I was having a perfectly relaxing weekend until I remembered one thing.

There I was, laying blissfully on the couch deciding what I should shovel into my mouth for dinner, and then I remembered. Just last week, I agreed to something awful. For the past few days, I’ve been repressing the memory of this verbal contract so I don’t have to deal with it. But today, it resurfaced out of nowhere like it was that seemingly endless piece of glass that was embedded in my foot more than five years ago.

And like that shard of glass poking its way through the layers of skin on my foot, it was an unwelcome and irksome, making me question the kind of life I lead. It hasn’t been a good few minutes.

I just made a face like I stepped on the boneless carcass of a kitten while wearing nothing but socks. Because that’s what this situation is like: there’s the initial unpleasantness of the sensation of having three-day-old organs form around your toes like one of those memory foam pillows, but there’s also the drawn out task of peeling off the bodily-fluid-soak sock off your feet and then figuring out how to dispose of the soiled tube of fabric.

So what could be so awful it is akin to desecrating the corpse of a beloved pet? I agreed to compete in some town festival queen contest.

The worst part? It has nothing to do with cross dressers.

It’ll just be me: cross in a dress.

From what I can gather, it will be your standard women’s-rights-backtracking beauty pageant forcing me to smile and care about something: hobbies I have never really taken to.

I sat in my manager’s office with frightening visions swirling in my head. Picture a grainy montage of Vasoline teeth smears, hair rollers and swimsuit parades cut violently to the soundtrack of Psycho. It was like some inspired person with Microsoft Movie Maker recut clips of Miss Congeniality into a horror movie. I was Sandra Bullock and Michael Caine was rousing on me for wearing my gravy-stained pony jumper and shooting me deathly glares every time I dropped a c-bomb. This re-cut was no romantic comedy, and there was no happy ending. The main character (me, obviously) would die in the belly of a giant swan.

But I still agreed.

Thankfully, there’s plenty of time until this thing gets underway. I have months up my sleeve in which I can weasel my way out of this.

I would stay here and rant some more, but I have things to do. I have to go find some people with glandular fever to lick.