Tan, Interrupted

I wrote this article some years ago, but thought it worth sharing again... It's a bit of a good'n! Oh, and I promise, this will never, ever happen to you... Pinky promise!!

This morning, I woke up feeling fat.

Since my chest infection, bronchitis and urinary tract infection, my gym routine has gone right out the window. And to top it off, I now have plantar fasciitis in my right foot. My exercise regime is limited to a few non-standing activities while I’m waiting 3 weeks for my orthotics to be made for my joggers.

So to remedy my flabby feelings of bulk, I asked Mikey to give me a spray tan - this always makes me feel at least 5kgs lighter. The last tan he did for me ended in tears. I’m extremely fussy (and bossy) when it comes to tanning. When I tried to teach him a better way to tan my legs, he threw the tanning gun on the floor and told me to do it myself. I did so, but if you’ve ever tried home tanning, you’ll know that it’s super hard to reach certain areas. After this episode, winter set in, so I gave tanning a break. This is one of the only times we argue (apart from his Formula-One-type driving!). But I have to say, Mikey does a pretty good job for a bloke!

I store my tan machine and we do the tanning in our huge laundry at the back of the house.

Mikey was working from home today, so we got stuck into it before his work phone starting ringing. I set up the tanning tent and stood naked waiting for the cold solution to hit my body, only it wasn’t so cold and there wasn’t much solution coming out. I got Mikey to stop tanning and I looked at the gun. “Must be the nozzle,” I thought, so I turned it a little to the left and Mikey proceeded to tan me. The solution still wasn’t flowing as it should have been and when I looked directly at the nozzle, I noticed hair-like particles coming from the spray holes. So I pulled them out, one by one. I found this puzzling. I’m extremely particular about cleaning my tan gun, to the point of over cleaning and regularly checking it. Yet we continued regardless, but it just wasn’t happening. The tan was blotchy, runny and not doing as it should. I didn’t want to hold Mikey up as it was time for him to start work. So he did the best he could and I left it at that. I didn’t want to start an argument after that last tanning disaster!

An hour went by and I washed off the tan. I then went into the laundry to clean the gun and check out the situation with the nozzle. I unscrewed the nozzle protector slowly and took off the nozzle head. When I did so, [insectopobe’s look away now!] a big, brown, ugly, broken-in-half cockroach fell out!! Oh. My. Gawd! I was just sprayed with cockroach guts all over my body and my face! And the ‘hair-like particles’ I was pulling from the nozzle, were the cockroach’s legs!! Ewwwww, I’m going to puke!

Please someone… please tell me this (or something similar) has happened to you? I’m feeling quite violated and icky right now.

But then again, I could have stumbled upon the next big beauty product. Roach Juice for skin! I’ve heard that women (and Tom Cruise) put nightingale poop on their faces and Oprah is currently promoting a new anti-aging facial cream containing human foreskin fibroplasts. Why not add a bit of insect guts to the mix?

In the meantime, I’ll sit and wait for my tan to develop and hope like hell I don’t break out in some kind of weird animal rash.