i am not particularly popular at work with some people at the moment….

here’s why:

a good friend of ours has an annual big-bash-birthday party, usually with some crazy fancy-dress theme. last year it was nympho’s and nuns – and this was my outfit:

 

 

this year’s theme was “down the rabbit-hole”. i knew whatever outfit i came up with would require some kind of top-hat, so i spent one morning scouring the internet for ideas (there’s lots of inspiration out there) and making a miniature topper. lots of messy glue-guns and cutting out and gluing, but i thought for a first attempt it wasn’t bad.

 

 

come saturday night, i still hadn’t decided on a character or what i was going to wear, though it all came together at the last minute and i was quite satisfied with my creation. on the bottom was a victorian looking skirt, on the top a striped top i made,  under a sies! isabelle coat over which i wore a red belt i’d hand-sewn a while ago. it took a bit of last minute alteration to the top-hat, but i was happy.

the party guests loved my outfit, but they seemed to enjoy my introduction even more. so guess who/what i was? tweedle-dum and tweedle-dee’s lesser-known sister, tweedle does! it took a minute for the penny to drop and then they’d all grin like the cheshire-cat.

 

 

 

(note, that brooch is made from a button i found in my mom’s sewing-kit. it’s probably about 40 yrs old! and yes, that’s some of my art-work up against the wall).

ok, so enough preamble. the party was in full swing when one of my friends showed a sudden interest in my hula-hoops. (i’m reknowned for showing up at my friends’ parties with hoops on hip).  i’ve been hooping for over 10 yrs and it’s been incredibly frustrating for me that i haven’t been able to generate much interest for it here in jhb. in l.a. i’d take my hoop out and people would ask about it and want to try it out. not here. so when someone shows even the slightest interest, i’m ecstatic and just short of prosthelytizing.

so there we were in the dark with my 2 LED (light-up) hoops and i was showing her some advanced isolation moves which require holding the hoop and moving it like a big steering wheel infront of you. next moment she loses control of her hoop and i feel this searing pain in my eye. i’m so used to hoop -injuries though, that i kept on for a moment until my wildly tearing eye made it impossible. when we stepped back inside, i realized that i had my contact lens in my hand, my make-up was running and what met me in the mirror, was this:

 

 

of course my first thought was, oh shite! what am i going to do  about work?! i’m in the middle of quite a big story-line on the soap, and this was going to put me majorly out of continuity. then my next instinct was to go home and cocoon, but fortunately i countered that and the discomfort and pain and stayed for what turned out to be a really fun party, even though i was wearing diva sunglasses for the rest of it to protect my eye.

when i showed up at work on monday morning, i had just about everyone recoiling in horror because by now, my eye looked like this:

 

 

on-screen it looked even worse. i was looking like i was stumbling around in  twilight, like a demon from some teen-vampire movie. unfortunately, the show must go on, so for once i was allowed to shoot with my hair covering my eye (usually a major no-no) and a lot of angles had to be adjusted. seems we’ll be reshooting one scene and picking up 2 shots.

today the director told me how much he’d been cursing me the night before as they painstakingly painted 500 and something frames to fix my red eye. as a friend quipped, next time use the red-eye reduction setting! it’s actually much better by now, my homeopath friend’s recommendation to up my vitamin c intake to speed the healing, seems to have made a big difference.

though i don’t think i’m going to be forgiven at work anytime soon. apparently i owe a lot of people a lot of whiskey to make up for this.

i feel bad  that my injury has made life difficult for the production, but if you think i’m going to stop hooping though, here’s mud in your eye, mack!

(and elisabetta, if you’re reading this, don’t feel bad, i don’t think anyone at work believes i didn’t do this to myself!)