I’ve just been incredibly busy.

I could write about my current work schedule, and the different jobs I’m juggling concurrently in books, television and film, and have a deep discussion about trying to have it all in a town where you’re never done trying to have it all while trying to keep some semblance of a personal life intact.

But instead I’d like to talk about how last night, during a heated Top Model discussion, Stephanie told me I look exactly like Brooke.

“You take that back, Stephanie.”

“Pam! She’s a top model. That means you’re pretty.”

“She’s… that’s… I…. I’m calling Dan.”

“Fine. He’ll tell you. She’s pretty. Right, stee?”

“Brooke is a man.”

“She looks like Pam. We all think so. Anybody could be pretty, Pam. It’s like calling you Giselle.”

“I’m going to pick and choose from the words you’ve told me and rewrite it so all that happened was that you called me really pretty.”

“That IS what happened. Other than the enormous chin, you look just like Brooke.”

“Dan! I’m handing the phone to Stephanie, and then you’re going to tell her I don’t look like Brooke.”

“Hello? …. Yes, she does! No, it’s not insulting. No, it’s not. Fine. Whatever. You don’t know what pretty is, then. Have you seen Pam’s hair? It’s really blonde and pretty.”

Just two hours earlier, Carlos had pointed at my head.

“What did you do to your hair?” he asked.

“Ned, please,” I shouted, instantly covering my head. “I can’t even handle it. Please don’t.”

I looked to Irwin. “It’s going to happen again,” he said.

See, people can’t seem to compliment me lately without it following up with some kind of unintentional insult. Like Stephanie calling me pretty by referring to me as the weirdest-looking Top Model contestant of the season. Or a co-worker who once said I remind her of a girl on 7th Heaven, who you don’t think is pretty until you stare at her for a while. Or the day crew member Solid walked into my office and said, “You look really different today. Like a girl. You’re normally so East Coast cool and jaded and fake punk, but today you look like a woman. It makes it much harder to tell if you’re a lesbian or not.”

Irwin watches it happen time and time again. “Guy,” he always says. “Why do they do that to you?”

So when it happened with Ned last night, I had to hide my face.

“I was going to tell you it looks really good, dick,” he said. “Look how red you’re turning.”

“Please, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for it to be so blonde.”

I ran into Todd at the restaurant last night. “Your hair,” he immediately said. “It’s so blonde. I like it. No, I do. But it’s so blonde.”

Oh, my God. I started to talk about my busy Hollywood life, but instead wrote about people discussing whether or not I’m really pretty or just pretty and how blonde my hair has gotten.

I’m going to stop before my blood turns to pure plastic.