Not what you think. I mainly use that term to describe what I do to myself on a daily basis. Regarding what I shouldn't eat. And what I shouldn't drink. And why I stuff it up. Ah, and I was doing well today. I stopped myself buying chocolates or coke in the supermarket - and ate a nectarine instead. Hi fives to me. Feeling very virtuous. You can do this, Tracey, you can do this. Then I got home from the shops and had 'just one' biscuit (cookie) with a coffee. I had bought a pack of these 'homemade' style ones from the bakery section of Woollies. For the kids. Because they nag about not having nice stuff for afternoon tea. It had bits of Mars Bars in them. Mmmm. Then I had another one. And then I felt ick. And tonight I've had more. And I sabotage myself along those lines all the time. Idiot!

Somehow, today, the term sabotage seemed apt for something I felt like doing to a place I passed a few times. I am a bit bitter and twisted little puppy about an experience I had [*more than a year ago now] and I wish I had had the guts to be proactive about it at the time! Yeah, yeah, so this is another woe is me Tracey moment. (In perspective of course... but sometimes it's the little things.) So.. how would you feel about a salon where the owner, when doing an eyebrow wax, took half your eyebrow off and didn't tell you. And you didn't realise till spotting yourself in the mirror that night around bedtime! When I say half, I mean laterally... ie. my left eyebrow finished about in the middle of where it should have. And after that appointment I'd wandered happily around the shops and probably taken the girls to some activity.. and THERE I WAS WITH HALF AN EYEBROW.

Now, get this. When I rang the next morning, she said she knew! She knew and didn't tell me! All she could offer me was for me to come in (yeah right, another 25km trip to town - and it was then the weekend) and she could draw it in with eyebrow pencil. I didn't go back, ever. But I did have to suppress the urge to go in during the next week and stand outside their door making a scene to warn off potential customers. If she lost even one customer then that might be appropriate retribution.

I guess that's the sort of thing that might upset anybody... but I was particularly cheesed because I felt that she didn't really care because I am not at all 'glam'. Maybe that is just my paranoia, but I'm a bit of a fish out of water in a beauty salon. I had only started getting my eyebrows done fairly recently.. believe it or not. Bit of a dag's midlife crisis to start doing that after turning 40. (I was a bit miffed that Marc never noticed that I had started getting it done! - but I suppose you do that sort of stuff for yourself more than anything.)

I may have been able to move on and get over it, except that, since then, I've seen in the local paper that this particular salon has won awards! It's in a part of town I don't go to that often, but today I happened to walk past it several times, and they have advertising out the front proclaiming proudly about all the awards they have won. And it still makes me grind my teeth and mutter to myself.

And, while the idea of a rock through the window holds some merit, what I'd really really like to do is sabotage the business. Stand out the front and hand out pamphlets or something.

Pity I'm so gutless! I'd be scared of getting arrested!

Labels: introspection, reflections