Hiding, unfortunately

Dear Cabin...

Ask me again next year. Or last year. Last year would have been cool, because in those days I had a job and plenty of training under my pink studded belt to serve me in the NZ MTB Marathon Championships. Sigh.

Instead, I'm hitting up Ferguson Park in Tauranga for a 5km run. Not really much of a comparison, but it gives you an indicator of where my health is at compared to last year. Don't be fooled by the pink lipstick, people. Makeup school takes a lot out of you.

Consider the Servilles fashion show I worked at on Friday. I planned to wake up at 6am, straighten my hair to its former Cleopatra-reminiscent glory, put on so much makeup I was barely recognisable, and be at the ferry terminal with ten minutes to spare. No such luck.

For whatever reason, I fell back to sleep until 7:15am, where by some unimaginable stroke of luck, I woke up. Of course by now I'd run out of time to do my hair. I struggled to take a shower in the time I had left before it was necessary for me to leave. Consequently, my makeup looked average, or even a scrape below. I ran out the door, armed with my kit, and considering I arrived at the ferry terminal at 8:11am (for a boat that leaves at 8:10am) and still had 200m to cover in negative one minute, I really shouldn't have got on the boat. But I did. Somehow.

Halfway across the Waitemata, I realised I didn't have my Student ID card with me, where it had previously been in my pocket. Grand. So then I hurriedly pleaded my case to an uninterested Korean guy at the gate in Downtown who clipped my ticket without so much as a blink. I ran most of the way to SRA, my kit swinging wildly along beside me, and arrived on time. In what I consider to be a miracle from God, the phone at school rang as we were leaving. Some good samaritan had picked up my ID card on the Bayswater side of the harbour and called the school. What!? Does life get any better?

The show went off for me without a hitch. I turned out five full makeups, four lips, and what seemed like ten more touchups. In reality it was probably more like two, but you know.

After the show, I went to meet the woman who had found my card on the ground. A Saint of some sort, I do believe. Even though I had no "clips" left on my ferry ticket, the gorgeous Neeraj (this being a subjective term - I'm pretty sure the only reason I find him attractive is because of his borderline resemblance to Donny) let me through anyway. I feel like our ticket-clipping relationship could only move on to bigger and better things from here.

Arriving home at about 4pm, I spent until well after 7pm catching up on sleep. I then went out until after midnight with Cam and Amber (this time, I planned ahead, and straightened and made myself up with an hour to spare) and slept from 4am until 5:30am, when I got up to go training. This was followed by the almost weekly jaunt to Hamilton. Safety first? Not when you're in makeup school.

Unsurprisingly, I slept solidly on Saturday from 10pm until 10am. That hasn't happened since I returned from Athens in 2004.

Since then, my nightly sleeping hours have been back around 2. What the hell? No wonder I look like an actual pile of crap! All I want to do is sleep but for some reason this comes secondary to school, training, trying to ignore Donny's incessant phone calls, watching "Yes Man", and texting friends while they're trying to finish essays about the Kama Sutra. I finally believe Dean Karnazes. You can function on no sleep.

So, Cabin, I won't be joining you on the startline. I'll probably be asleep.