I hate my wife’s stupid hair.

We used to have 3 dogs. In an apartment. And not small dogs either. And not easy big dogs like Greyhounds or St Bernards. Really tough, special needs dogs.

She’d drag me to the pound on a Saturday morning a few times ever year, and though we only left with a dog maybe 15% of the time, we still ended up with 3 dogs.

We had cats, rats, a bird…

Then we moved to a place where we really couldn’t have any dogs. They went to good homes, people we thoroughly vetted (pardon the pun-ish thing there). One of them actually lives on a farm. Apparently he likes to chase cows.

I hear about the dogs from time to time. I hear and kind of flush it out of my short term memory. I’m not a good person. I’m not a dog person.

We have a daughter now. Her name is Hillary.

For the longest time I imagined we wouldn’t have kids. When we got married we talked about it and both didn’t really seem to want kids at the time.

That never changed for me, not really, not in a substantial way. It definitely changed for my wife though. I don’t want to step into the quicksand of maternal whatever, but it definitely changed, and this isn’t exactly an uncommon thing. I hear this from guys all the time.

I don’t know why I said I was “ready” to have a child. I wasn’t. I’m not now. I remember thinking I was ready to give it a go. Maybe at some point I really thought that’s what I wanted.

Maybe one day it will be. Maybe I’ll regret not having a brood. I’ve heard a lot of older guys tell me that too.

I can’t count the number of wonderful moments Hillary has brought into my life. I can’t count the number of frustrations and heartaches she’s brought, too. The good with the bad.

I’ve lost so much sleep. So much sleep. Sleep isn’t as important as nurturing a human life, granted, but try to tell that to a severely sleep-deprived parent. They may not agree.

There’s a part of me that sympathizes with the childfree movement. Kind of. If they weren’t such a bunch of assholes, I mean. There are enough people the world. I have enough responsibility. I don’t need any more outlets for randomness in my life. I want to sleep more. I want more money. I want more time to myself.

My mom would tell me this all sounds very selfish and I should give up my expectations for other people, which I guess makes her happy. I agree. It’s kind of selfish. I can see how thinking like that can turn you into an asshole after a while.

I’ll just blame it on last night’s 2am daddy-needs-to-escort-me-for-some-reason potty run. I’m too tired to care if I’m selfish or whatever.

I used to think that marriage was a journey of getting to know another person.

Sure, I still think that. But there’s something inherently impossible and therefor frustrating about getting to know another person. They’re always going to be another person.

You might be familiar with their tics and body language. You may be able to predict their movements before the even move. You might be able to explain them perhaps better than they can explain themselves.

But you are never going to know them, not really. All you’re ever going to be able to do is think about them and come to really boneheadedly wrong conclusions until you figure out that you’re not so smart.

That’s where I’m at right now. I’m not so smart.

I remember the hair she had when we got married. It wasn’t anything special, but I really liked it. I still see it in our wedding photos every once in a while and wonder… what happened?

Bet she looks at my waist and says the same thing. I’m 50 lbs heavier now than then. I’m losing, but it’s not going as fast as I’d like (I blame beer).

This is why I don’t really tell her about this. I think. If I say something, she’ll have ample ammunition to fire back at me.

I know my hair is different now, but so is your waistline.

I don’t want to have to deal with that. And I’m a little scared of what the fallout might be. Because this shit’s all connected, man.

It’s not like the hair thing is about hair.

We’re fundamentally different people, me and her. You might not get that from looking at us, but we are.

I like things a certain way, and I like them to stay that certain way. If I had my way I’d live in a very particular type of house in very particular type of place and do a very specific kind of job for the rest of my life.

Would that end with a crazy midlife crisis or something? I don’t know. I’m definitely not there yet. I haven’t had the same house for more than 5 years (and I hate hate hate moving house). I haven’t lived in the same city for the same period. And the job? Well, you fill in the blank.

So why would a guy who hates moving move all the goddamn time?

Anyone want to guess?

So we moved into a new house. This is very much nicer than one we moved from. I mean, not superficially, it’s actually kind of a dump, but it’s more in line with our values. It’s in an old part of the city. It’s an older house. It has original fixturing. It needs some stuff done, but it’s livable.

This is my speed. I like old stuff. My wife is the same.

I though, vainly, that this might be the one. This might be the time where we settle down and stop living in the future.

Now we have our old house in our old part of town with our kid and our cat and enough money and nice restaurants close by… now we’ll be fine, right?

But not two months after we moved here, she pierced her nose. Again.

I don’t get what this woman wants. I really don’t.

The problem is I want to give her that thing. I want to give her what she wants. I’ve never said that much, mind you, that would be a cloyingly desperate thing to say, even for me.

But I’m not alone in not knowing. I don’t think she knows either. I think she has the impulse, and the just follows it.

I wonder what that feels like. Is it like when you really, really want a burrito at 2am but instead of a burrito it’s to pack all your shit into a U-Haul and move two states over?

I can say no to a burrito most of the time. And a burrito doesn’t cost $20,000 in fees and taxes.

But still, it’s kind of the hair. I live where we live now. I like our daughter. I like my new job. I like our cat.

I can’t get away from the hair. It’s been dyed to hell and back. It changes color every other month. It has the texture that reminds me of baled hay. Like she’s an old-time Raggedy Ann doll, and a poorly kept one at that.

It’s short, too. I don’t mind short hair, but it’s been short for 7 years now. I’d like some variety. Hell, I’ve had more and different hairstyles. Long, short, you name it. And it keeps getting shorter.

Every time she gets it cut or partially buzzed or whatever, right after she does that, she tells me to remind her the next time she wants to get it cut short not to do it.

Last time she cut her hair herself. It looks… terrible. Words can’t do it justice. I’m serious. I can’t think of a way to describe it.

Before she started, I reminded her. Don’t cut it. You always say don’t cut it.

She didn’t listen. Rinse, cut, repeat.