One morning, back when I was a teenager, I woke up with more than the usual amount of heads.
There was my original head, of course – the one on my shoulders, that had been there when I went to sleep. But now there was another, second head, rising triumphantly out of the exact middle of my forehead, a little like an illustration of Zeus giving birth to the Goddess Athena.
Of course, I rushed immediately to the mirror, where I was only slightly reassured to discover that this was not, in fact, a second head, but merely a spot. Oh, but what a spot it was! Although resembling a head in terms of its size and general shape, it had no head of its own, which meant that it couldn’t be deflated by means of squeezing. (Not that I would do such a thing, I hasten to add, for the beauty magazines are forever telling us never to squeeze spots, and of course I do EVERYTHING the beauty magazines tell me. Ahem.)
Instead, it just rose up out of my forehead, loud and proud: it was as hard as a rock, and there was nothing – and I do mean NOTHING – I could do to disguise it. Concealer only seemed to make the spot more prominent, and although I did seriously consider just slapping on a sticking plaster and pretending I’d hurt myself (after all, people are used to me being a clumsy fool, but a second head is just plain alarming), my mum talked me out of this course of action, and so it was that I was forced to go out into the world that day, and for the two or three days that followed, looking like a genetic experiment that had gone badly wrong.
(After two or three days, the Second Head deflated slightly, leaving me merely looking like Buddha, with a red dot in the exact centre of my forehead.)
As traumatic as my time with two heads was, I comforted myself with the knowledge that it was unlikely to happen again. Obviously, though, I was wrong about that, and from that day forth, every time I had a special event of some kind to attend, I could absolutely guarantee that the Second Head would return to attend the event with me, always appearing in the same position in the middle of my forehead, and each time looking even larger and more alarming than the last. The most notable occurrence of the Second Head: my first day in my new job as a journalist, when I was introduced to my future colleges looking like there were two of me.
(Strangely, my method of dealing with these situations has always been the same: I point out the Second Head to people before they have an opportunity to notice it for themselves. And, I mean, I would HOPE no one would actually be insensitive enough to mention it, but on the occasion of me starting my new job, the Second Head was SO prominent and bizarre looking that I felt I had to go around introducing myself to everyone with the words, “Hello, I’m Amber, and no, I’m not deformed, that’s just a massive spot on my forehead. Horrible, isn’t it?”)
Anyway, so birthdays, parties, dates, holidays – all have been marked by me having more than the usual number of heads. In fact, there are some people I only ever see socially who probably think I was born like that, such is the reliability of the Head. Lately, though, a powerful new player has entered into the game I like to think of as “Let’s Spoil Amber’s Fun In Any Way We Can”, and if you’ve been reading this site for the last couple of months, you’ll probably know of what I speak. No, it’s not the Haircut O’ Doom, (although that’s fairly reliable too), it’s the fact that I am guaranteed to get the cold or flu the day before any event I’m expecting to enjoy. See “Our Honeymoon“, “Christmas” and “That Time We Went to Tenerife and I Thought I Had Pneumonia” for evidence of this.
Lucky, I am not. At least, not when it comes to getting through supposedly happy occasions without either feeling like hell or looking like hell.
This Saturday, then, Terry and I had decided to throw a little party for some of our friends. We were both looking forward to seeing everyone, so naturally, as the day approached the main question occupying my mind was this: what would it be this time? Would I be either:
a) horribly disfigured by the coming of a Second Head?
or
b) almost totally incapacitated by the cold/flu/other illness?
Can you guess which one it was, folks? That’s right: IT WAS BOTH OF THEM! A double-whammy! Not only did I wake up on Friday morning with a raspy throat and runny nose, I woke up on Saturday morning with my old friend The Second Head in its customary place in the middle of my forehead! AAAAAARRRRGGHHHH!
I was fairly lucky in that the cold didn’t really get into its stride until yesterday, the day after the party (and I think the wine probably helped to numb my senses a little), but as for the Second Head… well, I can only hope our guests were distracted by the fact that all the heating downstairs decided to break a few minutes before the first of them arrived. Hopefully the Arctic temperatures helped distract everyone from the state of my forehead and if not that, well, surely the fact that we were giving them triple shots of vodka for every inch of mixer would’ve done it. I hope so, anyway.
Luckily Terry did manage to fix the heating halfway through the night, and my Second Head packed its bags the next day, meaning that I’ve now entered the “Looking a Bit Like Buddha” phase of my affliction.
I’ve still got that cold, though…
Tagged the cold, the second head, The Ugly
I’ve been tagged multiple times now on the “25 Random Things About Me” meme that’s been doing the rounds on Facebook lately, and so far I haven’t actually done it because, well, “over-sharing” is my middle name, and seriously, what else could I possibly tell you that you didn’t already know?
Oh. Yeah. Stuff about leggings and makeup, obviously. Of course. So, anyway, you asked for it (well, you did if you tagged me on Facebook), so here it is: 25 Random Things About Me That Are Even More Random Than The Other Random Things I Have Written About in the Past:
1. I attach a ridiculous amount of sentimental value to inanimate objects. For this reason, I will probably never sell my car.
2.Also for this reason, I have a number of boxes in my house filled with mementos from holidays and other good times.
3. I have no idea what some of them are supposed to represent now.
4. Strangely, though, I am ruthless about clothes and the very second I start to go off something, I will want to get rid of it and free up the space for something else.
5. Except for all those bags of clothes in the attic. Clearly I’m not quite ready to give those up yet.
6. I get very depressed about birthdays (mine) and have done since I was about 15 years old.
7. I own a pair of shiny leggings.
8. No, I have never worn them.
9. I do sometimes wear normal leggings, though, and I don’t really care what you think about that, so there!
10. I am not in any way a foodie, and if I lived alone I would live off things like toast and cereal quite happily. Especially if the toast had beans on it.
11. When I was young, I wanted to be a singer when I grew up.
12. Which was a bit weird, because I am almost completely tone deaf.
13. In primary school, I went so far as to enter a talent contest, in which me and a friend sang “Somewhere Over the Rainbow”.
14. We did not win.
15. I do not have a favourite film, book or song and never know what to say when people ask me to name those things. Which actually happens much more often than you’d think.
16. Without makeup, I look like a completely different person.
17. And also like a very ill person apparently – on the couple of occasions I turned up at work without makeup, my bosses have always tried to send me home because I look so “ill”.
18. When people see me in flat shoes/bare feet for the first time, they can never quite get over how short I am. I’m 5’3”, but am rarely seen without heels.
19. When people first meet me, they almost always point out that my name is Amber and I ALSO have “amber” coloured hair. They seem to think this is new information they’re giving me, and that I will be as amazed as they are by it.
20. No, I was not named after my hair colour. Which is generally the second thing people say to me.
21. Sometimes I have to talk myself out of getting another puppy.
22. Or a kitten, even.
23. I have applied for the Green Card Lottery (to be able to live and work in the USA) twice now.
24. I never did have much luck with lotteries, though.
25. I totally can’t think of a number 25. My bad.
I’m not going to tag anyone, but feel free to consider yourself tagged if you really want to do this too!
Tagged memes
Does anyone else ever get that thing where you go somewhere in your car (the local mall, say) and when you come back a couple of hours later, it’s SO COLD both of the locks on your car doors have frozen solid? So solid that you can’t even get your key into either one of them, never mind prise the door open with your fingernails, like you did last time?
So you drop your bags, containing the shiny new bikini you just bought (because you are stupid, and therefore exactly the kind of person who goes out and buys BIKINIS in February. When it is snowing) on the frozen ground, and then you drop YOURSELF onto the frozen ground too, onto your knees, in fact, and you pray to the God of Cars. “Please GOC,” you say, “Let the doors be opened, because this car park is dark and cold and I’m all alone in it, except for the crazy old man who will surely turn up any second now to torment, and possibly kill me. Also, this new bikini won’t be much use in the snow.” Maybe you even say a few “Open Sesames” at this point, who knows.
But it doesn’t work. The doors remain resolutely frozen, and no matter how hard you pull and yell and try to force the key into them, they will not budge. But wait! Wait! There is a can of de-icer in the car boot! If only the lock on the boot will open for you! Oh, sweet, merciful Jesus, it WILL! And there is your de-icer! Hallelujah, you are SAVED!
So you skip like a lamb (albeit a clumsy lamb. That is wearing high heeled boots on an icy day.) back to the driver’s side door and you spray your de-icer like there is no tomorrow. You spray, and you spray, and then you spray a little more. And it does not work. The door is still frozen solid, so you mosey on round to the passenger door to try your luck there, casting furtive glances over your shoulder as you go, fully expecting to see a stooped and sinister shape shuffle into view in the deserted car park (did I mention that the car park is also pitch dark? And that soft flakes of snow have started to fall?) and start making its way towards you. “Ya’ll need some help there?” the stooped figure will ask (because in your foolish head, you are now apparently living in Hicksville, USA, as well as being stranded in a frozen car park in the dark), before bludgeoning you to death with the crowbar he was hiding up the back of his filthy trench coat the whole time. When your body is finally found, it will still be clutching the carrier bag containing the new bikini. It is a mystery that will puzzle your friends and family for months, until they finally remember that you always were a bit wrong in the head anyway.
Anyway.
You spray your de-icer on the passenger side door, to the point where you actually start to get high from the fumes. But the door does not open. So you shuffle back round to the driver’s side, and you rinse and you repeat. And then you do it again. And maybe once more for luck.
Finally, success! The passenger side door succumbs to your mighty efforts, so you throw your bags into the car, and you climb in, snagging your thigh really painfully on the handbrake as you do so, and making a mental note NOT to buy a coupe next time. Then you realise that, why, the snow that has fallen has formed a solid crust on all your windows, so you must get right back out again to scrape them!
First, you try opening the driver’s door from the inside, using the very scientific method of throwing your body against it like a lunatic in a padded cell. Needless to say, this makes absolutely NO DIFFERENCE to the door whatsoever, so you’re forced to once again climb across the central console, this time snagging your OTHER thigh really painfully on the handbrake. You spend a few unhappy minutes scraping down the car, and getting your coat soaked in the process, before repeating the whole process once again, with the passenger door and the handbrake. GOD.
Now, I know what you’re thinking: you’re thinking that after all of that, what would’ve been really funny would be if the car decided to pull its “stalling at low speeds” trick again on the way home. I thought so too. In fact, I thought of little else all the way home, but actually, after my ill-fated trip to the gym last week the car was sent to the naughty step, and has never done that again. In fact, if you asked it, I bet it would say it has NEVER done that, no siree!
I had to climb out of the passenger door when I got home, though. At least I will have matching bruises on both thighs. And hey, it is a really cute bikini!
Tagged car wars, the weather, Things I Bought
Although I didn’t mention it on this blog (because that would have made it REAL, and, well, I didn’t really want it to be), at the start of this year I realised I’d been just a little bit “spendy” lately, so I decided to make an effort to cut back on buying clothes. (Not shoes, though. One of my New Year’s Resolutions is to “buy more shoes” after all, and by God, I will do it if it kills me! Or if Terry kills me because of it, whichever comes first.)
I DID make the mistake of telling Terry about my resolution, though, and he made a little “we’ll see about that” noise and then suggested it might be “fun” if I tried to keep track of just how many clothes I DO buy this year. By that I think he meant it would be fun for him, because it would allow Mr “Three Monitors” Man over there to feel all superior about the fact that he DOESN’T buy too many clothes, just lots of monitors and stuff.
Anyway. Because I am stupid, I decided to take him up on his suggestion and I now present the list of Things I Bought in January:
3 pairs of shoes (WIN!)
1 dress
1 skirt
4 tops
And actually, I think this may turn out to be a counter-productive exercise, because when I see it all written down like that, it doesn’t really look too bad, does it? (Maybe I should try to spend MORE? Food for thought, there…) Especially when you consider that one pair of shoes was in the sale for £10, all of the tops were cheap basics, like long-sleeve t-shirts and vest/tunic things, that are actually essential to life.
All the same, resolution for February: buy less than that.
(Let’s just ignore the fact that yesterday? I went shopping. That doesn’t really count, though, because I only bought gym clothes and I HAD to buy gym clothes because I was in danger of being mistaken for a homeless person every time I tried to exercise.)
Also: it’s been snowing here for the past 24 hours now. I feel I have to mention this because it’s been more or less the only topic of conversation on Twitter and Facebook all day today, and I’m starting to feel left out because I’m apparently the only person in the world who doesn’t get super-excited by the snow. I hate the snow. It’s cold and wet and it makes driving dangerous, and when you work from home ANYWAY, you don’t even get a snow day. Bah, humbug.
Oooh, also: Terry has been giving the blog a bit of a facelift. Isn’t it pretty? Say it is pretty.
Tagged clothes, Things I Bought
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