Hickies at work.

This coming weekend, I'm heading down south to somewhere near King City, CA, not that I've ever heard of King City or that I expect you to know where it is either, but that's the best point of reference I can provide. I'll be swimming in the Wildflower race -- yes, just swimming -- doing one leg of a triathlon relay.

In prep for my very first time swimming in open water, I've hit up Aquatic Park here in SF a couple times recently. It's just a roped off area in the frigid, dirty, mucky, cloudy, choppy, possibly shark-infested, definitely sea lion-infested waters of the SF bay. They even say there's this one sea lion that ate radioactive materials, went nuts, and subsequently occasionally attacks swimmers that lurks there. But given my extreme toughness, I brave it all. Yep, that's me.

As the water temp is about 52 degrees, I'm in a wet suit. And beneath my wet suit, I rub on this layer of stuff to help prevent chafing. I focus particular on the neck, shoulders, and back region. Although I apparently did a mediocre job w/ the stick yesterday evening, as I appear to have a giant hickey on the left side of my neck today from wet suit chafing.

I examined in the mirror this morning and thought it not so bad. So, I didn't take any steps to cover it up. I also though, well, if I don't try to cover it up, then no one, if they even notice it, will think it's a hickey, b/c naturally, if you HAD a real HICKEY, you'd try to cover it up. So me, I thought, I'll wear it proudly, and then, everyone will just assume it's like, a...burn...or something.

Except when I went for coffee w/ my friends Robyn and Steph this morning, it took them all of 3 seconds to notice it and call it out. And now all day today, I have been incredibly paranoid. I feel like everyone's staring at me. Or rather, at my neck. And they're thinking, "wow, that girl has a hickey! A big one! And she didn't even cover it up!"

And it makes me feel ridiculous. And there is nothing I can really do. And my VP noted that if I tried to cover it up w/ makeup, it'd likely only look worse, so I'm pretty much stuck. Here, at work. With a giant hickey. On my neck.