining, please.

The other day my husband and I realized suddenly . . . that we have no money! It came as something of a shocker to us, being that the only three–oh so tiny little–things that have changed in our lives recently are me no longer having a full-time paying job, our rent going up by something like $400 a month, and having an additional human mouth to feed.

I mean, give us a little credit here: how could we possibly have seen those things coming?!

As a solution, we decided that–get ready for it; its ahead-of-its-time cleverness will blow you away–instead of dining out or ordering in every night? We would NOT dine out OR order in EVER AGAIN IN OUR LIVES.

Or, at least, every night, going forward, until further notice.

It’s been quite a challenge, partly because I fail as a stay-at-home mom and don’t really cook, and partly because it’s kind of hard not to just be like, “Why doesn’t one of us just run across the street to pick up a massive $5-per-person feast at the Chinese place?” every single night, since really sometimes the whole thing does seem a bit futile. But we’re trying to get into the habit of this, so we can’t allow ourselves to slip.

One thing that’s made it easy is our discovery of the frozen section at Trader Joe’s. And by that I mean, the frozen section at Trader Joe’s in its entirety now resides in our freezer and will be feeding us for the next quarter-year. For $27.85.

Every several days I trek over to TJs to top us off with stuff like a couple dozen bags of biryani rice–the excursion has replaced the trip to Whole Foods as one of my evening “alone time for mommy” rituals–and since I always end up unintentionally buying six or seven vegetarian or vegan dishes (read: “soy”cotash? Really? Didn’t realize lima beans were from an animal), the walk home is just like the new PETA campaign where the neck-brace-clad anorexic supermodel trudges back from the market carrying a bag of vegetables to refuel her maniac boyfriend’s insatiable sex drive.

Except that I’m weary from running around after a crawling baby all day instead of from starving myself. And except that if anyone ever did anything to me in the bedroom that put me in a neck brace, I would be walking in the OPPOSITE direction with that bag of vegetables. And except that I don’t usually make a habit of glorifying rape.

But other than that it’s exactly the same!

We’ve really stuck to the dining-in plan, though, and money-wise I do think it’s helping. And the nostalgia of feeling like it’s the last time I was poor all over again–when I first moved to the city over a decade ago–is kind of comforting in an odd way. Walking past all of these wonderful-looking restaurants day in and day out, dreamily gazing in and wishing I could afford to eat at them–makes me feel like my whole life is ahead of me again! Or at least my twenties.

Except that I wouldn’t wish the reliving of my twenties upon myself.

Nor would I wish my twenties upon my worst enemy.

I would, however, wish my twenties upon any and all young and impressionable girls who see the latest PETA commercials and decide to starve themselves so some sex-crazed douchebag (dorky and unattractive, as it turns out, but I guess that’s “in”) boyfriend figure will find them more desirable.

My twenties were an absolute field day compared to that!

Anyway, as soon as we have money again, we’re goin’ to Disney World! Nah, just kidding, we’re going to–waaaaaaaait forrrrrrrrrr ittttttttttt–a super-elite premiere NYC dining spot known as? The secretly be-gardened, lovely and shockingly reasonably priced Italian place around the corner.

And if we order vegetarian there, it will be entirely intentional.