When I was growing up, my sister had (well, she still has, to be precise) beautiful, thick, auburn hair. So thick she has to use the extra-large ponytail holders. And it's naturally curly, like Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman, except that Julia Roberts had to use a bottle and my sister's hair is just like that normally. It's gorgeous, and for many, many years I was insanely jealous of her hair. This couldn't in any way be connected to the time in the grocery store check-out line when an obviously tactless old lady leaned in, peered at me, peered at my baby sister in her infant carrier and exclaimed, "What beautiful red hair! What happened to the other one?"

My hair, on the other hand, is baby-fine and naturally a rather unattractive ash-blond color, which I help out by visiting the blond fairy once every six weeks or so. When I was younger, though, there was no coloring hair (though I've noticed it doesn't stop high-schoolers and even middle-schoolers today), so I was stuck with what I had. I did lay in the sun a lot with my hair covered in lemon juice. I even tried Sun-In, which is a very scary product that smells like bus stations, but it didn't really work.

I've always hated it when people refer to my hair as "thin" instead of "fine." To me, thinning hair connotes elderly men with combovers, which is not quite the problem I have - yet. The problem I have is getting out of showers, towel-drying and looking as though a condor landed on my head and prepared a nest for its young. The problem I have is that folks can actually SEE THROUGH my hair when I try to grow it long. I can hold up half the hair on my head with one bobby pin. I had a little hope when Lord of the Rings was popular, because that whole fairy thing seemed to be going my way, but the style never caught on. Alas, I have since discovered that a stick-straight, chin-length bob is the only way to cooperate with my hair, and you will probably see me as a grandmother with a blond, chin-length bob. It's all I know how to do.

When I was pregnant, I lost the hair you are supposed to lose post-partum in my first trimester. Not only was I seasick daily on dry land, I also thought I might go bald. Now I have bangs on one half of my head, which I try unsuccessfully to hide. A huge chunk fell out right above my left eyebrow. I don't think anyone noticed but me, but it felt like I needed Rogaine For Women. Very traumatic. The good news, I thought, was that I had ALREADY GONE THROUGH THE HAIR LOSS. Oh, no, I was so wrong.

Now, at fourteen and a half weeks post-partum, it has begun. Again. Suddenly, I am looking down into my little angel's smiling mouth to find long strands of blond hair poking from her lips. They are wrapped around her bottles. They are in between her toes. The cat plays with them sometimes, and then hacks them back up along with her own, baby-fine and graying hair. It is not pretty. I imagine that someday I will come home from the dreaded office and find that she has created a new kitty castle out of Summer's End Blonde.

Oh, and by the way, my baby got that red hair. It had better be the good, thick kind.

I'm convinced the daycare director, a lithe, snake-y looking woman in her mid-thirties, hates me. Or at least I was until this morning. I admit, she would have good reason to after I forced my beloved to call her after the little angel's first day at daycare and tell her I was very tempted not to bring her back ever again after they WITHHELD FOOD. Okay, so what if she was sleeping and they thought they were being nice?

Anyway, she pierces me with her reptilian eyes every time I walk past her office. She's mad because she lost our paperwork, so every time I go in there, she gives me another useless sheet to fill out and bring back. Yesterday it was the food stamps application, or free-breakfast program or something like that. I was confused, because I don't know how anyone on the free-breakfast program could afford to shell out almost $700 a month for childcare, but again, this is part of what is wrong with America in the first place. I mean, if you need free breakfast, you should also get free daycare, in my opinion. But that's a whole other social issue I don't have time to lecture on this morning.

So yesterday my friend C. at work suggested I give the teachers a nice present to make up for my little outburst. I was horrified - I mean, I had told them exactly how to treat her and they lost the little, carefully typed piece of paper. Is it MY fault they had no heart, brain or courage in Oz? But being the kind, politically savvy person she is, C. reminded me that a little honey goes a long way if you can overlook principle. She is so right. So last night I went home and actually BAKED COOKIES. This is so out of character for me that most of you are probably spilling coffee on your laps right now. Yes, I did. And I even attached a cute thank-you card to the plate.

This morning I walked in a half-hour late, cookies and free-breakfast sheet in hand, only to find the evil snake-woman hounding some other poor, misfortunate soul who had had the audacity to forget to pay her yesterday. His head hung somewhere between the knot of his tie and his breastbone. I realized it was not just me...she hates us all. I handed her the cookies, and with a new spring in my step, headed downstairs to see the people who actually like my child. I still cried on the way to work, though. I'm spending a fortune on mascara these days.

I'm convinced the daycare director, a lithe, snake-y looking woman in her mid-thirties, hates me. Or at least I was until this morning. I admit, she would have good reason to after I forced my beloved to call her after the little angel's first day at daycare and tell her I was very tempted not to bring her back ever again after they WITHHELD FOOD. Okay, so what if she was sleeping and they thought they were being nice?

Anyway, she pierces me with her reptilian eyes every time I walk past her office. She's mad because she lost our paperwork, so every time I go in there, she gives me another useless sheet to fill out and bring back. Yesterday it was the food stamps application, or free-breakfast program or something like that. I was confused, because I don't know how anyone on the free-breakfast program could afford to shell out almost $700 a month for childcare, but again, this is part of what is wrong with America in the first place. I mean, if you need free breakfast, you should also get free daycare, in my opinion. But that's a whole other social issue I don't have time to lecture on this morning.

So yesterday my friend C. at work suggested I give the teachers a nice present to make up for my little outburst. I was horrified - I mean, I had told them exactly how to treat her and they lost the little, carefully typed piece of paper. Is it MY fault they had no heart, brain or courage in Oz? But being the kind, politically savvy person she is, C. reminded me that a little honey goes a long way if you can overlook principle. She is so right. So last night I went home and actually BAKED COOKIES. This is so out of character for me that most of you are probably spilling coffee on your laps right now. Yes, I did. And I even attached a cute thank-you card to the plate.

This morning I walked in a half-hour late, cookies and free-breakfast sheet in hand, only to find the evil snake-woman hounding some other poor, misfortunate soul who had had the audacity to forget to pay her yesterday. His head hung somewhere between the knot of his tie and his breastbone. I realized it was not just me...she hates us all. I handed her the cookies, and with a new spring in my step, headed downstairs to see the people who actually like my child. I still cried on the way to work, though. I'm spending a fortune on mascara these days.

Well, this weekend marked both the end of my first week of putting the little angel in daycare and my first weekend trip away from her. My college roommates and I threw a shower in another large, Midwestern city for my friend C., who is due in August with her first baby. As one of the shower's hostesses, I should've thought harder about the timing. Hell's bells.

So it was with considerable trepidation that I left the little angel in her daddy's arms and drove to the airport, where my flight turned out to be delayed for over an hour due to earlier weather in said other, known-for-horrible-weather Midwestern city. Okay, it's Chicago. I finally arrived there around 10:30. My friend S. came to pick me up and drove me around the city from the south side to get to a northern suburb. It took about ten years. Okay, it was an hour and a half. Please, people - why must a metro area be so large???

Anyway, the weekend was great. With most of the spouses left at home, we girls hung out and drank (except C., of course) copious amounts of alcohol, smoked the occasionally ciggie and practiced other such debauchery. In fact, it was a little twilight zone to realize I was hanging out with the same people and doing pretty much the same things I had done ten years ago, except now I have a little angel, C. is eight months pregnant and almost everyone is married. But for a few hours, I kind of forgot about all that. For a few hours, I remembered all the people I have been that led up to the one who cried on the way to the airport because the baby wasn't in the car.

My beloved called at 8:15 the next morning. He had been up since six, had fed the little angel, changed her and was driving to church. I was blearingly hung-over and wishing for a large glass of water in my sleep. In my sleep-induced stupidity, I could barely make out who he was, what baby he was talking about and why there was a cat other than Sybil sitting on my feet. Once I remembered, though, I was achingly lonely for the little angel and quite frustrated I was still in Chicago.

This weekend, I guess, was a lesson in how many people we can be at once, and how odd it is when several realities slam together like railroad cars at a changing station. I'm glad the one I'm living in now seemed the most appealing when it was all said and done.

I have long known that people don't read. Ask the average American the last book he or she read, and you will most likely get a confused response followed by the title of one of High School's Greatest Hits. Maybe, if you're lucky, you'll get a Danielle Steele freak. And for packaging, the same holds true. Maybe people read the cereal box in the morning, maybe they don't. Incessant legal disclaimers have brainwashed us into believing that all small type is worthless.

As an online editor of sorts (okay, I'm really a product manager, but does that say ANYTHING about my job duties?), I spend hours trying to think of new ways to word things so that the general public will read it. You'd think I'd have learned my lesson after watching endless usability sessions in which a reasonably intelligent, college-educated adult misses 14-pt. type in blaring red telling him EXACTLY where to find what he is looking for. But oh, no, I made the mistake of typing out directions for the little angel's daycare, which I will be referring to from now on as "Oz." It's a nice, oddly-colored place to visit populated by people with no heart, brain or courage, but there's no place like home.

You're wondering how this all ties together. Well, one of the reasons I was so upset about the little angel's first day in Oz, when they DIDN'T FEED HER FOR FIVE HOURS, was that I had taken the trouble to painstakingly type up a cute, little instruction sheet containing helpful hints regarding feeding (feed her more than once a day, people), how to make her stop crying (I'm a veteran after playing "Why Are You Crying?" every day for twelve weeks), when to give her tummy time (not right after you load her up with Liquid Sleep, or it will come pouring back out just like a twenty-one-year-old after the seventeenth Goldenschlager shot) and the like. DID THEY READ IT? NO. Did the old lady who asked me this morning, "Are you sure you want me to wake her up every three hours to eat?" even know it existed? NO. NO, YOU MORON, I DON'T WANT YOU TO TIME HER FOOD LIKE NURSE RATCHED. I JUST DON'T WANT YOU TO LET HER STARVE.

People don't read. Not you people, of course, you are reading right now, and how bright you are! You are probably one of my beloved, literate friends! I, of course, am referring to the masses, and the staffers of Oz. Okay, I'm done now.

Well, it's my first week back working for the man. Here are the things I am learning this week:

1) There is a special, eighth level of hell especially reserved for new mothers who have to leave their young babies at daycare. I used to smile sweetly when a new mom would tell me she cried every day for a week when she had to leave her little angel at daycare for the first time. I thought it would feel like when I have to board Sybil at the vet's when we go home for Christmas. I did not realize it would feel more like someone had borrowed one of my limbs for a few hours and told me to function like a normal, smiling human being without it while my heart crawled into my little toe and cried.

2) Just because you have a little angel does not mean everyone you care about will be able to drop all their plans and rearrange their lives to celebrate her milestones with you. Hmm, I thought - how can they not all be as fascinated with her eyelashes as I am? BECAUSE SHE IS NOT FLESH OF THEIR FLESH, that's why. So I need to get over my disappointment when people can't make it to events I deem important. Suddenly, I realize the handiness of the nuclear family, and more importantly, the husband. Before he was a fun guy to vacation and canoodle with, but now I realize he is also the only other person in the entire world who is as excited about the little angel as I am. No wonder people place so much importance on family to the sacrifice of jobs, hobbies and friendships. This was all new news to me, who has always considered her close friends to be extensions of self. What, we're different people? I thought. Well, yeah, and that's okay.

3) Ironing is overrated.

I was just upstairs a little bit ago reading the little angel books, trying to give her time to want the rest of her bottle. We read a few we'd gotten from friends with her name in them, then we read The Giving Tree, by Shel Silverstein. The Giving Tree was one of my favorite books when I was a little girl, but I thought the tree was pretty stupid, I admit. I mean, she just gave that ridiculous little boy everything he wanted! Even in the end when she was nothing but a stump!

Today, though, as I got to the end part, I finally got the subtext that escaped me as a child. With the little angel belching liquid sleep right down her adorable Baby Gap overalls, I started bawling. I wanted my mommy. I finally got it. The book is about respect. The little boy doesn't really respect the tree for most of his life. He loves the tree, and he's happy the tree will give him unconditional love even when he takes everything she has, but he doesn't really respect the tree until the end. In the end, he realizes he has taken everything from her, and he realizes all she needs is his time and attention. And he gives it to her. Shel may have intended something else - as a writer, I realize most people interpret stories as they want to, hell's bells with what the writer intended - but that is what I now take away from this book. As children, we don't really respect our parents until we get older. With awareness comes respect, and you really can't have one without the other.

A lot of people have asked me what the most important thing is for keeping the marriage alive with a writhing mouth-child taking up most of your time. I think respect is probably the short answer. It's so easy to get tired (and you have not experienced "tired," I now understand, until you have had interrupted sleep for more than six weeks running) and snap at your beloved. It's easy to blame him for the stitches, the pain of labor, the excruciating pain of nursing, all of the things he didn't have to do to bring this little thing into the world. It's easy to hate him when he stops for gas on the way home when you have been playing Primary Caregiver for the last 14 hours. And it's even easier to hate him for not making enough money to let you stay home with your little angel instead of going back to the cruel, faceless working world. But if you truly respect each other, you realize he is just as tired as you are, and just as confused, and he realizes you are not joking when he sees your tender chest area blister and bleed as you bumble through breastfeeding.

I wonder how many other children's books I never really understood? I guess I'll find out soon.

My husband informed me a week ago that we have a mouse. An icky, poo-dropping vermin has invaded the little angel's pristine environment. Okay, there were already a few hairballs. And some dust. But otherwise, very pristine.

My husband stalked the mouse for days, first by insisting we get rid of the candy jar and sealing the cat food, then by installing peanut-butter-infused traps wherever we found little turd evidence of the rodent. "Here, mousie, mousie," my husband would trill lightly. "Come on out and fight like a man."

Then it seemed to go away. Until last Friday, when my friend J. and her baby were here. J. had her son, also J., on the floor changing his little diaper. I was watching, fascinated by the precautions one must take when one has an always-armed little BOY, when I saw movement in my peripheral vision. Out from under the armoire crawled a fat, gray mousie!

"Get the baby off the floor!" I screamed with the authority of a firefighter, a middle-school principal, Donald Rumsfeld on a good day. I scooped up the little angel and threw her, bouncy seat and all, on the dining room table and ran to the kitchen for a proper mousie-entrapping device. I couldn't find a hand grenade, so I grabbed a colander instead.

"Sybil, get the mouse!" cried J., dangling her baby and dancing back and forth along the top of the couch. My 15-year-old cat, Sybil, took one look at the mouse and ran for the hills. She is useless. I didn't even care if she KILLED the mouse, I just wanted her to scare it away by acting all badass and cat-like, but oh, no, she is a first-class freeloader. More on that at a later date. Bad kitty.

I threw the colandar on top of the mouse, who was apparently either too stunned or too drugged from slurping D-con in the basement to move.

"What if he can move the colander?" said J., still on the couch.

"Good thinking," I replied, and added a pinecone-stuffed vase to the top of the colander.

"What if he can breathe through all those holes?" said J., still on the couch.

"Right-o," I said, retrieving a plastic bowl fit for suffocating mousies from the kitchen, and inserting it between the colander and the vase. At this moment, my friend C. arrived with her baby, N. A veritable vermin extravanganza was playing out for all of my new-mommy friends, and I was helpless to rid our baby playground from rodents. What a good friend I am!

So I did what any normal, strong, independent woman would do. I called my husband and shrieked, "Get in the car right now and come home and kill this mouse!"

And of course, he did. My hero.

I am a control freak with no control. Sounds kind of like the opening line to a Sting song, doesn't it? Prior to having the little angel, I often succeeded in holding onto control over my life. I've had at least two jobs since 2000 and during that time managed to attend graduate school a few nights a week, get through the whole program, write my thesis and emerge on the other side. I planned my wedding on my terms (poor Ma). I had my own company. Everything was going along swimmingly.

Now, there are several things I can't control. I can't control how fast she grows, for instance. The little family is set to fly from KC to Portland, Oregon at the end of July for my cousin B's wedding. I am now concerned the little angel will have outgrown the carseat that is supposed to last until she is one by then. I had anticipated checking this carseat through on the plane, then using it in my parents' rental car, easy, peasy. Now I have been broadsided by the sneaking suspicion that at almost three months she is probably almost 16 pounds. What if she hits 20 next month? How am I going to check through a carseat the size of Montana and fit it in a compact rental?

My emotions, as we have already discussed, I can't control, especially when Barry Manilow is involved. (I will never listen to "Melissa" again, or at least not until the little angel is married.) I can't control her moods, either. I can't seem to make my cat stop projectile vomiting on the new rug whenever she feels attention-deprived. I can't control my husband's addiction to major league baseball, even though the Royals have started selling off players like they were so many nonworking lamps at a Friday-morning tag sale.

The result? My control-freak side is mourning the loss of perceived world domination. The side of me that always secretly suspected I did not have it, indeed, in the bag is jumping on the bed. There is a certain peacefulness in being dust in the wind and knowing it. I don't feel nearly so responsible for all the bad stuff that happens, but I'm still just as happy about the good stuff. Funny how that works.