I’m just back from the most loving little holiday. Shaun and I did some beautiful hiking around the Arrochar Alps this weekend. My head is clear, my smile is smily, and I am feeling fresh and calm and happy for my first day of work tomorrow. While I love the art and culture that city living gives me such easy access to, the open, sweet smelling wild is the place where my heart lives.

For the full story and pretty, pretty pictures, visit The Loch Ness Blog.
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Where does your heart live?

::Random Tangent::
Bassetbottom asks: “have you been to The Mackintosh House in Glasgow?”
Chicagoartgirl23 answers: I have! And I’m glad you have too. The Hunterian Art Gallery and the Mackintosh house were the first spot of culture I took in when we first moved here. It was a double dose of the Glasgow Style, too, because at the time, the Hunterian’s main exhibtion, entitled Doves and Dreams, highlighted work by Renee Mackintosh’s wife, Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh. Also, the one treat that came out of my weird job interview with City Council was that the interview was held in Martyrs’ School, a Mackintosh creation that is not usually open to the public. Fun stuff.

Today I ate in heaven.

In heaven, plump olives glisten in gorgeous bowls. Rosemary and goat cheese tarts nestle neatly between billowing, beautiful croissants. Plates are pilled high with bunches of spinach, drizzled with balsamic, brightened with sun dried tomatoes, finessed with pignoli. The air smells of figs and coffee and warm, loving, whole meal bread.

Is this heaven? Oh wait. No. It’s Kember and Jones on Byers Road. But I certainly wouldn’t mind spending an eternity there.

Shaun and I savored some fluffy coffee drinks, scones and the most delicious apple/blackberry pie I’ve ever eaten there as a reward for tying up some boring bank chores. It’s only been a few hours since we went, and already I want to go back. YUM.
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Have you eaten anywhere delicious recently?

::Random Tangent::
As mentioned in the insane edit to my last post, I got my dream job! So no more bitching out of me, I swear. (I apologize: I think this blog was getting gloomy.) Read all about it, as well as this past weekend spent with fellow Xanga author, Jenn, on The Loch Ness Blog. Seriously. My good post for the week is there. Go read it. You’ll laugh.

WARNING: This post contains a little good natured smut.

One of the funniest things I’ve ever seen in my entire life was when my beloved mother-in-law crammed a fistful of pencils in her mouth, mistaking them for pretzels. We were at a wine tasting in Saugatuck, MI during Shaun’s stepsister’s wedding weekend. Mother-in-law got a little tipsy, felt a little peckish, enthusiastically rooted her fist around in a cup of pencils the wine clerk had at his desk, and threw a fistful in her mouth. To her credit, the pencils were those small, eraserless pencils that you use to keep score of miniature gold games. But still: the image I have of her chomping down on wood and lead makes me laugh hysterically whenever I think of it. And her little face of “what?!” when she didn’t taste salt along with the crunch. Priceless.

The second funniest thing I’ve ever seen came my way yesterday while on assignment in a gay sex shop that I was reviewing for a travel publication. I tried to look nonchalant in my lipstick and hoop earrings as I walked into the shop, which I noted after a quick glance around, caters exclusively to gay men. Namely those interested in prosthetic phalluses the size of Arnold Swarchenegger’s forearm and butt-less leather chaps.

So here I am, poking innocently about the sex shop, wondering what I could possibly write about this store besides “penis, penis, penis, butt hole, penis, penis,” when I see it, the second funniest thing I’ve ever seen in my life, shelved neatly next to a painful-looking device called The Massive Crack Attack: a game called Anal Ring Toss.

The Anal Ring Toss package pictures a fresh-faced nineteen-year old boy. The boy’s mouth was shaped in a prim little circle of surprise, eyebrows lifted, eyes doe-like, and a dainty hand placed on his cheek. If it weren’t for the fact that the boy was stark naked with a pole jutting obscenely from his squeaky-clean bottom, you might just think he was imitating the Queen. And to add the final touch of hilarity to the scene, the photo was snapped as a plastic ring was caught mid-air, sailing towards the pole for a winning point.

I couldn’t help it. A laugh burst from my throat when I landed eyes on Anal Ring Toss. A loud laugh. A nice man in a spandex shirt came over and asked if I needed any help. I told him no, thank you. I was just browsing. I wanted to ask if The Anal Ring Toss was a top seller (I mean, with a package that great, how could it not be?), but the laughter started to bubble up in my throat again and I scurried out of the shop so as not to look too immature.

I got the information I needed and wrote up a hot little review last night. And as a little bonus, got another one of those absurd mental images that is sure to make me laugh for years to come.
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Do you have a moment or image that makes you laugh whenever you think of it?

EDIT 1:30 pm: Holy crap!!!!!!!! I just got a call from The Lighthouse! I’m the new markering coordinator for the Six Cities Design Festival! I start Monday, November 20 and I am so exicted that I just might pee my pants! The bird is gone! It’s gone!!!!

There is a little brown bird that lives in my chest. Sometimes I feel his scratchy, brittle claws hopping around the branches of my ribs. Sometimes he pecks at the grapes of my bronchial sacks, greedy and frenzied like birds are. In the worst of times, he puffs up and beats his wings against the hollows of my body, trying and unable to escape; I feel like I’m choking on his feathers.

My bank statement came today. I need to start work. Now.

I had two job interviews this week. On Tuesday, I thought I was interviewing to be a Clerical Assistant to the city’s Marketing Department; Glasgow City Council seriously needs to work on accurately advertising vacancies. As it turned out, the position I was inexplicably a candidate for was that of Purchasing Associate to the museum shops. While I’m sure I could handle the task of confirming prices with vendors and ordering shipments, the only retail experience I have was a very part-time job at Hallmark during high school. If I got the position, I would have been contacted yesterday by 5 pm. My phone was very quiet all night. I was not surprised.

Yesterday I also interviewed for a very desirable position as a Marketing Coordinator for Scotland’s Six City Design Festival in May 2007. I aced the interview and even if I don’t get the job (which is very likely, since I’m new to Scotland and have never set foot in three of the six cities), I know in my heart that I did my very best. This makes the bird hush a bit. I’ll know Friday by 5 pm if I got the job.

After the interview yesterday, I enjoyed a calming ham toastie, a cold Stella, and the end chapters of the Kate Atkinson book I was reading at a friendly place called Cafe JJ before heading over to the Job Center to get my National Insurance number. Remember, I waited 2 1/2 weeks to get this appointment. I was told by the temp agency that hired me (my back-up plan if the two interviews came to nothing) that I needed my number before I could start work.

At the Job Center, my advisor told me that what the temp agency said was illegal; I was only required to apply for the number once hired, but they should have let me start work in the meantime. Not only that, but the appointment did not conclude with me getting my number. To my dismay, I have to wait another 2-3 weeks before it should arrive via mail.

I was given a number for my temp agency to call to get them to start me right away. But so far it hasn’t made a difference. It may just agitate them further and make me a temp that they don’t want to deal with and will not call to give assignments to.

Maybe this wouldn’t bother me so much if finding a job weren’t such a bloody nightmare. I don’t understand. I’ve put in heaps of applications to a wide range of jobs: retail, food service, office jobs, janitorial jobs, marketing jobs, and museum jobs. I can’t apply to work in schools or tutor, as the Brits have certain certifications you need that American me doesn’t have.

Before registering with the temp agency, I was hired as a temp to Royal Mail for three weeks during the holiday season. But once I got the office temp job, I figured I wouldn’t do the mail thing. Now I’m not so sure. The Royal Mail gig is only for 3 weeks and doesn’t start until December, by which time I will probably have gotten the national insurance number anyway, thus eligible to start work with the temp agency. But can I trust the temp agency? They’ve acted illegally, to my great disadvantage, after all.

The bird is riled.

Perhaps I’ll get the dream job with the design festival and all of this silliness will float away. I will laugh easily again and my skin will finally clear up and the bird will soar out of my throat with ease.

In better news, Itchy City liked my sample reviews and assigned me to review Glasgow gay bars for next years guide. The job is unpaid, but its good exposure, fun to do, and shit, it’s not like I’m doing anything else at the moment. Plus, I get a media card, which will likely get me in for free and may help in getting me free drinks. So this weekend I’m scheduled to review 7 gay bars, 1 gay sex shop and 1 gay community center by Sunday at noon.

I’m a little nervous, as I’ve yet to make any Glasgow friends who are gay, meaning I have to hit the clubs alone or with a straight friend. Which is fine with me, I’ve had fun in plenty of gay bars, albeit accompanied by gay friends. I just hope it will be okay with the patrons. I don’t want the patrons to feel like they are an anthropological exhibition or anything, you know? All I can do is my best. I can also pray that the smell of latex and rubber in the sex shop isn’t so strong that I pass out. Although that would provide some really hilarious writing material, now wouldn’t it? Ha!

Also, I passed my Teaching English as a Foreign Language course last weekend. Hurrah! It was completely exhausting (20 hours in two days!), but totally worth it. Everyone said that I am a very convincing, encouraging teacher. Weirdly enough, I felt like more of a foreigner in the course than I have in any of the time spent abroad so far.

In mock teaching presentations, I unintentionally wrote examples with American phrases. “You need a ticket to ride the train” made everyone laugh. Brits don’t ride trains. They just get on them. Punctuation style is different, which I knew about. But grammatical terms are also different, which I did not know about. Lucky for me, outside of the course in a teaching position, they will hire me to teach American style everything. Unless I work in the UK, of course, which seems unlikely. Also, I was told that I am very American in my presentational style. When my students got something right, I gave them two thumbs up, applauded, smiled and said, “Good job!” or “Awesome!” The Brits tended more towards a stiff nod and a “well done, then.”

So now I’m looking around for some short-term positions teaching English abroad, to get me a bit of experience before we move back to the states. I’m looking for a position that is no longer than 4-6 weeks, sometime before September of 2007. I’m also looking to join a Spanish immersion course, as I am now qualified to teach immersion courses and after learning more about them, think its a great way to learn a language.

Taking these positive actions do a lot towards making the bird simmer. But you know what would make him chill out for real? A job. A shift. A paycheck.

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Have you ever worked (or tried to work) abroad? What was your experience like?

For the last two and a half weeks I’ve been lazing about, guilt free. After firing off countless CVs to various jobs in Glasgow (and spending one hot, fetid, prawn-reeking first and last day employed in a sandwich shop), I was hired by a temporary agency called Kelly Services on October 19. While both my employer and I were eager to start me on my first office assignment straight away, Kelly Services requires all their employees to have a National Insurance Number before they begin employment.

In the UK, the National Insurance number is what the government uses to make sure you pay taxes. It is how you can receive whatever benefits your employer offers. Trying to live without one is a bit like trying to live without a social security number in the states. And trying to get one is a lengthy process.

Once you have a job (or evidence via a rejection letter that you’ve been looking for employment), you make an appointment to apply for your number. To the appointment, you have to bring a plethora of evidence that you are who you are: passport, visa, birth certificate, marriage certificate, drivers license, blood samples, baby teeth, your crusty, petrified umbilical cord stub, ect. It’s quite complicated, really.

I made my appointment to get my number after getting a rejection letter on October 17. And the fastest appointment I could get for my number is 23 days later on November 8.

While it has been nice to have 23 days to enjoy the city without the stress of looking for a job weighing on me, I certainly wasn’t expecting it. When you are granted a work visa, no one tells you: “oh yeah, you won’t be able to actually work until you apply for this other thing.” (Although some employers, like Shaun’s, will let you start before you have a number, knowing how long it takes to get one.)

This number thing is nothing that I’m upset over, but just something that I thought might be worth tossing out on the ‘net, should anyone else be planning to live abroad and might find this info useful in their budgeting; my credit cards are getting clingy.

Anyhow, so I am content thinking of working as an office temp this year. The hours and flexibility are ideal. The thought of popping into someone’s day-to-day work has a voyeuristic quality that appeals to me and should benefit my writing. Then yesterday, I began to visualize a different route this year could take for me: I received two letters inviting me to interview for two very appealing jobs.

The first job interview is for Glasgow City Council. I applied to act as the assistant to the city’s marketing office, which would be fun and relatively low stress. I’ve always wanted to be a city employee and I held a similar position at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) in Chicago before my promotion. Plus, I truly like this city. I could assist in the marketing of it in good conscious.

The second job interview is for The Lighthouse: Scotland’s Centre for Architecture, Design, and The City. The position I’m a candidate for is to be the Marketing Coordinator for the Six City Design Festival in early summer, 2007. I know I would throw myself into this job; I love The Lighthouse (it’s one of Glasgow’s coolest museums and the cafe is luscious). Plus, I was a Marketing Coordinator at the MCA so I know the logistics of the job, and the idea of working intensely on one project appeals to me. I think that the festival sounds incredible.

I’m certainly not an architecture expert (or an expert much at anything yet, really. I’m only 24 for gods sake!), but I’ve been brushing up on my Scottish art/architecture history lately (what can I say, I’ve had a lot of time on my hands), so even if I don’t get the job I will have all this fun knowledge floating about my head. Plus, I sincerely value what the festival offers, and I am confident in my ability to communicate that value to the public.

Architecture and design are fun to celebrate. When people are given a chance to revel in the objects and spaces that they utilize everyday, it’s interesting to realize that utilitarianism does not equate to mundane. Strong aesthetic principals are not frivolous; they can influence a community subtly, guide us, help us navigate, influence our moods and our ability to think, create, and engage.

I’m going to take the train into Sterling on Monday to checkout the architecture there (Sterling is one of the Six Cities in the festival), so that should be a fun trip. There is a castle there, too, so I expect that I’ll frolic about it for a while.

Anyhow, if I don’t get either job (it is likely that a local might be more desirable for either position, understandably so), it’s good to keep in the habit of interviewing. Plus, the worst thing that can happen is that I don’t get either of these jobs and I get to flit about the offices of Glasgow as a temp, discovering all the types of paper shuffling there is in the world. I can take vacations or new assignments whenever things get stale. Like I said, the temp job is appealing to me too. I guess I just have to wait and see.

In the meantime, this weekend I’m taking a condensed course to get my Teaching English as a Foreign Language certification. This might help me land a job at a writing center or a school when we move back to the states. Also, with this certification, you can do month-long trips teaching English in places like Peru, which might be an interesting way for me to get used to large, terrifying bugs. Oh yeah, and help me transition into an English teaching career before I’m thirty.

After the course is finished on Sunday, I’m joining Shaun and the rest of the International crew at the Glasgow Green for a chilly night of fireworks and bonfires in celebration of Guy Fawkes Night.

Remember, remember the 5th of November!
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Have you ever visualized taking your working-life in a different direction? What did it look like?

The Loch Ness Blog has been updated to include belated tales and photos of my London excursion earlier this month. I hope you take a peek and enjoy!

In other news, my eye was just acting freakish because I must have scratched it accidently with a fingernail that had been cutting hot pepper for my stir-fry dinner. After a strange encounter with National Health Care, where the nurse asked me what was wrong over the phone, I answered “I think I have conjunctivitis,” and she arranged for me to pick up a perscription without me ever having seen a doctor, my eye had gone back to its normal, not red nor gooey state. I think I was just exhausted plain and simple. All better!

Today was lovely. We woke to the sun pouring in through the windows. Always a good sign here. We drank coffee at the local cafe and walked the Kalvin River all afternoon long before coming home to some garlic bread, soup, and poetry. We read aloud, in bad Scottish accents, from The Penguin Book of Scottish Verse, decoding the old language as we went along. My reccomendation: Robert Burns’ Tam O’ Shanter. If nothing else, read it as an excuse to say the word “howlet” aloud. It means owl and I love it.

That’s all. Now go to Loch Ness and read my good post for the day.
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How was your Sunday?

Cause of Sleepyness Discovered
This morning I woke with a red, gooey eye. It looks like my first time using National Healthcare will be in search of a cure for a case of conjunctivitis. (Careful with the link–the picture on it is revolting.)

Home is Where the Cash Flow Is

Wednesdays mean Spouses Lunch. I never thought of myself as a lady who lunches, but these shared meals are different. Spouses of International Students congregate to share baked goods, information, make friends, practice English, and create a community. I am loving my time here but without these lunches a disconnect would surely seep in.

There are five of us childless twenty-somethings that sit together. Mara is a Chilean lawyer. Fika is an Indonesian dentist. Nadia is an Afghanistan model. Elnaz is an Iranian student. And I am me. These women are an enormous comfort to me here. Comfort from what, I don’t know. But the first thing I do when I see them is sigh with relief.

Many of the wives are struggling here. Nadia can’t bear the cold and is heartsick for her family. Fika and Elnaz were homesick during Eid, the feast to celebrate the end of Ramadan. Mara is always outgoing and energized, but this week she spoke about how hard it is for her “as a Latin American” to leave her family behind. Everyone has these ferocious family ties. Except for me.

I’ve not traveled extensively in my own country. I have not met all the many, many different types of people who live in the states. So it is hard for me to generalize about what Americans are like. I can only speak from my experience, from my Midwestern religion, my Caucasian ethnicity, and from the upper-middle economic class that I was raised in. And although my path was different in many ways from the route those from my demographic are expected to take, I incorporated the idea of moving away from my small town birthplace into my plans very early on.

In my hometown, it was a right of passage to leave home at 18. After high school graduation, we went away to college. There is a stigma there, as stupid as it is, that going to the local university or community college lessened your chances success. Or at least that is what we pretended. Really it was just a status thing.

After college, many Americans that I know distance themselves even further from their families in pursuit of job opportunities and wealth. Of course we don’t call it wealth anymore. We call it “lifestyle.” If we are too open about our cash wads, we might be expected to share it with our families.

After wealth comes, in the places I’ve lived, it is completely normal to live even further away from your parents, make a family of your own, buy a house and build a massive fence around it. Perhaps you’ll see your family over the holidays. And then of course, many people change their minds about the family they created, divorce, and find themselves alone behind that fence, without the physical presence of their parents, siblings, and extended families to comfort them. I am not the only American daughter that I know whose mother has cautioned: “you can never depend on anyone except yourself.”

And sure, other cultures leave their families to live in far away places. But most do it with the intention to make enough money to bring every aunt, uncle, and cousin along for the ride. In the states, most of us are lucky if we really know anything at all about our extended family.

I’m not sure exactly what I mean by all this, certainly cultural behaviors are too slippery a subject to ever nail down completely, but the other International Spouses always seem surprised when I tell them that Shaun and I lived in Chicago and no, we had no family there. Even more shocking to them is when I tell them that when it is time for us to go back to the states, we will go wherever either of us have the best job offer. For them, the answer is always obvious: we live where our family lives. When we go back, it is to our families, our home.

To be certain, I love my family. Being a sister is one of the best things about my life. Meeting my extended family in England was incredible. Most of the time, I see my huge sprawling family, born of divorces and remarriages, as a blessing; I’ve been told that this means I have more people who love me. But I’ve grown so accustomed to distance that I don’t grow homesick; I’m spared the heartache that the other spouses feel. In fact, I don’t truly feel that I have a home in this world. Which is perhaps the biggest source of my wanderlust. I think that if I look hard enough, I will find the place I am supposed to be. And it will be home.

Sometimes I worry about what I am missing. My brothers are turning into men without me. I wonder what it would be like to see my mom every week, to invite her over for dinner sometimes. But living in my hometown is so against everything I’ve been taught; there are no good jobs for me in my hometown. It’s the Motor City after all, and Shaun and I are many things, but engineers, draftsmen, and line workers we are not. Plus, I just have no desire to live in that place. But does that make me a rancid person to put place over people? Wouldn’t my heart be shattered if my child grew up and moved a million miles away?

I don’t know the answers to any of these questions. But I like having supportive people here in Glasgow who get me thinking about the subtle “whys” of my cultural upbringing. For the first time in my life, I am thinking about what it means for me to be American. Because that is what I am here.
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If you are American, what has your experience with family ties been like? What have you observed?

::Random Tangent::
Day to day, I’ve impressed myself with how happy and content and excited I am here. Everyday is filled with hours of exploring the city, walking every place I go, and getting life in order here. In the past 5 weeks, I’ve moved to a new country, set up house, learned to drive a stick on the “wrong” side of the road/car, gotten a job with an office temp service, done lots of bureaucratic-type things like applied for a National Insurance Number and signed up for a National Healthcare doctor, taken up baking (leaned metric conversions), joined a gym, gone to England, revised a script, sent spec work to a travel publication, applied to an opera writing program, and made a few friends. And I’ve truly loved every minute of it. I’ve been energized, productive, and social.

But today I think things caught up with me. For the first time since we’ve been here, it was a struggle to make an effort. I could not lift my arms to wash my hair. I had planned to have a good morning of errand running followed by a noontime work out and ending with some writing. (For those of you who are wondering why my days are so carefree, I am not eligible to start my new job until my National Insurance number comes on November 8. Not all UK employers require that you have this number before you start, but mine does. So I am in a happy limbo time right now.) Anyhow, so I was scheduled to have a productive morning, but last night, I could not get to sleep.

I was writing up a storm until 3 am, in the zone, not tired, and unaware of the time. When I tried to sleep, it would not come. I don’t think I got to sleep until 5.30 am. And I woke gritty eyed and acid stomached at 8.30 am after 3 hours of unmemorable nightmares.

Today, after a brief and very crabby outing to print and mail my opera writing program application, I crawled back to the apartment, wrapped up in a blanket, and napped on the couch. I read the New Yorker. I watched Vanity Fair (don’t rent it, by the way–it was so boring that I nearly died). I snacked on apples and hot chocolate. It was as if everything that should have exhausted me and made me anxious about these last 5 weeks decided to wait for today before knocking the wind out of me.

It is 9.13 pm now and I still have not made the kale and broccoli stir-fry I planned for dinner. Shaun is at work, so no luck in asking him to feed me. And the wind is howling and the rain is icy so grabbing a bite at a wee curry shop is not what I want to do in my fragile state. I guess I’ll just starve. I’m just so sleepy….

Sunny, With a Chance of Puss
Despite the craggy face, this week’s been great.

The First Good: Itchy.
After getting a positive response to a solicitation letter that I sent to Itchy City Guides, I emailed the editor two very funny restaurant reviews that I wrote. Even if the editor decides that my writing is not his cup of tea, the reviews were fun to do, good practice, and I think they kick ass. And I will post them if it is determined they are not good enough for *real* publishing (meaning compensation, of course).

Second Bit ‘o’ Good: The Opera.
Shaun stumbled upon a Opera Writing course here in the UK that I am applying to get into. I emailed a few of my screenwriting teachers from college and my fiction-writing instructor from Story Studio for references and was met with so much encouragement. Plus, picking out sample work is always fun. Like revisiting old friends.

For those of you who might think that opera is a sort of left field thing for chicagoartgirl23 to be fascinated with, I’ll let you in on a little secret. During high school I was quite the theater kid. I even took voice lessons for a while and sang Italian arias in competitions around Michigan. I never won anything—I was never that good–but I’ve always found the music and story of opera to be so seductive and beautiful. I still find myself belting snippets of Se Tu M’ami, Danza Danza, and Caro Mio Bien in the shower, to babies, and while doing chores.

Goody Goody Gumdrops: The University Gym.
Since students just swipe their ID’s to enter, I’ve been joy riding on Shaun’s card all week without a hitch. Monday I took a crazy-hard circuit class. Today I took an aerobics class. Tomorrow, after serving up some baked goods at the International Spouses lunch, I’m off to a kickboxing class. Yes I am sore. Somehow, running up hills for an hour daily did not prepare my body for the rigors of grape vine-ing. Go figure.

The Last Morsel
I’ve been going to a lot of the nighttime film/theater series at the Centre for Contemporary Art by my lonesome lately, while Shaun is off at class. (I was going to go to something tonight, but I’m just too whipped.) And it’s really nice. We don’t have a TV here, which has been incredible. Aside from getting out and enjoying different arts things going on around town, I’m reading heaps more. And actually revising things that I say I’m going to revise. Plus, to own a TV here you have to pay a hefty TV license (some 130-odd pounds), and while I’m all in favor of supporting BBC, I can think of too many other things to spend my money during my year abroad.
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What’s been good in your week so far?

Warning: this post is lame.

A Bag For My Head
When I was a teenager I had acne. Really bad acne. Dermatologist grade acne. Acne so fierce that nothing would kill it: vitamins, natural remedies, over-the counter, dermatologist strength, uber-healthy eating, and oil-free everything did nothing to stop the outcropping of big, cystic bumps surrounded by little pocks. Once, at the tender age of 15, I was told by a fed-up dermatologist, “wow! You probably want to put a bag over your head.”

Nothing worked, until Accutane. This drug, prescribed only as a last resort treatment of hellish acne, is famous for provoking extreme depression. And that’s the last thing a moody teenager with a ravaged face needs: to feel even shittier about things.

The drug comes in a packaging plastered with the image of a pregnant woman with the red, crossed-though “no” symbol over her. Apparently, while a person is on Accutane, or even sometimes after one has been on the drug, the only thing they will be capable of conceiving is a hideous monster. Bi-weekly, I had to get blood drawn to ensure I was not pregnant and to check that the drug was not killing me in some other way.

How Accutane works is that it sucks away all the moisture in your body. And not just the oil on your face. Everything. You get dry eyes. You get eczema. You get thirsty. You are a tumbleweed, a dessert, a dry and dusty skeleton.

But, after the horrible treatment is finished, your skin is clear. And you see, that underneath the bumps and lumps, you are pretty after all. Sure, after a while, as your oil level returns to normal, you have a few minor, occasional breakouts, just like anybody. You are still careful with your face, carefully following your ProActive washing regimen, taking your vitamins, eating healthy, wearing oil-free makeup. Eventually, your scars fade. You look nice.

Until you move to Scotland.

Upon arrival to our new Scottish home, I reactivated my ProActive subscription. But this was through the UK Proactive. When it came, it was slightly different. Green and gritty for starters. And it had a night cream with Retinol in it, which always seems to make me break out, even though I hear it works wonders on other people. I called the company and found there was a difference in ingredients. But hey, it was a company I trusted. So it should work, right?

Also, shortly after our arrival, my trusty Neutrogena oil-free pressed powder and concealer ran out. So I bought some Scottish makeup called “Clear Completion,” which I assume is oil-free, but the packaging does not list the ingredients, so it’s hard to tell.

It could be either of these things, it could be both. But my face is completely embarrassing. I look like I’m about to erupt: huge, gory, thundering cysts accented by millions of little pimples have transformed my cute face into something more fitting to monster movie than a 24-year old human. My face has not been this bad since 9th grade, in my life before Accutane. And with the never-ending wait of National Health care, it will be weeks until I can get in to see a dermatologist.

I guess I can be thankful that my skin was fine when I was interviewing for jobs (who wants to hire a hideous beast?). I was hired by Kelly Services to be a temp, but my start date is not until November 8, the date that I’ve been assigned to pick up my National Insurance number (a tax ID sort of thing). While the banes of bureaucracy usually irritate me, I’m sort of thankful that I don’t have to start a new job right now. I look frightening.

Anyhow, I’m going to try to get US ProActive shipped to the UK (which will be costly, but I’m such a mess right now that I’m willing to shell out the cash) and I’m going to order this expensive, all-natural makeup designed for puss faces like myself called Arrbonne.

I’m also soliciting you, my Xanga readership, for some help. Has anyone else gone through this? What have you done?

Your pimply pal,
Truly

P.S. Is it just me, or do dermatologists conspire against us to perpetuate horrendous skin so that we keep going back and giving them our money?