Hello,

My name is Fenella Harpy and Problemchildbride has graciously allowed me to use her blog to highlight my plight and throw myself on the general bosom of humanity. Here is my story.

It all began when I looked in the mirror one day and discovered I simply wasn’t as attractive as I’d like to be. Up until then I’d been just about as attractive as I wouldn’t like to be. Following this realization, I reeled backwards and collapsed into my lucky armchair, rolling my head about with my fingers thrust up through my hair at the temples. That is to say, in a traumatized way.

I sat there for a while in a bit of a funk, mouthing silent “whys?” at the overhead light fixture, when, as chance would have it, (O! Fickle Chance, thy name is abhorrent to me now!) my eye espied a spectacle. I told Mr. Harpy to put his spectacle away and as he did so I happened to glance at an open magazine. A man, broad of grin and entitled of eye, smiled out at me, the staple in his forehead only lessening his dazzling handsomeness a tiny wee small bitty. In his hand he held a box of Crest Whitening Strips which he was also – helpfully, I thought – pointing to with his other hand in case we hadn’t noticed it.

The thought occurred to me immediately and I banged the heel of my hand against my head declaring myself a doofus for not having thought of it before. With whiter teeth I could be more attractive! (Even more attractive, if I might say so. I don’t want to brag but I have never yet thrown myself out of bed on a cold night. I’m that cute.)

I ran off immediately to tell Mr. Harpy the news and all about the plan I was even then hatching to get me some of these whitening strips. He cautioned that they might make my snaggly, mis-aligned teeth more noticable (I have British ancestry) and perhaps a modest hand covering my mouth when I smiled would be a better course of action if sustainable attractiveness was what I was after. Snorting dismissively at his out-dated attitude, I hied me down to the nearest chemist shop and bought up their entire tooth-whitening inventory.

Let me tell you, fellow travellers, I was dazzled by the beyond-whiteness of the confident smiles I saw on these promotional leaflets; much moved by the pinky pinkness of the healthy, healthy gums. A whole new way of being was opening up for me and I had my figurative spotted hanky on a metaphorical pole all ready to set off down that road.

And that was how it all began: innocently, experimentally, as these things often do. Once-a-week whitening started to not seem like enough. Pretty soon I was at it every day. As the adverts promised I was whitening on-the-go too with invisible plates “because you love life too much to spend hours whitening!”

Then I discovered the handy purse-sized tooth-touch-up pen and that’s when things started to go wrong. I was spending more and more time at work in the Ladies, anxiously peering at my mouth with a dentist’s wee mirror to see what lunchtime’s cod in white sauce with boiled potatoes had done to mar my precious pearly whites (I was on an all-white-food diet by then too, to minimize staining). The management noticed and I was given a warning. 3 warnings and an official letter later I was given the humiliating sack.

Low on money I moved to a caravan on the outskirts of town, a blighted spot with a blighted tree, but there I could whiten unmolested. By then my teeth were almost translucent from the bleach. If I gurned with my lips apart, teeth clenched together, you could see right through to my tongue behind them. Once, a tooth shattered when Maria Callas came on the radio. And still I whitened. I couldn’t get them as white as I craved.

There was no great revelation, no epiphany, no intervention was staged to drag me back to the world. Slowly, only very slowly, it dawned on me that I had become a tooth-whitening addict. Now when I looked in the mirror I saw a smeared and grubby woman with haystack hair, sitting in a midden with a manic smile that would blind me for minutes at a time if I looked directly at it.

One grey, rain-lashed morning, I lurched from my caravan and, clutching a holy book, staggered bravely underneath that twisted, wind-blasted tree and back to the town to my dear friend Problem. She took me in and now here I am trying to work my way back into society.

I never realized what was happening, see. Oh sure, I noticed that all my friends had started wearing sunglasses when I showed up but I thought they were just messing when they shook me by the shoulders; only teasing as they held me down and slapped me round the face, screaming “Will you wake up to yourself, woman! Will you look at what you’re becoming!” Way beyond the point where I could recognize rhetorical questions, I would reply No and No, smile slightly at their yellow-toothed folly and dazzle them to their knees. Who needs friends anyway?

Friends, what I am asking from you today is money. Lots and lots of your money. Heaps of it. Having a whole lorry-load of money is the only way I can afford to pay a top-lawyer to sue Crest for their insidious marketing schemes. Did you know you can buy “starter-packs” of whitening gel? They act as gateway whiteners, inevitably leading to heavier and heavier use, and they are blatantly advertised to our teens. They’re on the shelves of most supermarkets right now! These Crest people, these Rembrandt scallywags inhabit a seedy underworld of gleaming offices and impeccable manners. Implausably impeccable. They have the dentists on their pay-roll and they’re out to get YOU! It’s a scourge on society.

So!

Send money with all possible haste!
(No post-dated cheques please. And no buttons in with the coin.)

Update: I’m not against tooth-whitening particularly, it’s just that the bar seems to be rising – expensively – on what’s considered normal minimal-level personal grooming. But then I live in Southern California among beautiful, expensively touched-up ordinary people where seeking body-perfection is practically a past-time, so maybe my view is skewed and regular people elsewhere don’t feel they need to spend a bucketload to keep up and look normal, as it were.

When the dog bites, when the bee stings
When you’re feeling sad
Just simply remember your favourite things
And then things won’t seem so baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaad.

Okeydokey, but when does life ever work out like a song, eh? Today, in my case, the parameters need to be readjusted to something a bit more like:

When the nose runs, When the unidentified bug bites
Causing unutterable itchiness
I simply remember my favourite things
An pu-hoot them iiiiiiiiin my blog.

Well there are the things that everyone likes like, green paper packages coming from Amazon, finding the 20 bucks you hid from yourself a long time ago when you were flush so you’d get a nice surprise someday (ideally in a bright copper kettle or some warm woolen mittens) Singing Bohemeian Rhapsody like a floppy-limbed maniac with the moshing bit and everything; scalding tea and jaffa cakes. blah de blah de blooh.

Right then. *Taps lectern*. Altogether! Everybody in a rousing rendition of Sam’s Favourite Things adn one and two and…

Old kindly gentlemen wearing tweed jackets
Getting pals drunk with my own first pay packet
Liquorice allsorts all lined up by rank
These are all things better than a plank

Chorus:
When the nose swells, when the spot lurks
When your head, it pouuuuuuuuunds
Just simply remember your horrid cold
Is do-hoo-hoo-ing the rounds.

Telling your mum that he’s not just a phase.
Watching Pink Panther on wet, howly days
Showering your labrador, sodden and soapy
Fills up your heart with all bubbling hopey

Reaching the top of a wild, rainy mountain
Panting, elated as rain like a fountain*
Sti-ings your cheeks just like wee wet bee kisses.
Getting to be-ee your hubby’s missus.

Muddling your scanning and not caring less
Eating nice puddings, drinking to excess
Holding the hand of any small child
A Bock fairy-story, becoming beguiled

Getting the scab off all in one go
French bread, rosemary, a nice white Bordeaux
Eating fish and chips right out of the poke
Hearing the minister tell a blue joke.

Schooners, strawberries and sun on your shoulders
Pregnancy giving you Dolly-sized boulders
Then after a while them going right away
Cos who can be arsed with your back in a stay?

When the spot bursts
When the coccyx hurts
When you’re just not quids in
Just simply remember your favourite things
And pour liberalleeeeeeeeeeee
From the gin.

* A horizontal fountain. Look, it rhymes, OK?

ATTENTION DISLIKERS OF MUSHY, POORLY EXPRESSED EMOTION! Get back in your vee-hickle and turn back now. This is a personal post that doesn’t feature sheep so if you have Googled for sheep don’t be looking here, twit. Of course, you might end up here anyway now I’ve written sheep 5 times in one post. (There is another sheep hidden in the text below somewhere – a virtually free kir to the first person who can spot it.)

My best friend, M, has had her baby! An 8lb 10oz little parcel of wonder. I’m not going to say his name ‘cos its not my place and I don’t write my own daughters’ names online either, ‘cos I’m a scaredy-cat eejit about vague God-only-knows-what online perils. I’m only going to put up one photo of him for the same reason but I have to show you how beautiful he is, even if he’s wild with me for it years from now. Flickr won’t blog pictures for me tonight but he’s over on my Flickr site. (See sidebar over there. Down a bit. Further. Yep. He’s in there.)

This wee fellow is causing joy in places all over the world. It’s a peculiar thing but, although he’s not mine, he’s my dearest, oldest friend’s son and I feel profoundly that I will always love him unconditionally, just as I do my own girls. I have a god-daughter in Lewis that I love dearly too, despite only having met her on one trip home. I always expected to love my own of course, but I wasn’t prepared for how much I’d love my best friends’ children too. It’s a funny thing but it’s all that teary, achey way that pure love feels like and I’m not foolish enough to go second-guessing or trying to analyze it; I just feel very lucky and proud to be their Auntie Sam. I know and love the faces of the parents they come from so well that it feels like they’re my family too, as if my brother’s wife had just had his child or something. (They plan on having them at some point so I feel OK saying that. Few years for them yet though – little whippersnappers.)

He was born on his daddy’s birthday to two people I would entrust to bring up my own girls if anything deadening happened to me and the Problem Husband. They are going to be wonderful parents and he’s a very lucky and loved wee boy.

When his mammy and I were kids we were definitely not the most baby-adoring of girls. We never hankered to look after the babies of friends and relatives, much preferring to do something outdoorsy instead, and slightly disdainful, baffled – and probably a wee bit afraid – of girls who fussed over prams and dolls and babies. It never occurred to me back then that there could be such sheer happiness to that degree in the birth of any baby and I kind of thought people went overboard when a new one was born – it’s just a baby, right, ten-a-penny? thought silly little I – but my heart is very, very gladdened to meet all these new wee people. I’ve already been out and wet his head with a few drinklets. ‘Twas fab.

And birchsprite got married! Go and see! She wore one of the classiest wedding dresses I’ve seen and was radiant. Births and marriages – what a great way to start the new year!

And I got two awards! A Beardy from the fantastically generous and warm-hearted Bearded Philosopher, Kim; and a Roar For Powerful sheep Words from the beautiful and talented, Eryl – check out her poem she recorded for the Storyteller’s Blog. I’ve had a couple awards in the past from blogpals but, rather rudely, not posted about them ‘cos, for one thing, I couldn’t get them to sit nicely in the side-bar. I wasn’t meaning to be rude and I apologise to the folks who took the time to give me one – I should have acknowledged the fact on my own blog and not just in your comment boxes. Sorry, peeps. I’m a churl.

Anyway, although the deep-note happiness will persist, the top-note joy of these past few days will quieten, as is normal, and soon the bullshit things of life will rear their ugly heads again as sure as eggs is ova, so I’m going to revel in it while I can and will not be apologising for my gushiness.

Who else is having a happy old time of it just now?

…Puuut them away-ay in some drawers, falalala lalalala…

The holidays are over for another year. It’s back to plain food, brass tacks and resuming one’s normal affairs. I think I shall be on the hunt for a new affair, however. I’ve being seeing Raul, (or Rrrrrrrah-ooh!-l, as he’s become know in housewifing circles) the specialist-disinfectant delivery-man*, since November but to tell you the truth, it’s all gone a bit stale and even a housewife as punctilious as I can use only so many bottles of specialised cleaning agents.

However, a girlfriend of mine has put me in touch with a discreet little service that promises to “pair wanton housewives with strapping, illegal immigrants (male) from South America in desperate need of money.” So discreet was this service, and so confusing, myriad and specialised have these little mom-and-pop “international introduction agencies” become in California, I made a couple of serious missteps and was not careful enough in my initial enquiries. I’m still facing the legal consequences of my name being found on the books of an outfit specialising in “one-ton housewives trapping illegal immigrants” for enjoyment in their own home. You can see how I went wrong.

It’s slavery or something, apparantly, but my lawyer thinks it’ll be fine. I’m pleading not guilty on account of the language barrier. We’re arguing that, confusion is bound to reign when a Scottish lady of officially impeccable character tries to communicate with a lisping Venezualan bandito in possession of only half a tongue (some kinky Canadian housewife tried to pierce it for, as she testified, her “future enhanced pleasure once the scab healed” with a dolly-head clothes-peg and a meat mallet. Unfortunately the clothespeg caused a horrible infection and she had to pay for surgeons to remove part of his tongue. The 90s were a terrible time for pool-boy-addicted housewives sharing dirty clothespegs – they had to set up a clothespeg exchange in the end, to stop the senseless waste of South American tongues) …where was I?

Oh yes, we, my lawyer and I, contend the word “slavery” is easily lost in translation under these circumstances although the judge remarked there seemed to be no muddle at all as to their having to be illegal immigrants, legal and illegal being such very similar words. Which is odd.

But we are confident that once again the great wheels of American justice will grind out a verdict in favour of the one with the lightest skin. Some people might be appalled at that and call it unfair but, my lawyer explained to me, US justice is demonstrably and quite literally skewed towards fairness, although having freckles can blemish your record. (I swiftly had mine laserifically removed in one of the many corner plastic-surgeons around here, so I should be OK, LOL!) Well I couldn’t argue with that so I’m happy to pretend to myself I’m in the right. Anyways, I await my first match from the new agency with tremendous excitment.

What else is happening to brighten the first two traditionally gloomy months of the year? Well, Iowa is caucasing tomorrow to ensure Iowan windows stay firmly in place until the next presidential election cycle. It’s always fun seeing candidates trying to out-folksy each other to win Iowanian hearts and minds, which is very like winning Eye-ranian hearts and minds only with poorer enunciation, which is itself like that time when the Virgin Mary was visited by the angel only this was the Shia Muslim virgin Mary version, generally believed to have taken place in rural Iowa. See it makes perfect sense. I don’t know why people say the caucus system is archaic and unnecessarily complicated. As long as you know about its Persian roots, you’re fine. Santa’s Persian too, as it goes. And leprechauns. Not a lot of people know that.

Other exciting things are happening early in the year as well. I am going to travel to Ireland on the way home to pick up my frightened-flier mother and take her over here for a holiday. I’m trying to plan it to coincide with the Irish blog awards in Dublin, in the hopes of getting to meet as many of me Irish blogging pals as won’t run away from me as I can in a few short days. Any Irishers up for a few wee drinkies with a Scottisher, eh? I’ve already demanded the splendid fatmammycat set aside some time for me which she has graciously agreed to, also agreeing to fall off the wagon for a few days while I’m in town, This falling we will do graciously too, observing all decorum, I’m sure of it. She with her fabulous ankles and me with my immaculate white pinny. Such fun! I cannae wait so I cannae!

* I need a clever ruse to justify regular gentlemen callers, so’s the neighbours don’t talk. The Problem Husband, despite his name, has no problem with my little flings. He quite likes another fella around the place to talk rotating axials with. We both believe our marriage is the stronger for me not making him read my blog and him not making me talk rotating axials.