While I Was Away

I hope you all had a restful three-day weekend, full of presidential memories and the purchase of at least one major appliance or mattress. As has become our custom, my little family joined up with four other little families to make our annual Presidents' Day trek into the mountains. There was plenty of snow and frolics therein, and plenty of time to drift lazily off to sleep with that new John Irving novel resting comfortably on one's chest. Did I mention that, including my son, this crew consists of nine boys - ages six through twelve? This means that the couch-dozing moments are relatively few, but still savored nonetheless.
Meanwhile, back here at my Internet connection, Britney Spears has shaved her head! I only became aware of this awesome media event this morning as I began packing to go home. There was a little television on the corner of our dresser, and it was turned on, ostensibly, to tell me what the driving conditions would be on Interstate 80 between Reno and Oakland. Instead I found myself staring at the Today show, with their parade of experts making conjectures as to just why "Troubled pop starlet Britney Spears took reinvention to an extreme this weekend." How long had I been away? When I left, she was just a single mother who had checked in and out of rehab after a flurry of excesses following the breakup of her marriage to white rapper and Super Bowl commercial star, Kevin "K-Swiss" Federline. From the AFP: "Spears's post-marriage party life has been documented in pictures of her nightlife in New York, Los Angeles, Miami and Las Vegas, famously without panties." I suppose at this point in history, the fact that she was not photographed in NASA diapers, she's probably ahead of the game.
But back to the hair - I shave my head once every three months and no one has suggested that I may be on the verge of a nervous breakdown. It is also true that I have never sold seventy million albums, and my salacious bumping and grinding has not made MTV's Total Request Live - not even once.
She used to be a Mousketeer, for Walt's sake. She's twenty-five years old. She's got two new tatoos and a shaved head. I think my weekend was better than hers.