I couldn’t help wondering when I skidded sideways into the optician’s waiting room yesterday morning with seconds to spare before my appointment, what opinion I’d form about me, if I was having an out of body experience and watching myself from a distance. I was bang in the middle of a serious menopause moment, you know one of those where that prickle of heat starts in your toes and works its way upwards ’till you feel like you’re about to spontaneously combust?

My face was glistening with a sheen that screamed crazed middle-aged hormones at work, and my hair, totally banjaxed by the moisture rising from my skull had gone wild at the back and flat at the front. I looked like the lead singer from Flock of Seagulls, in fact I’m surprised that nobody stopped me for an autograph.

It’s fair to say that my day had gone tits up from the minute I opened my eyes. I arrived at the Kingdom of Pain at 6.30am prompt to do my fat furnace class, and you know that yellow T-shirt that was so hard-won, the one that tells everyone that I’m a citreenie..? Well I only went and bloody forgot to put it on didn’t I…I mean, whaaaat??  In my defence, I was on 6am autopilot and I just grabbed the first T-shirt I came across in my gym drawer.

It seems I’m not the first. God of Pain even has a special garment reserved for folk who forget…it’s known as the yellow vest of shame. If I’m doing the citreenie workout I need to look yellow, them’s the rules.

So out came this hideous day-glo yellow mesh vest, made from the kind of nylon that makes you sweat like a stuck pig. I had to pull it on over my T-shirt and it was a snug fit, bunching up around my waist with the bottom of my own T-shirt sticking out underneath like a tutu. I looked ridiculous, and I don’t think I’ve ever sweated as much in my life. Of course my fellow athletes took no pleasure whatsoever in my predicament, judging by the amount of piss-taking they managed to squash into the next hour 🙂

I then had precisely 45 minutes between getting home and leaving for my eye appointment, during which time I had to shower and dress, dry my hair, put a load of washing in, get supper going in the slow-cooker and make lunch to take to work – so there’s no wonder I hit the opticians looking like the wild woman of Borneo. And putting my face on without my contact lenses in seriously hadn’t helped the situation, although looking at the world through soft focus meant I didn’t realise it at the time.

I’d gone to get fitted for some new contact lenses – I usually wear daily disposables, but I don’t want to be fannying around in the rainforest with grubby fingers trying to put them in or take them out, and I don’t want to wear my specs. So the eye guy had agreed to order me some lenses for the trek that I can leave in for two weeks at a time. Despite realising that my face looked like it’d been made up by Picasso once I’d put them in, they felt fine but he still needed have a good look.

What was different compared to the last time I went, was that yesterday I fitted in his chair. This time last year, I didn’t, and having my annual contact lens check-up was excruciating. I’m supposed to rest my chin on a little ledge inside a framework so he can look through his machine thingamabob at a close-up of the lenses in situ.  The framework is fixed to a table, and the table needs to be wheeled close enough to my chair so that I can stay seated and lean into the machine…problem was, last time my belly wasn’t letting that table get anywhere near me.

If I’d had a neck like E.T I’d have been okay but as it was I ended up standing, and bending forward with my bum sticking out backwards and my back screaming at me in protest whilst my chins battled to stay on the ledge so he could gaze into my eyes.

But that was then. Yesterday I took a seat like any normal person would whilst he did his thing…no drama and no embarrassment. Moments like that…well, they make every bit of hard work worthwhile, right? 🙂

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