The squeamish may want to skip my gruesome detailing of this morning's events. Just warning you now that this post isn't the usual whimsical philosophical riddle.

I haven't had much of a will to do anything lately, mostly because I have once again come down with the dreaded sinus infection.

I keep telling Berta that I should have my sinuses removed, but a sinus is actually a body cavity, meaning that it's an empty space. And how do you remove an empty space? Pack it with chewing gum, I suppose.

This morning at around 5:55, just before the 6am alarm usually goes off, I woke up to what I thought was a runny nose. Oh, great. I rubbed my nose with my hand to "check for leakage". And in the half-lit bedroom, I noticed that the liquid on my hand was a bit darker than I expected.

By the time I got to the bathroom to effectively deal with the issue, both hands were covered in blood. I looked like I just got finished stabbing someone to death.

I have to say this is the first time this has happened. Usually it's just a little bit of bloody snot, if that. Usually it's just the cold medicine that causes it. Today, I'm wondering how much blood I swallowed while I was sleeping.

I always had my suspicions, but I am now fairly certain that the sight of large quantities of my own blood isn't something I'm going to need to worry about. That is to say, I need not worry about freaking out over the blood itself. The feeling is more one of, "Oh, look, lots of blood. Great." Years of gory movies have desensitized me, I guess.

Maybe I was just tired. Perhaps I would have freaked out more if I was more awake.

Dropping off Abby at school, I wonder about the wealth among the people that take their kids to school there.

These days, caring for a kid is not the cheapest of endeavors. They need clothes and food at minimum. Medical care is important. And the cost of daycare can be killer. So it's not really surprising that half of the cars in the parking lot at Abby's daycare school are a Lexus.

The thing I was noticing in particular on this icy morning is something about the other kinds of cars in the lot. Having spent a good ten minutes scraping the ice off of my car this morning, it occurred to me that even after all of that effort, the rest of my car (the non-glass parts) my car was still covered in a thing sheen of ice.

I looked around at the other cars in the lot and noticed that even the less expensive cars didn't exhibit this feature. The only other cars in the lot that were icy were the school's own minivans.

From this, I can draw the conclusion that these folks probably all park their cars in garages. This is an interesting tidbit of knowledge to tuck away about the uppercrusty class that we've fallen in with while trying to get better daycare for our kid. It explains a lot about why I don't feel like I fit in with these people.

I know that there shouldn't be any real difference between people who have money and those who don't have a lot, but I'm wondering if that's just a weird lie that the slowly evaporating middle class tells themselves to keep from crying themselves to sleep. Socially, I'm not going to be involved with people of better means. I'm not even really interested in what they do socially. At the same time, I enjoy the civility that is present in their social circles.

Later on my drive to work (after passing a truly horrific ice-induced road accident) I stopped at the Wawa in town for my morning soda. All of the cars in the lot had unscraped ice on their hoods. There were guys standing in the lot in work clothes - overalls and boots - sucking down coffee and speaking in the local Mexican's broken Spanish. It's a completely different social stratum.

And then compare that to the Turkey Hill convenience store across town near my office- The people in there rarely bathe, hardly shave or style their hair, are often obviously the unfortunate victim of their mother drinking during pregnancy, and all too frequently stop for $5 of gas, a $3 pack of smokes, and $10 in lottery scratch-offs.

The more often I find myself stopping at Turkey Hill for their cheap and delicious personal pizzas, the more I wonder whether I am an honorary member of the social outcast group. Do I have any hope of hobnobbing with the "social elite" parents of the kids at Abby's school?

It's weird to think about because every so often the parents at Abby's school behave as though they can smell the Turkey Hill on me. "You've been messing around down with the low people again, haven't you?" And oddly, I'm not really thinking that way, about "low people".

I look at those people and think that it's unfortunate that we all don't have the same opportunities in life, but we all make of it what we can. Some choices I don't agree with (smoking, lottery as a lifestyle, lack of basic grooming) but those are so often the indicator of ones pride in himself. Is the point of failure the point when you give up trying to be better than what you are? Who decides what's better, anyway?

In the meantime, I worry that Abby's friends will want to play with Abby at home. And when the parents drop off their kids, they'll see the little home we've made - the one that we've done as best we can - and that'll be the last play date between their kid and Abby. At least, the last one that's at our house. The word will migrate around the "superior" social circles, and the sand will shift. Abby will have a new set of friends - one more appropriate to our means, but perhaps less appropriate to her aspirations.

I guess our new house had better have a two-car garage.

Principally, the decor of the house is left to Berta. I believe this is how it should be, because of the two of us, she is the artistically talented one, and I am the artistically void one.

That said, there must be a certain level of trust that when she goes to decorate a room, it's going to look presentable not just to her and the people that come into our home, but to me, too.

Berta has done a wonderful job with every room she has redone in our house. We (mostly her) have repainted practically every room in the house since we moved in. She has done a lot of sanding, painting, second coats, touch-ups, and sealing in this old house, and it all looks great.

But when she and Abby returned from ACMoore the other night, she had an evil plan that was bound to ruin my comfy home decor bliss.

The trend actually started a few days before when Berta replaced my impromptu shower curtain in the upstairs bathroom with more formal accoutraments.

When she was away in Ireland, I finished off the work in the upstairs shower, including attaching the new spigot and putting up a cheap, temporary, ugly-as-sin shower curtain I got at KMart. The intent was always to replace the curtain, and Berta had designs on outfitting the bathroom with its own color-coordinated towels.

Months later, Berta informs me that she bought the towels and washcloths and such, including a new shower curtain. And they're yellow. When I say "yellow", I really mean "canary yellow that is so bright that the sun looks dim in comparison".

Well, alright. I can live with yellow.

But apparently the bathroom needed an additional "something". So Berta returned from the store with some matching ("blinding like the face of God"-yellow) artificial flowers. She arranged them in a pot and put them on the toilet. And I admit, they look nice there, even if they do sometimes slightly get in the way of business that is transacted at that location.

But this opened the flood gates.

With Abby's help, Berta returned from ACMoore with bunches of flowers and started leaving pots of them all over. They're in the living room. They're in the downstairs bathroom. They're in the kids' playroom.

Moreover, and this is the camel's backbreaking straw: There's one on my dresser.

"What's the big deal?" You ask. Well, I'm looking around at the slowly growing flora, and wondering if there's any masculinity to be found in our house. Certainly, the last bastion of manliness is in the computer room, whose abundant wires, role-playing game tomes (Oh, no! They've been moved!), and collectible action figures say, "This is the room of a male."

But all the other rooms inthe house are nicely decorated and furnished. Yes, it looks nice. Yes, I want to project this kind of finished image to guests. But man. Throwpillows, couch covers, pressed flowers in glass frames, flowers in vases and pots...

Where's the leather couch? Where is the impressionist/cubist print art? Where are the dark colors? Where's my Lay-Z-Boy?!

Riley and I will need to seek out space in our new house and claim it so that it doesn't get attractive but feminine floral wallpaper.

We (Roberta and I) didn't do anything special for each other for Valentine's Day. Abby had a lot of preparation, though. They had a valentine party at school, and there was entirely too much candy exchanged in addition to both prefab and custom valentine cards. When do kids lose interest in this practice?

After dinner we watched The Princess Bride, which seemed appropraite for being a romantic comedy. Abby enjoyed the movie, I think, but Riley (who we put to bed just after the movie started) and I (who was laying on the livingroom floor) fell asleep before the end. The girls made heart-shaped decorated cookies late into the night, and I think Abby went to bed around 11pm, which is much too late for her. But the cookies look tasty.

Our dinner was the special surpise for the evening. Those guys at Bravo across town where we get our pizza sure are an interesting bunch. I don't think there are any restaurants around with that much character. Salud!

Once again it's time for... Is it just me? The gameshow where I complain about some issue that everyone deals with, and you all weigh in with your opinion on the matter.

This episode's topic: Haircuts.

I know that there are many differences between the male and female hair treatments. Most men I've met would rather find the cheapest barber they can ("Uncle Lou only charged me $3 -- Sure, he's nearly blind and only has the use of one arm, but... cheap!") and women seem to head for the more frilly places ("I was going to drive home right after my hair appointment, but I had too many of their free mimosas, so I went shopping instead"). This is a hasty generalization that I'm sure will earn me no respect for having written it.

Nonetheless, I must admit to a certain affinity to a $30 salon hair-do. As I was explaining to Berta, if you find the right stylist, there's definitely something to the scalp kneading that occurs during the shampooing phase. It nearly triggers that blissful reaction in me that you see with some dogs when you scratch them in just the right spot. Moving on...

The reason I bring up this whole hair issue is because I had mine mostly chopped off yesterday. And during the process, as usual, the stylist wanted to know how I wanted my hair done. Allow me to pose this question to the guys in the audience: Do you really know what to say to answer this question?

I find that I am frequently and inexplicably flustered upon the asking of this question. What do I want my hair to look like? I'm not really sure -- I just want it to not be as long as it is because it's a pain to manage.

I'm not averse to long hair. In high school and college I had hair longer than any woman I know. It's just that weird in-between stage that makes growing it out too difficult and has me returning to the hair salon all-too-infrequently.

So I've been told that I like a "number 4" on the sides. Does it seem strange to anyone else that I would order a haircut by number? I guess it's difficult to describe my own vision for my hair, but somehow specifying the blade guard length on the razor used to trim my hair doesn't sit well with me.

I suppose that it really is frustrating for stylists when a client comes in and says, "I have hair. I don't want all this hair, and I don't really care what it looks like as long as 1) I don't have to spend more than 5 minutes messing with it in the morning and 2) I don't look like Uncle Lou cut it." I feel like my head could be a solid block of marble, ready to be chiseled into a masterpiece of a sculpture. Or something. They don't seem to appreciate that they are free to explore their own artistic vision using my head.

It seems that I have also not gotten down the hair cutting small-talk:

"Whereabouts do you work?"
"Over in Thorndale."
"..."

Ok, it's not as bad as that, but I find that when I'm seated under the waterproof nylon hair clipping shroud that I have usually just gotten out of work and I'm still thinking about what I'm going to do when I get back near the computer that I had left early so that I could experience the inconvenience of the removal of all that blasted extra hair. So yeah, I'm not exactly in the mindset of a person who is getting their hair cut. Asking me generic small-talk questions will undoubtably get you the most terse response possible. My brain may be under all that hair, but my mind is elsewhere.

Of course, my favorite hair cutting small-talk question of all time is, "So it's been a while since you've had your hair cut?" Yes. Otherwise, I would have just been here, and I'm certainly not one of those neurotic N-Sync/Vanilla Ice-looking boys. Indeed, I actually have a life, and I try to involve hair in it as little as possible. Of course, I can't say that because they take offense to it for some reason (oh, no, you go ahead and try it and see how that works out for you when they've got scissors near your ears), so I usually stick with the old standby: "Yes, I'm so busy with work that even scheduling time for this is a problem."

Also - and I'm totally stereotyping here, but I have yet to find it to be untrue - I can't talk to hairdressers about computers. Can't be done. The first thing out of their mouths is usually, "I hate computers, especially the one we have here." Those geek readers familiar with this phonmenon know the pat response, right? "Yeah, yeah, me too." Otherwise, it's a whole can of worms you're opening with someone who has no experience with computers other than as a frustrated user, who is wielding cutting implements near your brain.

I'm sure some of you are thinking, "Ok, yeah, that's funny, but nobody's really going to cut you for saying things like that." You would be surprised. I was cut by the same lady twice in the same sitting. The first time, I assumed it was an accident. Yeah, right. Check out the ear scar; battle wounds from my time in the pneumatic chair of death.

I think if you're going to take away a theme from this post, it should be: "Be nice to people while they're cutting things off your head." Whether it's for this reason or I just feel generous, I way overtip. Consider it a thank-you for putting up with my lack of small-talk skills and inability to describe a simple thing such as a haircut. See? We're both inept to each other!

Here's what I think I would really be into: At the Borgata casino there is a real old-fashioned barber shop that gives haircuts and hot foam shaves with real straight razors. I would be so into that. There's a place in Exton that looks like it does the same thing, and the place seems really swank from the outside. The waiting area has a pool table, if that tells you anything. Hmm... I wonder if they server liquor and cigars; it seems like just that kind of place.

So there you have it. Is it just me that has these hair styling issues? Or is this a common thing?