"What will I wear to this party?" wondered Pär. He still doesn't quite get the American Halloween thing of dressing up as something. Or maybe he just doesn't give it much thought far enough in advance. Thus far, his idea of a costume has been to color his hair with some of that super-temporary stuff that comes in a hot pink spray can, and to maybe paint his face green.

I suddenly got hit with a rush of mania. "Hey! Will you let me cut your hair really short and dye it blue? Please? It would wash out after a few weeks."

"No; then I'd be stuck with really short hair," Pär said. "It would look bad unless I put goo in it. I need no-maintenance hair."

"I'd maintain it for you! I'd put goo in your hair and spike it up every morning! It would look great!"

Pär has been through this conversation before, and knows what it means. "Poor honey. Every time you get your period you want one of us to cut off their hair and dye it blue."

"Oh GOD I wish I could cut off my hair and bleach the fuck out of it and dye it any color I wanted, and then a few weeks later when I want it long and back to my natural color again, I could just snap my fingers and have it back! Or hmm, maybe I'll just dye it jet black again. I'd do it in a second if I didn't get so sick of waiting five years for it to grow out." I began to hyperventilate.

"I know, honey," he said soothingly, stroking my shoulders. "It's the problem with having long hair."

"Yeah. But that's why I could cut it all off. It would feel so good to have it about an inch long." I paused and breathed rapidly a moment. My mind skipped a track. The mania left me as suddenly as it had arrived. To my surprise, I discovered I was singing the words "My frogs like to hop around in ponds," to the tune of Eddie Murphy's 1985 hit "Party All The Time."

Pär stroked my shoulders some more. "Thank god your hormonal swings are self-regulating. The scary thing about them is that you always get the urge to fuck with someone's hair. But fortunately, when you're having your period you have no attention span, so you don't usually go through with it."

"My frogs like to hop around in ponds," I sang quietly.