I Cut My Own Bangs Again.

Apparently, it's that time of the semester, because about a week ago, I cut my own bangs again.

It's not as disastrous as last time - I might be getting better at this.  But I think it points to deep-seated mental illness that keeps me from going to professional hair-stylists and instead, hacking at my own hair with kitchen scissors somewhere around 5:00AM once a semester.  It's a very specific mental illness.  It's called So Little Sleep and So Much Stress That Home Haircuts Sound Like a Great Idea Once Every Three Months Or So syndrome.  Only really awesome people have it.  It results in bangs that look like Bettie Page bangs, if you tilt your head to the right and squint a bit.  Pure awesomeness.

So, remember the boulder from Spring semester?  That was a teeny-tiny little pebble compared to the summer semester boulder that has flattened me.  The stress over the summer was so enormous, I lost twenty-five pounds in about eleven weeks.  Go ahead and ponder that for a minute; I'll wait.  Twenty-five pounds.  That's one-third of my seven-year-old.  I'm pretty sure it's because I have convinced my body that it can live on Diet Dr. Pepper and maybe a tuna salad sandwich at around 2:00.  I like to call it the "Holy Shit I Can't Do This" diet.  At completion, you can fit your newly skinny body into Bad Idea Jeans.  It's a beautiful thing.  (Not that I am anywhere near skinny now, but this is a good start.)

Speaking of my seven-year-old (as I did in the paragraph above, however fleetingly), I have been at home with my children for the bulk of the summer.  Just me.  And them.  And Phineas and Ferb.  And a lot of homework that they would rather I didn't do.  It's a lot of togetherness, and starting Friday, we'll have two weeks of ultra-togetherness, because I won't even have the option of going to class twice a week to get away from them.  I start my Fall semester the day after they do.  Which means that on August 22nd, I will have from 7:30AM to 3:00PM full of quiet.  I may just sit there, in the quiet, doing nothing all day until I have to go get them and bring them back.  I may weep from the beauty of it.  Just the idea is making me a bit teary.

Other news and notes:

* Thanks to my Environmental Science class, I may start doing my level best to ruin the environment singlehandedly.  It would serve it right for giving me the boringest class of my life.  (Boringest is indeed a word.  I just made it up.  English is a fluid language, people.  Changes everyday.)  I plan to buy a Hummer and drive leaded gas on the highway, chucking fast-food wrappers out of the window every three miles.  I also plan to contribute heavily to the hole in the ozone layer.  Maybe I can hire an airplane and take a run up there to jab it with forks or something, creating more perferation.  I also plan to take a blowtorch to Antarctica and melt the ice caps a little more.  Just doing my bit.

* It is so hot outside right now that my sunglasses, which were on top of my head momentarily when I went outside earlier, burned my face when I put them on my nose where they belong.  Burned my face.  I yelped and everybody stared at me.  It's almost as awesome as that one time, the first time I went to college, when I completely buckled for no apparent while walking to class through a completely crowded commons.  I fell right on my face.  That was awesomeness.  Not because I was self-aware enough to laugh at myself at the time (although whenever I think of it now, I can't stop laughing, because somebody falling down and busting their ass for no apparent reason is funny, even if the falling-down person is eighteen-year-old me), but because it was a complete and total failure of my legs and everybody in the entire school saw it.  It was epic and would have been on YouTube, had YouTube existed at the time.  And digital cameras.

* The excruciating heat is not helping with the kid-and-mom togetherness.  You can't just send your kid outside when it's 107 out there with a heat index of 115.  You can't say "run your energy off" and send them out there, because if you do, that's child abuse.  They will immediately melt into a puddle on the porch, and there is just no amount of hosing that will make that pavement clean again.  Besides the fact that CPS will then show up, load the amorphous blob that used to be your child into an unmarked van, and take it away to live with nice people who would never do that.  This may sound like a good deal, but I'm betting there's a lot of paperwork involved and maybe also police, who I promise you, you do not want to tangle with during a summer as hot as this.  Because it's this kind of heat that will make usually normal people try to jump off the Wilson-Riggins Hardware Store wearing nothing but a Speedo with the British flag on it, black trouser socks, and water shoes.  So they're a little busy right now and do not want to deal with your kid puddle and everything that comes with it.  Trust.

I'm supposed to be doing algebra homework right now, but I can't summon up the energy for it, given that I just took my last Environmental Science test about fifteen minutes ago.  And studying for that test made sure I only had about four hours of sleep last night, so I'm fucking giddy.  I'd also really like to go home, but staying for class and working on my review sheet is probably the better idea.  Fucking adult-level responsibility.  You're always screwing up my sleep