So, I had intended to do a little update every day this holiday, but as time has gone on and the wireless network in the house has become dodgier, I’ve found myself thinking “to hell with that” and heading off to lie by the pool instead.
Suffice to say, then, that we’ve been having a fabulous time. I’ve been here so often that it feels almost like coming home, especially given that it’s been a few years since I was last here. Despite that, Florida is reassuringly familiar. The sun is still hot enough to fry you (which is great after the non-summer of Scotland), the people are still friendly, the shoes are still cheap… What more could you ask for?
So far we’ve “done” Epcot (it’s been a while since I was last there, and it was fab), been to Disney’s boardwalk (which is one of my favourite places in the world ever), lain around by the pool a lot, ate more than is really good for us, and been to Target. Because, you know, you gotta go to Target. So far I haven’t bought any shoes, but I will rectify that soon. No more snakes, and no more planes, though, so everything’s pretty much perfect. I haven’t even had a random act of stupidity or anything, so nothing to see here folks, move along…
Lots and lots of pictures to show you, needless to say, but for now we’re off to St Augustine for the day, so let’s just hope the wireless connection lets me post this…
Well, we are here! And also: alive! The flight almost killed me, there was a snake in the swimming pool of our rental house (Snake! In the pool! Which, OK, is way better than snakes on a PLANE, but given that my mum has a snake phobia to rival my flying phobia, we’re both pretty freaked out round about now) and I’ve been awake for almost 24 hours and think I’m starting to hallucinate a little bit, so I’m going to give in to the jetlag and hit the hay. Here’s to a snake and plane free day tomorrow…
So, we’re flying out to Florida at 3pm tomorrow afternoon, and, it’s like…I really hope we don’t die, you know? Also: we’re flying back really late on the evening on September 10th, which is way too close to September 11th for the liking of someone who is absolutely terrified of flying. I mean, I’m not in the least bit superstitious, but the words "Florida training camps" keep flashing through my mind, and does it seem to anyone else that if there was going to be another big terror attack, the anniversary of the last one might seem like a good time to do it?
Yes, I know, I know: safest form of travel, hugely increased airport security, especially on THAT date, nothing to worry about at all, really. But just in case we do drop from the sky like a stone (OK, totally not helping myself here, am I?) I thought I’d just pop this entry up to say… well, so long, and thanks for all the fish, I guess.
Anyway, the packing is done (and was a nightmare. Did you know I own in excess of twenty five vest tops? No, neither did I, but I do. What on earth am I going to do with them all?!), the house has been cleaned and Rubin has been delivered to the house of his "grandparents", where he will be thoroughly spoiled for the next two weeks. (No Las Vegas for him this time round. He says he just wants to chill out on the down-low this holiday.) All that remains is for me to say goodnight and go and lie awake, staring at the ceiling until it’s time to get up again and go to our doom the airport.
(Despite my recent handbag-buying disaster, we will be taking the laptop (in Terry’s bag, naturally. This is why I married him) but I don’t know how often I’ll be able to get online, so if anything earth-shattering happens to any of you while I’m gone, drop me a comment or an email and I’ll reply if when I get home.)
Remember the time I dyed my eyebrows jet black and then couldn’t go out in public for about a week? Yeah, I learned nothing from that. NOTHING.
I did try tweezing them last night, in a bid to try and make them look a little less… dramatic. So now I have jet black eyebrows THAT ARE ALSO REALLY THIN, like I drew them on with a biro or something. Another pile of holiday snaps, ruined, then. Still, at least I can cross "Benefit Highbrow" off my list of things to buy before my trip…
Speaking of The List (God, I love lists, don’t you? This week I have made three: Thing to Buy, Things to Pack – actually that counts as two lists because technically we have Things to Pack in Suitcase and Things to Pack as Handluggage – and Things to Do), I’ve managed to buy everything on it except for the pony, so we’re actually doing pretty good here. I am, anyway. Terry? Not so much, really, because Terry’s computer decided to get a virus yesterday morning, so he spent the entire day re-installing Windows and having all kinds of virus-related fun, meaning that he gets to spend all of today doing the work he should have done yesterday. Let the good times roll, people!
So, occassionally I like to amuse myself by taking a look at the things you crazy kids type into Google to find this here blawg. Here are some of this week’s, which provide a handy insight into the wrath behind my last post, about Facebook and ginger-bashing. And, you know, a handy insight into how totally freaky some people are…
forever amber blog
Typing www.foreveramber.co.uk will get you here quicker, but hi, hello,
how are you, loyal readers who are Googling JUST FOR ME. Am flattered.
i have red hair, will my baby?
Oh, here we go. I knew it was too good to be true. You had to get started with the whole “red haired baby” thing, didn’t you? Yes, your baby will have red hair. Try not to breed.
how to avoid a ginger haired child
Um, cross the street, maybe? Or no, wait: just don’t go out AT ALL. That way you don’t have to see the ginger children and they don’t have to see you, either. Everyone’s a winner, baby. Also: you’re an idiot – have a nice day, now!
i see stupid people
Yeah, tell me about it, I see them too. In fact, one of them typed the search term right above yours, as a matter of fact…
amber mcnaught
Can we say “stalker”?
how would a red head with freckles avoid having children with freckles?
Freckles are caused by the sun. You would avoid having a child with them by protecting its skin from the sun. You would avoid having a STUPID child, on the other hand, by protecting it from YOU.
should ginger haired people dye there hair brown or blonde
I dunno: should stupid people maybe learn how to spell before hitting up Google, hmmm?
look back in amber
Hey, lookit what you did there! You made a clever pun! I’m TOTALLY going to use that as a post title one day – just so’s you know. Also: I make the jokes around here, ‘kay?
waistband stretcher
Who knew the post about the waistband stretcher would still be getting hits, almost a year to the day since I wrote it?
i hate my mirrored wardrobe sliding doors
Oh God, me too! Man, am I glad Terry broke those bad boys, giving us a cast-iron excuse to get new ones.
amber is a spoiled brat .com
Now hold on one cotton-pickin’ minute there: Amber is a spoiled what now? What’re you calling me? You don’t want to make me angry, you know – we redheads have some MEAN tempers…
can’t take my eyes off you mcnaught
Oh, you! Stop it, I’m blushing 
there was a big wad of wax in my ear is that normal?
Doctor Amber, she say… No. Not normal. Now stop looking it up on the Internet and go see your doctor.
why do they call redheads ginger?
Because they are stupid. Next!
what do people do on honeymoon
Seriously, dude, if you have to ask, I don’t think I can help you…
knew shoes
Please tell me you didn’t mean “new shoes” when you typed this. Oh, you poor thing.
pretty redhead ugly redhead
I’m not going to tell you about this again, you know
ginger phobic t shirt
I mean it…
ugly red head children
OK, one more jibe about redheads and I’m leaving
mean red haired kids
…
Tagged ginger, Gingerism, redheads
Q: Why do redheads take the pill?
A: Wishful thinking.
Q: What do you call a good looking man with a redhead?
A: A hostage.
Q: What do you call a redhead with large breasts?
A: A mutant.
Stop me if you’ve heard any of these before, by the way. I discovered them all by chance, last week on Facebook, where I stumble upon a hitherto untapped source of redhead hatred. “Red hair sucks – I’d rather die!” is the name of the group that initially caught my eye, but a quick search revealed dozens of others, including “Redheads are gingers and they have no soul”, “If you have red hair I’m sorry, but we just can’t be friends” and the short but sour “Redheads suck!” Nice.
Of course, I’ve always known that if assholes could fly, the Internet would be an airport, but it was still a little worrying to discover that prejudice is alive, well and thriving on one of the web’s biggest social networking sites. Facebook is going through a bit of a “media’s darling” phase at the moment, but while most people are probably using it to stalk old school friends and play Tetris Tournament when they
should be working (I know I am), others are apparently using it to try and incite hatred towards that much maligned social group – the gingers.
The problem is that there’s no arguing with these people. Believe me, I tried. I sent a message to one of the more offensive posters on the “Red hair sucks” group. “Hmhmhmhmhm,” came back the answer. We’re
clearly dealing with a powerful set of intellects here, which is kind of reassuring: they’ll never prove that we “have no soul” if they can’t even string a coherent sentence together. “Am kind of dumb,” my idiot correspondent admitted in a follow-up message. Well, you said it…
The other problem with all of this, of course, is that if you are a “ginger”, you’re not allowed to be offended by it. To admit to feeling even a little bit hurt by such overt hatred is to admit to having no sense of humour, because most of this drivel – not to mention the teasing and negativity redheads get in real life – tries to masquerade as “humour”. It’s funny, you see? “Geez, lighten up!” they’ll tell you if you so much as raise an eyebrow at the “hilarious” jokes. “Stop taking things personally! You have to be able to laugh at yourself, you
know – especially if you’re a ginger!” Boom boom! I’d imagine blondes probably feel much the same way about the “dumb blonde” jokes that float around: funny, sure – as long as they’re not directed at you.
As “funny” and “lighthearted” as you may believe it is, though, there’s a serious side to it all, too. How many little redheaded girls (and boys) are growing up believing that they’re fundamentally unlovable and ugly, just because of all of these idiotic comments and oh-so-funny “jokes”.
Is it really OK to make fun of a whole sector of society and call it “humour”, I wonder? Or is it only OK when it’s not about you?
(Note: this is actually a column I wrote yesterday for Dollymix, but I figured I’d post it here, too, seeing as this site still gets so many hits from people who’ve Googled phrases like, “If my unborn child turns out to have red hair, can I kill it?” and the like. Asshats.)
Tagged red hair, redhead
Guys, I walk among you a marked woman. I am a dead woman blogging. The sand, it has nearly reached the bottom of the hourglass of my life. Or, to put it bluntly: I have seven days left to live. This time next week I will be falling to my fiery death, somewhere above the Atlantic Ocean. I am absolutely sure of this, because I? Am frightened of flying. Did I mention I was frightened of flying?
Even although I’m really excited about going to Florida, which is my favourite place ever (this will be my 9th trip, I think. So yeah, we go there a LOT.) I’ve now reached that stage in my preparations where if someone were to come to me and say, "You know what? You could just stay here!" I’d be all, "Yeah, OK, whatever. Who cares that I’ll lose a lot of money on the plane ticket, at least I’ll live to see another day!" So, you could say I’m not feeling too good about the flight right now, or, of course, you could say that I’m absoolutely freaking the hell out here. Only one of those statments would be totally accuate. (Clue: It’s the second one). Last night a plane flew over our house (this happens a lot, of course – we live under the flight path for Edinburgh airport) and it was "Goodbye sleep, hello lying-awake-for-hours-imaging-all-the-different-ways-we-might-die-next-Monday!" GOD.
I blame the pilot who flew Terry and I out to the Canary Islands on our honeymoon. Sure, I was terrified of flying before that, but the whole "skidding sideways down the runway" thing really didn’t help, you know?
So, basically, as far as I’m concered, on Monday? We die. Which kinda makes me wonder why I bothered cleaning the house and washing my hair today, but I guess not even imminent death can change the habits of a lifetime. I really wish I’d just bought those red shoes I saw last week, though. I mean, carpe diem and all that.
I am thinking of going to the doctor and asking for… well, drugs, basically. I’m thinking drugs might help. Then again, they haven’t helped much in the past, so maybe I should just save myself the price of the prescription and buy wine instead? Or whiskey. Whiskey sounds good.
Seven days to go. What should I do with the time I have left, I wonder?
Have y’all got the theme tune to The Office stuck in your heads now? Is it making you good and melancholy? OK, good, for I come bringing melancholy news indeed. Yes, that thing that you probably all knew would happen has, indeed, come to pass.
My handbag arrived this morning.
My laptop does not fit inside it.
So, by now you’re probably thinking one of two things. You’re either thinking "What the hell kind of huge-ass laptop does this woman have?" or you’re thinking "Looks like Amber screwed up with the measuring, huh?" Well, you are wrong on both counts. My laptop is just a little ‘un. The bag, it is big – and technically, should hold the lappy. It doesn’t, though, because the zip? At the top? Is tiny. Tiny. There’s no way in hell my laptop is going in there, which leaves me with a dilemma. Do I:
a) Send it back and get the bag I would have bought in the first place, had I known I was buying an ordinary handbag and not a laptop bag
b) Send it back and buy a laptop bag. Or maybe: no bag, because that would be what a sensible person would do, and sometimes I like to imagine what it must be like to be a sensible person.
c) Do nothing.
The matter is complicated somewhat by the fact that the shop in question will only take the bag back now if I pay them a 15% restocking fee and spring for the shipping. So, if I send it back, I will still lose money. I don’t really enjoy spending money and having nothing to show for it, but at the same time, I can’t really justify paying the re-stocking fee and shipping and the cost of a replacement. So I should just keep it, shouldn’t I? But then, I don’t really like the hardware on it. It looks cheap. In fact, it IS cheap. Which brings me to option D:
d) Email bag store. Explain that hardware is not what I was expecting. Whine. Pout. Hope that they will agree to waive the fee so I can send it back. But then I will have no bag. I want a bag. Why can I not have a new bag?
So, we’ve gone for option D. I will keep you posted, needless to say: I’m boring like that. And to think that just last Friday I didn’t even KNOW I needed a handbag…
For the first couple of years of my freelance writing career, I just didn’t take holidays at all.
To be fair, that wasn’t just because of work: my husband was on kidney dialysis at the time (this was the reason I started freelancing in the first place – so that I could be at home with him but still work and earn money to support us), which made travel very difficult, but even without the health issues, we just wouldn’t have been able to afford it, or to deal very effectively with shutting up shop for a week or so.
Vacations are difficult for freelancers. When you work for someone else, it’s easy: you normally get a certain amount of paid vacation time, and while you’re gone, someone else in the office is there to pick up the tasks you’d normally be doing. Sure, you return to a bit of a backlog, but trust, me it’s nothing compared to what you’ll be dealing with as a freelancer!
When you work for yourself, the biggest obstacle to holidays is the fact that you won’t be getting paid while you’re away. There’s also no one there to pick up your jobs, so you’ll come home to a bulging inbox, an empty bank account, and while you’re gone you’ll be beset with worries: what if that commission you’ve been dreaming of finally lands in your inbox while you’re gone? What if your regular clients are forced to find someone else to replace you while you’re gone, and end up liking that person better? What if new clients don’t want to wait for you to return and go to someone else?
You’re never going to be able to get rid of these worries completely, but there are lots of things you can do to make holidays easier. Tomorrow we’re off on our second foreign holiday of this year, and will be gone for two weeks – so it can be done! Here are a few hints to help you:
1. Set up an email autoresponder or ‘out of office’ message
Existing/potential clients will understand that you’re on vacation, but they won’t understand two weeks of radio silence. A simple autoresponder message stating that you’re out of the office but will be back on ‘X’ date will let them know that you haven’t just disappeared off the face of the planet. You’ll also want to change the message on your answerphone to let callers know when they can expect to hear back from you.
2. Consider employing a virtual assistant service if you tend to get a lot of calls and emails
Autoresponders and answerphones are all well and good, but if you get lots of enquiries and prefer the personal touch for your clients, a virtual assistant will be able to take care of them for you.
3. Give regular clients plenty of advance warning about your plans
No one expects you to work 365 days per year, but your regular clients will appreciate advance warning if you’re going away, so that they can arrange to have someone cover for you if necessary. If you’re really worried about the impact your absence might have, you may also be able to arrange to do some work in advance for them rather than leave it to a temp.
4. Take the laptop – but only if you must!
Personally, when I go on holiday I like to be able to completely forget about work: as a freelancer, there’s a temptation to work every hour that God sends, and to spend vacations hunched over your laptop. Try to resist this impulse: it’s good to get a complete break every so often, and you’ll come back from it with a renewed energy for your freelance career. That said, this isn’t advice I’ve been able to take myself, so when I leave for Florida tomorrow morning, my laptop will be coming with me!
Do you have any other tips for taking holidays when you’re a freelance writer? Tell me about them!
“I am a student journalist and would like to be writing articles to be published in your presitigious magazine. I will therefore be very grateful if you could send me a copy to my postal address below so that I can go through and know the content and the format to follow in wrting and publishing of my ariticles.”
If you’re going to be submitting your writing to a particular publication, it’s always a good idea to get a feel for the publication’s style and format. So this correspondent gets full marks for initiative. What he also needs to do, though, before he even thinks about sending out any more of these emails is to:
1. Learn how to spell “writing”.
2. Learn how to spell “articles”.
3. Learn how to spell “prestigious”.
4. OK, let’s just say “learn how to use the spell checker.”
5. Make sure that the person he’s writing to actually publishes a “prestigious magazine”. We publish a lot of websites, but no magazines that can be posted out to people, I’m afraid. (And even if we did, we’d want to make sure that the potential freelancers at least knew how to spell “article” before we’d consider commissioning them to write one…
|
|
|
