When's the last time I was up for posting twice in two days? Anywho...

Cut my hair off today, feels so much cooler. I should cut it more often, but I opt for the "Does it stick up when I wake up?" test -- if I have to comb it, it's time to cut it. I'm lazy, I do as little maintenance as possible -- shave off the hair that bothers me (soul patch and underarms), adjust moustache length, trim my nose hair if it's visible, occasionally trim up underneath my beard and rarely trim the beard for length. And the ears if Pattie reminds me, like she just did. Thanks. Otherwise it gets the all-over treatment once every few months.

It hasn't always been that way. When I was little my dad took me to the barber with him, and after he died mom took me to the salon with her. At that time point it was an actual haircut which, despite protests, I always parted on the left. In retrospect paying for haircuts made no sense, as mom had gotten her cosmetology license young (though she never opted to use it) and I didn't like to comb my hair anyways. At some point that dawned on mom too, and she started cutting it at home, nothing shorter than the #3 guard though. Once I took over I switched to the #2 guard, and tried straight-razor smooth a few times (and you'd have thought the world was ending). But once I moved out the all-over no-guard buzz was by far the easiest.

All that to say I cut my hair. Anywho, got that done outside, came in to take a shower, and plopped my clothes down beside the biggest wasp I've fucking seen. Thank all that's holy for the 65°F weather, it was stunned and sluggish. I squished it with the only weapon available -- an empty toilet paper roll -- and had to squish a few times to really get it. I took it out to show Pattie, then threw it away. It wasn't until later that I thought I should have taken pics, but I'm not digging through the trash for a dead wasp. For comparison, it was about a third the length of the TP roll, I swear its wingspan was better than its length, and a quarter of the body was stinger.

There's two funny things about this story. One is that I've always been terrified of bugs, and my flight-or-flight response has always kept me safe except the one time I got a yellowjacket caught on my watchband trying to get it away from my food. I didn't start killing bugs until I moved in with Pattie. I'll admit I was a little shaken up afterwards, but something kicks in now that just wasn't there before, dunno if I feel like I'm protecting my wifey-poo or what.

The other is that the whole showing it to Pattie thing reminded me of an incident when I was little, one of many where I remember being told the story rather than the event itself. To set the setting, back then we lived in an apartment that regularly got what we called waterbugs, although browsing Wikipedia they looked more like either the Oriental or Florida woods cockroach. Anywho, one night mom was setting the table for supper. She heard dad yell at our cat -- which he wasn't overly fond of anyways, as I remember it -- and came into the dining room to see a dead waterbug in the middle of dad's plate, and the cat sitting on dad's chair looking as proud as anything.