Chin hairs & prune juice

I'm 41. I told a friend I was 42. I couldn't believe I got that wrong. How did I get that wrong? I had to work it out - ok Tim is 2 years younger, so that makes him...how old is Tim? No. Hang on. I had Campbell when I was 28...so it's 2013 now, so that makes...wait...Ella was born just before I turned 30 and now she's 11...30 plus 11 equals 41. Yep. 41. We got there...

It made me remember when I was a fresh-faced youngster. Yes kids, I was a child once, too. I didn't escape the womb as a cranky old tired 41 year old, nor was a created out of spite by some pissed off mad scientist from the waste products of all things evil and bitchy. Nooo. But I can see why you may have thought that.

When you're a kid, you know your age. My twins spontaneously announce it in supermarkets to checkout chicks or to strange men with man boobs.

I'm 3. 

I've noticed a difference in the way four of my ferals announce their age. Lily and Grace hold up three fingers and say proudly, "I'm 3." Ella will tell people that she is 11 and three quarters. Campbell adds on a year: "I'm 14." They'll go through the rite of passage of calling themselves 18 so as to be served alcohol and to be let into nightclubs. Then they'll say they're younger to get cheaper entry fees to amusement parks and movies. But once you reach 40, well, you can write off even being admitted into a swingers club. Just too damn old for that kind of funky lovin'. Obviously, they don't cater for walking frames and incontinence.

I'm not really phased about being in my 40s. I don't feel 41, whatever that's supposed to feel like. Physically, I'm feeling a little slower, but is it my age or the excess of excessive weight I'm lugging? Mentally, I'm a sharp as a tack - sharper even - I'm finding it easier to learn new things. My brain is ready for biology and physics, whereas 25 years ago I couldn't tell my arse from my head with anything scientific.

Let's hope that by pulling these feckers
out I haven't encouraged more to grow.
And, yes - they ARE from my head.

After having pulled out two enormously thick pube-like grey hairs from the top of my head and examining myself miserably in the bathroom mirror-that-tells-lies, I thought about my mum and how she never gave me all the facts of growing up. Oh, she told me briefly about (whispers) periods and growing boobs (the rest I learned from Dolly magazine in the 80's) but she never got around to telling me about the other important stuff - like what happens after our babies grow into teens and we start to get all like, totes embarrassing and old all of a sudden.

We all know that growing older is inevitable, but this is my list of things I wished my mum had told me about it. I have entitled it:

Things I Wished My Mum Told Me 

About Growing Older

We all know about the possibility of our eyesight and hearing getting weaker, our bodies slowing down and the sudden desire to eat prunes and sing along to the golden oldies of the 1980s & 90s, but I wish Mum had've mentioned some of these seriously awesome perks of ageing (un)gracefully:

• Your body will start to hurt in places that never hurt before. And what doesn't hurt will probably stop working.

• Your mind will become delusional and will think your body can handle the alcohol and exercise you were used to when you were in your 20s.

• Your eyebrows will begin to fall out and reappear on your chin. Thicker.

• Your feet will become rough and your toenails harder to cut.

• Course grey hairs will not just grow on your head. They will appear on your chin, your arms, your cheek, and with a surprising amount of speed. You will look in the mirror and suddenly they're there in all their grey pube-iness.

• You might grow skin tags anywhere the skin tags decide to grow. Don't think of ripping those bastards off. You will bleed out. Accept them. 

• You will wake up feeling hungover without actually being hungover.

• You will sneeze, cough, laugh and wee at the same time.

• Your perky little boobs may be perky now, but wait until you're older and have had kids.

• You'll sweat more than you ever imagined humanly possible. Even in winter.

• You'll Google everything, from 'my knee clicks when I bend' to 'should my wee be that colour' and other ailments that lead you to believe you are dying.

• You will think that the perfect evening is an early night in bed. Alone. With a book.

• The music you liked will be called boring and old by your kids.

• You will be called boring and old by your kids.

• You won't understand today's music but if you sing any of today's music you will be told to stop.

• You will begin to say "When I was your age..." "In my day..." and "If I spoke that way to my mother..."

• You will gain great pleasure in listening to and telling stories of recent surgeries and illnesses.

• You will understand why a hot windy Australian day is the perfect day for sweating it out washing shitloads of clothes to hang out to dry.

• You will have riveting conversations with friends about mortgages, the lack of respect from the younger generation, the price of petrol, stretch marks, bargain shopping and recipes. 

I would have laughed and laughed if my mum took me on this ageing joyride, rolled my eyes and called her old and boring, and would have thought, nah, not me. I'm so cool and awesome that I will always be this cool and awesome. And how dare you tell me C&C Music Factory and Smashing Pumpkins wouldn't be cool either. 

Not by the grey hairs on my chinny chin chin.

Sleeping Beauty

As you walk up my stairs, using the snot streaked wall as a guide, you will find my sanctuary (which also doubles as the laundry). Despite having wall to wall clothes baskets of yet-to-be-folded washing, I love my room. My room represents solace, reflection, meditation. I watch all the best movies and tv shows in my room, and play the most awesome of addictive iPad games til the wee hours of the morning.

I share my room with Baby Scarlett who, in her eight short months, has slept all but three full nights in my bed. To be honest, I don't mind. I'm now so used to having her there I think it would be weird not to have her lying across the middle of the bed, up on her knees with her nappied bum snuggled under my armpit. She has slept all through the night, about ten hours, in my bed since she was eight weeks old. If I move, she will reposition herself to grab a fistful of my hair or lie her hand across my cheek. I know I'm her bedtime bitch.

Honestly, could you say no to this sleeping beauty?

But that 10 hours of sleep makes an enormous difference in her, and my, moods. That is, if I'm not up all hours getting my blog on or engaged in the daily soapie that is Facebook. 

If you're wondering where my Superman is, he's wrapped up in his Ikea blanket snoring on the couch downstairs. If it weren't for his snoring he would be hidden much like ET was in Gertie's closest, camouflaged between Beanie Bears, Barbies and other teddies. Poor Tim had been banished from the bedroom a few years ago because of his incessant snoring and now in my old age I think it would be too hard to share a bed with him again. I think we'd need two beds Leave It To Beaver style.

I would like to reclaim my bed from Scarlett. She is the first child out of all five to sleep in my bed. Her cot is at the end of my bed, so it's not a huge transition for either of us, and yet I still can't bring myself to do it. Supernanny would have a fit.

I know what I have to do - put her in her cot, settle, resettle, resettle, resettle, until she begins to understand that this cot is her bed and this mum means business. I know it may take several nights to establish this, but my big question is, "Can I be arsed?"

It wouldn't really hurt if she stays a little longer, would it? 


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Night one

It's been a while since the whole family has spent this amount of time together in such close proximity, and I think I know why. As I lie here in our motel room, baby snuggled into my chest, Lily across the foot of my bed, and the rhythmic serenade of my husband's snoring (please read that with a hell of a lot of sarcasm - it sounds like a pig mating with a cow on a train in a tunnel) I am able to see, hear and smell just what I have been missing all this time.

I note that my son talks in his sleep. Grace can search and find her dummy while very much asleep. Someone's junior parmigiana keeps creeping like a silent brown cloud over to my side of the large bedroom. Someone else isn't so silent. Ella suddenly will sit upright, rub her nose, and crash back down to her pillow. Tim, banished to the small couch in the kitchenetteloungeroomentrance area, breathes heavily, holds his breath...7...8...9...and bursts with a grunty snore. 

Night One.

The 10 hour drive to Goulburn, New South Wales, from Melbourne was better than I thought - but I have had a glass of wine.

I had aimed to leave Melbourne this morning as early as possible to get to Goulburn by 5:30pm. We got here at 8 and I don't think that was too bad considering we were traveling with five wild and constantly hungry animals who smelled and argued a lot. And if you think chewing gum is fun to get out of hair, try extracting a marshmallow from a 3 year old who in her tantrum is shaking and matting the goo deeper and deeper into her locks. And I need to get it out to make room for the next tasty morsel she'll lose in there tomorrow.

It's the little things you take for granted when you travel long distances. Like having a car stereo that doesn't have a Wiggles, Hi5 and about 70 cents of loose change shoved in it together. The USB with the Glee soundtracks can only last 

so long, yet I think we may actually have listened to about 10 hours of it already. Lucky us - it's about another 13 hours plus kid factor which equals around 17 hours that we can get our Gleek on. 

Yay.

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