(Taken just a few minutes ago: excuse the dark photo, it’s, er, nighttime.)
NO. Nonononono. NO. It’s almost APRIL. It’s SPRING. Actually, as of Sunday morning, when Daylight Savings Time started in the UK, British SUMMER time has officially begun.
And it’s snowing. SNOWING. And quite heavily, too.
I mean, they DID tell us it would snow this week. The weather people, I mean. And I was all, “Yeah, yeah, whatever! I’m totally switching over my wardrobes this weekend and getting out my summer clothes. I wore a trench coat this month, for God’s sake, so the snow can kiss my ass!”
Well, it looks like the snow decided to KICK my ass instead. I seriously cannot stand much more of this. We’ve just had the worst winter since records began, and it really feels like it’s never going to end. WAAAAAHHHHHHH! Woe is me! Woe! Woe! No, seriously: WOE.
If that snow hasn’t melted by the time I wake up tomorrow, I’m … well, I don’t know what I’m going to do. Cry, probably. And maybe book another holiday.
WOE.
Tagged I hate winter, snow
A couple of people on Twitter have asked me about the Invisalign clear brace I mentioned a few weeks ago, and as yesterday was The Big Day, i.e. the day I got my first brace, I thought now was the perfect time to update about it. Yes, all I need is the encouragement of TWO PEOPLE, and off I go! Hi, both of you!
So! Yesterday I got up bright and early and headed off to the dentist to have a large lump of plastic inserted into my mouth. As Monday mornings go, I’ve had better, but I’ve also had a whole lot worse, it has to be said. The visit started off with an in-depth examination of my teeth and, bizarrely, of my chin and neck. “This is just to check for cancer!” said the dentist brightly, massaging my lymph nodes. Clearly he didn’t get the “Amber is a hypochondriac” memo, but it’s OK, I got the all clear. Phew!
Next we moved onto the insertion of the brace, and actually, it all went much more smoothly than I was expecting. I’d been a little bit worried about how easy it would be to insert and remove the Invisalign: I had images of me standing tugging at it for hours, and ending up with the thing wedged half-in/half-out of my mouth, but while it’s a little bit fiddly, and will obviously take a bit of getting used to, I managed it without too much trouble. Phew, again!
Having got the thing in, I was really impressed by how, um, invisible it is. “Where is it?” asked Terry when I got back into the car after my visit and bared my teeth at him like a vampire. “Are you not wearing it?” Which is really all the evidence you need that yes, it really is unobtrusive. You’d have to be standing really close to me to notice it, and you’d also have to be actively looking for it, so it does live up to its name and reputation in that respect. This is a very good thing, because having spent the past few weeks thinking things over while I was waiting for the brace to be made up, I decided to go ahead and have one on my upper teeth, too. Well, in for a penny and all that…
The good news is that I won’t actually need to wear it for as long as I’d initially thought: the dentist reckons six months will be enough, give or take a few weeks to allow for my three week holiday in June, plus the fact that I wasn’t able to get appointments exactly two weeks apart. (You’re supposed to get a new brace every two weeks, but it’s a really busy dental practice, so some of mine will be longer than that.)
The bad news is that it is a bit of a lifestyle adjustment. So far the brace isn’t causing me any discomfort: it feels a bit odd, sure, and it’s kinda weird to think that I’ll be wearing it 22 hours per day for the next six months (I can’t stop running my tongue over the top of it and thinking, “I wonder how long NOW until I can take it out?”), but hopefully it won’t be too long before I get used to it. No, the main issue is the coffee. Yes, coffee. You see, the Invisalign has to be removed when you eat, and when you drink anything other than water. Now, I’m not too concerned about the eating: I’m actually not much of a snacker (although, having said that, it’s amazing how often since I got it I’ve found myself thinking “Hmm, I think I’ll just eat a… oh.”), and because I work from home, it’s not too big a deal for me to remove it for my main meals and then put it back in.
But the coffee. Oh, the coffee! Coffee is a big no-no when you’re wearing Invisalign, because not only is it likely to stain the clear plastic, the hot liquid could also damage it. But I’m a bit of a caffeine addict, so giving up is going to be hard. I’m determined to do it, because I want straight teeth more than I want a cup of coffee, and also because I’m paying too much for this to not follow the instructions to the letter, but it will be hard. Luckily I don’t have to go totally cold turkey: I can still drink coffee when the brace is out, I just can’t have my usual multiple mugs of the stuff during the day. This will be good for my health, if not my sanity.
Other than that, so far, so good. Well, other than the fact that when I was getting ready for bed last night I was so busy focusing on the important business of removing the brace (to clean my teeth) and then re-inserting it that I totally forgot that other important part of my night-time ritual: removing my contact lenses. Ouchy.
T minus six months to go…
I’ve been a bad blogger this week. Worse than usual, I mean. This time, though, I have a very slightly better excuse than usual. No, really, I do.
You see, at the end of May this year, I’m taking my annual, much-longed-for trip to The Happiest Place On Earth, a.k.a The Sunshine State, a.k.a Oh, Thank God We’re Back, a.k.a. Florida. So far, so exactly the same as every other year, hmm? This year, however, it will be slightly different, because this year we’re going for three weeks rather than two – a fact that has been the cause of great rejoicing in our house, and also the cause of great terror. Because… the business. It needs to keep functioning, even when I’m lying on a beach keeping an eye out for crustaceans, or having my fingers prised off another pair of Louboutins at Neiman Marcus. Previously, on “Oh Crap, How Am I Supposed To Keep My Business Running When I Am Not?” I have achieved this feat by writing all of the posts that would normally appear on the sites during my holiday in advance.
And it has damn near killed me.
This year? I just can’t. I can’t do it any more. Our holiday to the Canaries in December was the last straw. Once again, I worked myself into the ground in the run-up to the holiday, and once again, I spent a large percentage of my time on holiday worrying about how well the dozens of posts I’d been forced to write in a short period of time would go down. Every time I logged in to check the comments, my heart was in my mouth. Every time I got a negative reaction to a post, I started beating myself up for daring to take a holiday, when I should’ve just stayed at home and made sure there wasn’t even the slightest interruption to the sites. And then when I got home, I got an angry message from a reader who was so outraged by my absence from the internet that she had decided to never read my blogs again.
So I started 2010 feeling a bit down about it all, to tell the truth. I felt like no matter what I did, it would never be good enough. No one appeared to appreciate the effort I’d gone to to write advance posts for one blog, but when I DIDN’T bother to schedule posts for another, I got yelled at. It was a thankless task, and I’d pretty much decided that the only solution was to never take another holiday as long as I lived, when Terry stepped in as the voice of reason. He pointed out the fact that had been staring me in the face for a very long time: that the business has now reached the stage where I just can’t do it all on my own – or even with his help – and also, wow, chill the hell out woman, look, here is some wine!
Which is why, as of next week we’re starting to employ freelance writers for The Fashion Police.
(Note: It wasn’t because of the wine. Honestly.)
(Another Note: We’ve already hired the writers, so my apologies if the title of this post was misleading. Still, at least you don’t have to read any more of this long ramble, hey?)
This is a really, really exciting time for us. Bringing in other writers was always part of our long-term plan, but it was always something that felt like it was in the extreme long term (i.e. the I’ll-probably-be-dead-by-then long term), so finally being able to move forward with that is pretty amazing to me. Also, we have some really great writers on board (Take a bow Andrea, Caroline and Fi!) and more lined up for when we need them, so I’m also really excited to see what they’ll come up with.
It’s also kind of scary, in the way that change is always a bit scary. It means relinquishing a bit of the control I’ve had over MY BABY the site in question, and when you’re a control freak, that’s hard. But it’s also really cool, and I’m hoping it’ll be something that will help the business grow, and allow me to be able to take a break every now and then without being constantly glued to my iPhone and, um, running up £30 worth of calls (And by “calls” I mean “connecting to the internet to check my blogs, and also to find out if I really DO look like that girl on Coronation Street, like the mad woman who sat next to Terry on the plane said*”) before I’ve even left the airport at my destination. Which, yeah, is what happened when we went to Gran Canaria in December. Oh, how we laughed when Terry called O2 (my service provider) to tell them there’d been a “mistake” with the billing, and they explained that I’d downloaded a kazillionty-one megs of data WHILE I WAS WAITING FOR MY SUITCASE. Ahem.
Anyway! Onwards! And upwards! Does anyone know where Terry’s hidden my iPhone?
* I don’t, by the way. That woman was mad. She also kept leaning across Terry to poke me in the side and say, “Do you just read AAAALLL the time? Is that all you do?” To which I answered, “No, when I’m not reading I also enjoy eating old ladies who keep wanting to chat while I’m reading.” In my own head, natch.
Remember the time I lost my favourite dress? And also a top?
I think I know what happened to them both. And the reason I think I know what happened to them? This weekend, I almost did it again.
This time around, my innocent clothing victim was a skirt. I’d bought this skirt a couple of weeks ago: it was just a cheap, cotton thing, but I thought it would come in handy for holidays (and yes, it had stripes on it, SO?), so even although it was a size too big for me, I decided to buy it anyway and get my long-suffering mother to alter it for me.
As with the Sorry Tale of the Green Dress, the first part of the plan was executed smoothly. The skirt was delivered to my mum, who altered it successfully and gave it back to me when Terry and I went round there for dinner on Saturday.
You can see where this is going, can’t you?
Well, we had dinner, then Terry and I drove home, where I spent a bit of time tooling around on the internet before going to bed. For some reason, though, as soon I opened my eyes on Sunday morning, the skirt was the first thing I thought of. “Hmm,” I thought. “I don’t remember hanging up that skirt last night, I wonder what I did with it?” I pictured myself siting at the computer the night before, putting Rubin to bed, brushing my teeth… No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t picture the stripey skirt taking part in any of these scenarios.
The more I thought about it, the more I became convinced that something BAD had happened (again), so I got of bed and went to look for the skirt. It was not in the office. It was not in the wardrobe. It was not in my handbag. It was not in the house AT ALL, in fact, and so my fear grew. Had I… ? Could it be…? No, I told myself, absolutely not. Not even I am dumb enough to make exactly the same mistake twice, after all, so surely all we could gather from the absence of the stripy skirt in my life was that I had forgotten to pick it up when I left my parents’ house, and they were, even now, finding it hanging across the back of the chair in their conservatory, and saying, “Look, that dumb-ass of a daughter of ours has forgotten the stripey skirt again!”
The thing about that though, is that, as I’m sure everyone is well aware, by now, I AM dumb enough to make the same mistake twice. And probably three or four times more. So even although I went back to bed to drink my coffee and read a book, as is my Sunday morning tradition, I did so with an unquiet heart, and a strong sense of deja vu. Terry, meanwhile, headed downstairs to begin HIS Sunday morning task of painting our back door red (That was just a one-off, by the way. He doesn’t do that EVERY Sunday. That would be weird.), little realising that we were in the midst of yet another Missing Clothes Crisis.
Which is why he was really quite surprised to find a stripey skirt lying smack in the middle of our driveway when he headed out to put something in the bin later that morning. “Look!” he said, eyes wide in surprise, when he brought the item upstairs to show me. “I found a SKIRT in the middle of the drive!”
For a brief moment, I was tempted to just tell him that, why, the Stripey Skirt Fairy had obviously paid us a visit in the middle of the night! But Terry knows perfectly well that if there’s something covered in stripes lying around somewhere in the vicinity of our property, it’s probably connected to me, so of course, the truth came out, and the conclusion was that I must have dropped it as I carried it from the car to the house the night before.
Luckily, the stripey skirt was none the worse for its night under the stars. The green dress, I would assume, was not so lucky.
From now on, no item of my clothing will leave this house unless it’s on my body. I’ll just have to hope I’m not QUITE stupid enough to manage to lose myself…
Tagged things I lost, things that are stripey
—–Original Message—–
From: Peter’s #1 Fan
Sent: 09 March 2010 04:48
To: Magic Amber
Subject: peter
Where is PETER??? we want peter backl Peter had knowledge and opinions that mattered.
Joan is funny, the others are boring and bland. bring back peter,kate
Peter? PETER? Are you out there, Peter? Because I think Kate wants to speak to you in all lower case, Peter, and she seems to have decided to use me as her intermediary. If you’re reading this, Peter, I’d really appreciate you stepping up to the plate and answering your own Email From Crazy People, and letting me get on with answering mine. You have knowledge and opinions that MATTER, Peter! Use them!
Also, Others? Y’all are boring and bland, BRING BACKL (sic) PETER! Whoever he is.
Tagged email fun, magic amber
I HAD planned a completely different post for today, and man, it would’ve been brilliant! But I’ve woken up feeling like someone tried to drug me in my sleep, so all you get is a photo of the new hat I bought yesterday.
It IS a great hat, though. And stripey! OF COURSE.
(Note: I was just trying it on here – I didn’t walk around with it on. I totally WOULD, though.)
We were at a local antiques fair/indoor market with my parents, as a kind of Mother’s Day outing. It’s a pretty cool place, actually: lots of vintage jewellery (of which I didn’t buy anything, although I was sorely tempted, and will have to go back soon) and, er, other stuff:
I really wanted this:
But it was £50, and I never, ever use the phone, so it would’ve been a complete waste of money. And as you all know, I would NEVER waste money, not even on those boots I’m watching on eBay right now, that I totally wouldn’t be able to wear now until next winter, but which I really, really want. Ahem.
Anyway, Terry actually took these photos for me as part of my Shoeper Shoe Challenge, and there are some more over at Shoeperwoman, should you particularly want to see them. Happy Monday!
Terry and I appear no less than four times in the Google Streetview for our area, which finally went live yesterday. This is the best one:
Weirdly, they face-blurred me, but not Terry. Let’s not think too hard about why that might be…
(The masochistic among you will find Part 1 of this story here.)
When we left our heroine, she was floundering in the stormy sea of “grunge”, wearing Doc Marten boots and a selection of baggy, unflattering clothes, and totally failing to see the irony of “rebelling” against the uniform of one group by adopting the uniform of another. Because she really was THAT stupid. She was also apparently referring to herself in the 3rd person, so she’ll stop that now.
Before we continue the sorry tale of my life in fashion, I did actually manage to unearth another image from my Sullen Teenager era:
 ...and then the wind changed, and Amber's face stayed that way forever Oh, shut up - YOU’D frown too if you were wearing a brown floral PLAYSUIT. Ahem.
(Also pictured: Ted. Who had apparently been drinking again.)
Anyway, when I went to university, I packed all of the aforementioned “grunge” gear (not the playsuit, though. I wasn’t quite THAT bad.), even although, somewhere deep down, I was never really comfortable with that look, possibly because I’m 5’3″, and maxi skirts make me look like a midget starring in a costume drama. I thought that was the kind of thing people would wear at university, though. I imagined we’d all sit around in smoky cafes all day, listening to The Smiths, reading Sylvia Plath and talking about how no one understood us. And actually, I DID do all of those things at university: I just did them on my own, in my bedroom, because everyone else was too busy partying.
The DM boots and grungy clothes, however, lasted one day exactly. Because what I realised when I arrived at university was that this was a place where you could wear whatever the hell you wanted to wear, and be anyone you wanted to be. And I quickly discovered that what I REALLY wanted to wear was very short skirts and very high heels:
Continue reading →
Tagged things that are stripey
From Formspring:
How did your personal style evolve throughout your life?
Contrary to popular belief, I was not born wearing Louboutins and shouting “Bring me a green dress! With a bow! And some stripes! Also: dots! Bring me dots!” Quite the opposite in fact:
Yes, readers, I was once a little boy. My secret is out.
OK, so maybe I wasn’t a REAL boy, although like Pinocchio and George from the Famous Five, I did often behave like one, for in my formative years I was a bit of a tomboy and my interest in clothes extended no further than wondering how many days in a row I could get away with wearing that bathing cap my mum bought me for swimming lessons, but which went just PERFECTLY with a pair of Wellington boots:
(I’m not joking: I refused to take the bathing cap off. I thought I was IT. I was, like, SO EDGY and ahead of my time. If I’d only realised, I could be an up-and-coming British fashion designer with a trademark line in “crazy” by now, but sadly I was too busy pulling worms out of the ground and presenting them to my next-door neighbour as a “gift”. Another promising career ruined!)
Sadly for me, things didn’t get much better, fashion-wise. Some would say not ever, in fact. As I got older (this is the serious part of the post coming up, by the way, so quiet at the back please, and stop rustling those sweets) and reached an age when I was starting to realise to realise that clothes could look NICE as opposed to just providing a good excuse to never have to brush my hair, I was being pretty badly bullied at school. We’re talking parents in regular meetings with the head teacher and considering removing me from school, me being kept behind after class to make sure my classmates didn’t try to kill me on the way home: that kind of thing. And actually, as surprising as it may seem, none of the bullying was connected to my appearance: it was just stupid, petty schoolgirl stuff, but it got WAY out of hand, and it totally destroyed my confidence for a long, long time. One day I left school to find most of my classmates waiting for me outside the gates: they followed me home, surrounding me and hemming me in, while the ring-leaders hit me with rolled-up umbrellas, which were apparently the weapon of choice at the time. Thank goodness guns weren’t legal!
After that, my only real aim in life was to not stand out, and not give people any reason to want to pick on me. This was difficult for me, because I pretty much always stand out, and not JUST when I’m wearing a bathing cap in the street. Once I grew out of the tomboy phase, you see, I started wanting to dress up. It’s always (well, OK, not ALWAYS: see above for evidence) been my instinct to be slightly-to-outrageously overdressed. I tend to feel most comfortable in the kind of clothes that make people ask if you’re off somewhere special after this, and this tendency in me first reared its head when I was about ten, and came to school wearing a bright green coat and kicky little matching beret. This was the era of designer sportswear and shell suits, so you can imagine how well THAT went down.
For the next few years, then, I did my damnedest to just blend in. I always got it WRONG, though – sometimes really badly wrong – and that’s why there are no photos of me from this era. (Well, there are, but I’d rather eat my own eyeballs than put those photos on the Internet.) This was the late 80s/early 90s: it was a disastrous time for fashion anyway, but I was also “growing into myself”, as my mother put it. I had a horrendous, frizzy perm, a fringe which I “styled” until it stood up perpendicular to my head and… those were some bad times. But! Better times were… actually, no, better times weren’t coming, because once I realised I sucked at the whole “blending in” thing, I decided to rebel. Grunge was big at the time, and I embraced it in the way that only a angst-ridden teenager who is pretty damn sure Kurt Cobain is, like, the ONLY person who understands her, can. I had Doc Marten boots, long skirts, lumberjack shirts, and a collection of shapeless black sweaters. I also had hideous, high-waisted jeans with slightly tapered legs, because those were the only kind of jeans they had in the 90s, CAN YOU EVEN IMAGINE?
Because I refused to have my photo taken, and because my parents were probably worried that my scowl would break their camera anyway, this is the only photo I could unearth from that era:
Also the only photo you’ll ever see of me voluntarily using a phone. This was the day my 6th year exam results came out, and I was calling my grandparents to tell them my results. (I got straight As. No, you WOULDN’T think it, would you?) The shirt was my dad’s, the leather jacket was from a second-hand shop in Glasgow, because I was just too ALTERNATIVE for normal shops, and the jeans were straight-up hideous. Luckily you can’t see my feet, but I was wearing my DM boots, and was pretty sure I would wear them FOREVER, which just goes to show what I knew, eh?
Just in case my parents decide to ground me over this post, I feel I should point out here that they DID try to dress me like a little girl sometimes:
That’s Snoopy (he of “doing the toylet in the cichon” fame) I have in a headlock. My favourite thing about this photo is the very undignified doll in the background.
Oh, and I ALWAYS liked stripes, apparently:
I’m pointing at the ground to indicate where Snoopy had just done the “toylet”. Because if there’s a funnier thing than a dog peeing on a child’s sandcastle, well, my younger self didn’t know what it was.
To be continued later in the week, or possibly never depending on how I feel…
Tagged things that are stripey
Two questions from Formspring:
Would you ever go back to working as a journalist again or do you love being a blogger?
Do you love your job? It is so different from ‘normal’ jobs.
At least once a week, sometimes more, I dream that I’m back at my old job. At first I’m confused. Why am I there? When can I go home? (Which is pretty much how I used to feel in REAL LIFE when I arrived at work, now I come to think of it.) I’m smiling and nodding at people, and all the time I’m thinking, “OK, this is weird. I’ll just stay for an hour or so, and then I’ll make my excuses and leave.” But the thing is, I can never leave. Because I’m working in the Hotel California. No, I’m joking: it’s definitely my old job. The “never leaving” bit is true, though, because as the day goes on, I suddenly remember that when I left that job, I did so on the understanding that one day I would come back for good: and clearly that day has come.
(This dream is obviously connected to the one in which I suddenly “remember” that I didn’t actually sit any exams at either university or high school, I was just somehow allowed to graduate, on the understanding that one day I would return to take the exams. The dream always begins with me realising that tomorrow I have to take a three-hour mathematics exam, having not studied maths, or, indeed, even THOUGHT about it, since I was a teenager. I’m actually breaking out into a cold sweat just thinking about this. I wish there was a way to divorce your subconscious mind. Why can I not have dreams in which I suddenly remember I’m a millionaire?)
“Amber,” I tell myself, “You’re an idiot. You could be at home right now, getting up when you want, drinking a million cups of coffee, pootling around in your dressing gown, getting paid to look at shoes on the Internet… And instead you’re here, and now that you’re here, you’ll have to keep on being here, getting up at 6am every morning, clocking in, clocking out, doing what you’re told to do rather than what you WANT to do… IDIOT.”
And then I wake up, and I AM at home, and I DO get to get up when I want, and pootle around in my dressing gown, and run my day anyway I like, and as much as I hate those dreams, I’m always kind of grateful for them, too, because they remind me how lucky I am. And trust me, I am lucky. I genuinely do love my job, and those are not words I ever thought I would type. I never expected to enjoy work. I always viewed it as something I just had to get through somehow, and while I knew there were people out there who claimed to love their jobs, I’m going to be honest: I thought those people were crazy. Or liars. Or crazy liars.
I mean, blogging was my hobby. As was, um, shopping. I used to sit at my desk and daydream about shoes one day being able to to turn a hobby into a job, but I didn’t actually expect it to happen, so when it did I spent years – literally YEARS – worrying that it would all be taken away from me, and I’d have to go back to a “normal” job again. You wouldn’t have to be Freud to work out the meaning of my recurring nightmare, hmm? I still do worry about it, actually, because I know for sure that I never want to go back. Not ever. I actually don’t think I COULD go back, even I wanted to: I’m too used to being my own boss, and working at my own pace, and not ever answering the phone to be able to adjust to the restrictions of the workplace again. Also, I’ve slowly started to phase “mornings” and “phonecalls” out of my life, and I don’t think many employers would appreciate that.
So, no, I wouldn’t want to go to back to a “normal” job, and I can honestly say that I’ve never been tempted by the thought, not even for a second. Even when we’d just started the business, and were working round the clock to build it up and make a living from it, I didn’t ever think “You know what, I could just get a job.” I would just much rather work for myself than for someone else (even if it meant earning less money), and blogging could almost have been tailor-made for me in that it’s something I can do for myself, from home, and without having to worry about clients, and meetings and all of the other stuff that comes with so many jobs.
With all of that said, I feel I should probably add here that it IS still work. Sure, it’s work that I enjoy (for the most part), but there’s a very big difference between blogging for fun and blogging for a living, so while I think it’s about as perfect a job as I could ever hope to find, it’s not without its stresses and irritations, and some days I find myself wanting to tear my hair out in frustration, just like any other job. I think anything you HAVE to do every day can sometimes feel like a chore, and although the good points of my job outweigh the bad ones by a country mile, I still look forward to the weekend, when I don’t have to think about it for a couple of days. I think what I’m trying to say here is that while the things I write about are frivolous, and I get to write about them from the comfort of my own home, I AM still running a business, and trying to make a living, so obviously it’s not all fun.
It IS a lot of fun, though…
p.s. Some more questions have been answered here.
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