excuse me today

i'm totally out of kilter. Very strong antibiotics along with hormonal surges and indeed concerns about the size of my ass and my allure.

Which has DESERTED me.

leaving only ass.

I'm supposed to go to a ball next week. it's supposed to be a treat. it's a swank place. some people i care about will be there.
and it's my idea of hell.

i don't have a dress, i don't have a date
and worse, i have no game whatsoever.

Yesterday i spent one of the least comfortable hours of my life trying on perfectly nice dresses in a store called Monsoon, which is high street but still nice.

Everything was very expensive and nothing looked good on big boobs, small shoulders, small waist and ass wider than the wall of china is long.

it was more a question of how farcical i'd like to look, in what colour.

And what really gets me is i'd naively assumed that i was totally over this and i'd gone back to the joyful days when i thought i was invisible or really that no one ever paid any attention.

Whereas it turns out that the abject horror of being involved in my mate's wedding as bridesmaid (again, a high honour thing, nice position, sign of how much they rate you, etc etc) all came rushing back.

WE went (then not yesterday) to a bridal shop. It was (and probably still is) filled with UK size 10 dresses. This is because things are way more appealing in minature. No body every tried to make a swank listening device for music larger now did they? There are no huge high perfermance sports vehicles now are there?

I have never been a UK size 10. And i never will be.

But hey, it's not at all embarassing and humiliating to be in a store where you're supposed to be trying things on with three of the tiniest women in the universe, in front of them, where all you could do is perhaps use the frocks as a bracelet.

I smiled. I laughed. I put on the marquee like lilac sateen gown that was the only thing i might have remotely fitted into. And smiled.
And found something that i could live with.

Oddly enough, i managed to be 4000 miles away when the fitting came.

And the day itself was cool but hanging out in that dress lead to one of the worst hangovers i've ever had and 30 cigarettes. They were yummy. i wanted to put them out on the dress.
Which poeple keep telling me looked nice.

It was not nice. it was my idea of hell. REally. I can't overstate it enough. by the end of the night i was to be found, at the hotel party that i instigate and hosted and beveraged and catered, outside, sitting on the steps, crying on my good friend. who took it in good part and patted me at the appropriate junctures.

I realise that in the world scheme of hellish experiences, wearing a pretty prom dress at a wedding (I did give a recital during the ceremony) is not even noteworthy enough to cause a blip.
But for me it was like when Paul Clark told me i had a moustache in metal work when were 12.
Or when i had to wear a man's wet suit to go canoeing on the Lac Saguenay in Quebec (which was totally rocking bird and cannot be recommended enough).
like being slapped on your sunburn. A pain excruciating and rare for which there is no cream.

THere is not much in this world that makes me cry. Weird stuff. Not the regular stuff.
But the concept of being looked at and judged in evening wear will do every time.

I know i'm far from perfect but at least in my street clothes i'm prepared. In evening dress i feel like Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman after Richard Gere tells his sleazy mate she's a professional.
Ass hole. That's a word.
I think I liked fine better.

And i do like fine better.

Which is why i was forced to selfishly ponder about the career suicide that would be giving my boss his 2 x £200 tickets back and telling him I'm not going either, to my lovely friend, who i had actually called to give a phone hug to about another matter.

But see, this is taking up space in my head.
That i don't have.
i need to be writing essays. I'm hugely behind, i have an chest infection with a pocket of lung that's collapse. My dad thinks his p. Fibrosis is getting worse, my mum is walking around in monitors to check her stroke status, my endo is playing up and can't find the slip to make a payment on my visa.

My can of worms that isn't seems to have gonekablooie but right now that seems small beer too.

i need sleep and i need perspective.

Both of which are in short supply.

But hang in there. normal service will be restored