Older, wiser, more mature...

Life should be like a melting ice cream

Older wiser, more mature, glamorous, sophisticated, totally in control...come off it who do you think you are kidding!?
A whole year older and I am no more of anything than I have ever been.
I keep thinking that when I am grown up, I am going to emerge overnight into this coolly efficient glamorous but very approachable with a great sense of humour, totally in control able-to-turn-her-hand-to-anything-practical but still ethereal and intriguing zen-like earth mother goddess.
But I am 46
I fear I am running out of time to be all that and perhaps I am not so dumb as to think it could ever happen - I'm just not that type of girl.
I'm more of your heck-that's-a-good-idea-well-why-not-give-it-a-go-perhaps-that-wasn't-such-a-good-idea -bugger-it's-gone-tits-up-let-me-have-a-cry-in-my-pillow-how-do-I-get-myself-out-of-this-mess-I'll-wing-it-and-if-I-pretend-it-didn't-happen-it-then-perhaps-no-one-else-will-notice-and-I-didn't-really-do-it-anyway-sort-of-person...
It works for me, its a tried and tested method of getting through life lightly - not tidily mind.
A tidy life would be like an ice cream that didn't melt in the sunshine, while eminently practical and indeed often wished for, not nearly so much fun and hardly memorable at all!
So here I sit at newly 46 and all I can come up with is that my life is like a melting ice cream - that's really going to go down in family folk lore isn't it!

It's just a little crush...

Ian Somerhalder as Damon Salvatore

Maybe it's my age or maybe it's the two glasses of white wine I've had but I think I have a problem.
The highlight of my Tuesday evenings now revolves around The Vampire Diaries and a particular character called Damon.
I am far too old to have this sort of reaction; especially to something that is far...well too young for me.
I am a married woman with two young sons ( Please note the young popped in here I am trying not to seem too old when in fact even the doctors in hospital referred to me as geriatric) and the dreadful thing is I am probably old enough to be Ian Somerhalder's Mum too.
It is not a fact that is edifying to contemplate.
Actually I feel somewhat ashamed.
It never used to be like this.
I mean when I was younger all the crushes I had were way older than me.
Honest.
(Apart from that eat really embarrassing time at the Summer Disco in 1982 when I tried to get off with a boy who turned out to be two years younger - my 15 to his 13 - but in my defence I have to say that  he was way taller than me...)
So why now do I find that the crushes I have are getting younger by the day?!
And why on EARTH do they haunt my dreams so?
It is most discombobulating.
It's not something I am likely to confess to my husband either so it probably is for the best that during the working week he works in London and I can watch the Vampire Diaries in guiltless pleasure. But if I let things get out of hand I am certain to make a fool of myself.
Not that I would stalk a crush.
Just that I might, you know, actually say his name at an inappropriate time in my husband's hearing.
Now THAT would be embarrassing...
I know there's nothing wrong with having an active imagination but as my husband and I are not actually together during the week how on earth would I explain me shouting out another man's name in my sleep? Even if that other man has:
A) Never met me
B) Lives in another country
C) Isn't actually real anyway
Should I just lie and pretend  that I do know this character or should confess my crush?
I mean how silly is it to have a crush when you are over 40?
Just had a thought do you think I will have crushes like this when I am 80????!!!
OH GOD!
I think I should die now. That really will be bad. That is sooo bad. It's like knowing your parents still have sex when you are a teenager.
Gross.
Perhaps I  may be lucky; perhaps it is something you grow out of.
Maybe it's to do with all the hormones flying around my body in a last desperate fling at youth in the face of the reality that I am way closer to 50 than I will ever be to 35 again.
Perhaps once I am over the menopause things as paltry as crushes and urges to grapple the nearest man to the ground will just be fleeting and somewhat unimportant memories as I struggle with securing one down on the Times Cryptic Crossword.
You never know I may find a hidden yearning to knit, crochet and do needle point and the crushes of my middle years will be but as ghosts...
God I hope so...

Mothers!

It can only come from your mother. No one else would be neither quite as frank nor as public and get away with it.

No one else can remind you that you are after all a daughter and not a grown up with a demanding nay even influential job where you are respected and dare I say it…admired, even if it is only in select circles.

So on Christmas day surrounded by loving family she has to come out with it.

"Darling, why don’t you dye your hair?"

I snorted on the gravy and nearly choked unbecomingly on my Christmas turkey.

"What?!"

"It would be so much nicer if you dyed your hair."

I was bewildered. My hair has served me well for 45 years and now she says there is something wrong with it!

"I just preferred your hair when you dyed it."

Now I did dye my hair a few years ago when it first started to go grey but I didn’t think my mother cared one way or the other. And then it dawned on me.

My hair had got too grey!

She wanted me to dye my hair not because it looked better for me to have dark glossy hair but that it was an affront to her to see me with grey hair. Effectively forcing her to admit that she was no longer as young as SHE once was…

However, I must say she may have a point. I am far too young to have grey hair and only the other day someone thought she and I were sisters so perhaps it is in my own best interest….