Someone pass that woman a razor!

The 15th of March might have been an ordinary day for you. So ordinary in fact that you might not even have noticed the little sucker pass on by.

But I noticed it.  Oh yes, I did.

I noticed it because it was the day my 3rd book was due to my publisher. Perhaps some backstory is needed here; Grand Central Publishing bought 3 of my books recently. Two of which they have read, one they have not. And the 15th March was when I had to hand in this book. And because they had not read it, and they loved the other two, the pressure was on. And I did not handle the pressure in a very ladylike manner, at all. 

In fact, the pressure reduced me to something vaguely resembling a Neanderthal. The first thing to slip was my attire. In my single-minded, obsessive pursuit of this deadline I began forgetting to get dressed in the morning. I rolled out of bed in my pajama’s, rolled out the house, across my little lawn and into my office- still in my pajama’s.

The next thing to disappear was my hair brush. Soon I began walking around looking like Cyndi Lauper’s long -lost love child that had been raised by apes in the Amazon  since being dropped off there in the mid-eighties to avoid scandal. My hair got so big that  it began attracting small items; my glasses, pens and pencils and finally small woodland creatures that decided to use it as a nest.

And then, as the sleepless, stressful, cuticle-biting, chocolate-binging-eating, energy-drink-consuming days passed, I began to forget to shave. All desire to remove unwanted hair had left me. I had almost forgotten that such hair-removal devices even existed. First, my legs started sprouting hairs and then my armpits exploded forth with an abundant hairy bounty! But the worst part… was that I hadn’t even noticed it!

That’s how little attention I was paying to anything outside of my book (my husband- bless his soul- had probably pretended not to notice). I only became aware of my own hairiness when standing in the checkout queue at my local grocery store. I’d raised my arm to scratch my head (it was probably the small rodents causing it to itch) when I saw a man look at me in horror (more so than usual).

You see, the man had just come face-to-face with my unshaveness. He probably thought I was one of those bra-burning, freegan-feminists that’s into free-bleeding and shooting men in the balls. I vowed right there and then that when I got home I would shave immediately…

Only I didn’t. I forgot again, because whilst driving home I solved a plot issue  and rolled right back into my office and carried on typing in all my glorious hairy-ness!

p.s- I have since shaved. Although I am currently relapsing, as I chase a 1 May deadline.