The words, she looks like a living stuffed animal, run through my head as I watch my new puppy hop through grass that is knee high on her.  My neighbor had said it earlier as we’d watched her chase our daughters into the volleyball pit, her description fitting the bouncing ball of fluff with uncanny accuracy.

The coast is clear.  None of the neighborhood child mob has noticed us in my backyard.  Roxy sniffs through the grass as my mutt puppy, Juliet, hops at her heels.  Hana observes, surprised at everything as usual.  Her eyes lock on a mote of dust, dirt, or cottonseed.  I’m not sure what it is, but her mouth hangs open, saliva pooling along the spoutlike curve of her bottom lip, as her fingers propel in clumsly loops around it.

Movement catches my eye.  Through the fence into my neighbor’s yard is one of the child mob.  I freeze, waiting till she disappears around the far corner of her house.  The dogs are roaming with no obvious purpose.  I assume their outdoor business is finished, gathering Juliet up in my free arm (the other is still wrapped around Hana’s midsection), and calling Roxy behind me.  I pad up the stairs in my barefeet, glad for one moment that I left my shoes inside.  Hoping I wasn’t seen, I fasten the door behind me, and follow my hermit instincts into the basement.

No such luck.  The doorbell rings, young voices echoing from the porch.

“Maybe they’re not here.”

“I saw them.  Keep ringing.”

There are a lot of them.  I’m reminded of Lord of the Flies, the child mob chanting Give us your puppy.  This crowd has soured my generosity for the next few days.  It was Cadence’s feelings that did it.

Yesterday, two girls had asked to play with Cadence.  Her face lit up, her eyebrows raised in excitement.  “Can I play with friends?”  I sent her off to enjoy the pampering of girls four of five years older.  Ten minutes passed before my doorbell rang, and the girls declared that they were done playing with Cadence, “but can we hold the puppy now?”  My tongue sat fat and reluctant inside my open mouth as I tried to answer why she couldn’t play with her friends.  They wanted you for your puppy, sweetheart.

“They had to go home,” I say instead.

And what do I say to her now that they’re not pretending to want to play with her?  She’s asleep; I may not have to say a thing.  The voices, knocks, and rings continue, but I’m not anwering.

Sopping strands of mucous colored hair slither over my shoulders as I turn my head from side to side.  The hair is broken, sucking the water in like a loaf of bread in a bathtub.  Water drips onto my skin, drawing goosebumps on my back and arms.  The color is still wrong, every try bringing it to some new, wacky kaleidoscope hue.  Frustration is building.  I stare into the mirror, maybe hoping that if I stare hard enough it won’t be so horrible, or perhaps hoping that it’s just a nightmare I will soon wake from.

The rainbow snot hair isn’t changing.

My chest tightens, squeezing out a long desperate sigh.  Jake has forbidden any drastic haircut that would spare only the healthy roots.  So what?  It’s my hair, I try to convince myself.  I shake off the tightness in my chest, throwing one last glare at the mirror, before rushing to my dresser.  My left handed scissors are perched next to my multivitamin.  I snatch them up and pause near the closet door.  If I’m going to do this, I’m going to do it right.  I slide the door aside and pull out a large hand held mirror that I’ve tied a long length of cotton yarn to.  It’s a simple matter of throwing one end of the yarn over the bathroom door and looping it over the handle to position this mirror across from the other.

Wrapping one strand of hair around my finger, I measure the damage with my eyes.  The scissors wander along the strand, hovering hungrily a few inches from the root.  I can’t think about it too much.  It’s like cliff jumping: if I look at it too long, I’ll never leap.  My hand clamps down on the scissors.  The blades inch closer, but they don’t close.

I can’t do it.  As much as I want to have my bad hair decision falling into the garbage in chunks, I also don’t want Jake to vomit at the sight of me.  I slide the blades further down my hair, stopping at half it’s full length.  Then down again, two inches above the ends.

The scissors slice through my hair, the cut finished before I could decide against it.  Already a weight is lifting off my shoulders.  I would not have slept until this had been done.  I could not have waited to do the logical thing and allow someone experienced to cut my hair.  When I want to do something myself, no one can convince me I’m unqualified.  I continue the line of my cut around the back and to the left side.  The scissors and fine toothed comb work in unison, combing and cutting until the line is even, until the stray ends are tamed, until the frustration and madness are appeased.

The shorter A-line looks harsh against my granola face, but the end result is as neat as the original I paid for five or six months ago.  Terrible, Jake had called it.  Pulling up the hair framing my face softens the look.  I’m two inches nearer to having healthy hair, and Jake is spared the embarrassment of having a manly wife.

I’d call that a compromise.