Always Wear Lipstick

Style has never been my strong suit. I despise those people who can wear a ratty old pair of jeans with a plain t-shirt and still manage to look all put together.

Try as I might, that will never be me – in fact, I’m less ‘put’ and more ‘thrown’ together. I believe that dressing from Value Village is not in itself my downfall; I’m sure those annoying style mavens would get away with it by combining artfully conceived outfits with impeccably coiffed hair, manicured nails and flawless make-up.

Sadly, it seems, frizzy hair, cracked nails and streaked make-up are never going to be the style du jour.

As a teenager I always assumed that  I would blossom, at some magical age, from a short, scruffy duckling into an elegant, sophisticated (albeit, probably still short) swan. Still waiting. Now, here I am in my fifties, dumpy, frumpy and grumpy about it .

The point I am getting to, in my usual rambling, distractible way, is that the start of the landscaping season has not helped my plight. Already my fingernails are mud encrusted; my arms are criss-crossed with spruce needle scratches, and my hair is invariable adorned with a selection of twigs.Yes, I am totally rocking the ‘dragged through a hedge backwards’ look.

So, I decided a few weeks ago that if I have to spend the season looking like a scarecrow then I was at least going to do it wearing lipstick and an awesome hat.

The hat has proven somewhat impractical as it spends most of the day snagging on branches and falling off, but despite that I’m pretty pleased with the results. It’s possible to disguise all manner of mascara smudges with a pair of sunglasses, and no-one can possibly know what my hair’s doing under that particularly fetching hat.

Plus, the advantage of being just under 5’4″ is that most people probably can’t focus on anything a great deal lower than the lipstick, so I’m golden!

 

 

I’ve Fallen and I Can’t Get Up!

I’m not much of a drinker. No, really! While I’m not above turning to the gin bottle in times of stress, I find that one glass is generally enough. Not because of any high moral ground, but because, even after all these years, my alcohol tolerance hasn’t recovered from 27 months of pregnancy (not consecutive) and about two years of breastfeeding (also not consecutive).

But yesterday, after a hard day’s gardening, I thought it would be nice to sit out on the front steps with a glass of wine. It’s worthy of explanation here that the front steps are made of stone and they meander in long, gentle strides up the three feet or so to the front door, with flower beds dotted along the way.

As I was sitting there nursing my wine, and babysitting the cat (another story), the phone rang. It was Roxy wanting to chat. With my very mild tendency towards both OCD and ADHD, I find it difficult to concentrate on a single task, so while I chatted and drank, I also inspected the flower beds, fiddling about with some light weeding and a little bit of pruning. I also noticed a small gaggle of neighbours congregated a couple of houses up the road.

Being the graceful creature I am, it’s probably inevitable that at some point I would lean too far, or trip on a stray pebble, and unfortunately when it did happen I couldn’t decide whether to save the wine or the phone, and chose instead to catch myself with my face.

So there I am, hurtling face first into a bush with a shriek and all the neighbours watching. It was a spectacle which ended with me sprawled on the ground, covered in wine, and giggling helplessly like a cheerful drunk.

Unfortunately not all those neighbours had the best opinion of me to start with. Well one of them anyway  – after a small contretemp over a parenting issue, which I have incidentally won, now that the child in question has grown up to be a stellar member of society, even though said neighbour might be unaware of that fact (but I digress)  – and I feel as though watching me fall arse over teakettle in a drunken stupour probably didn’t help much.

Now I can’t ever go outside again because I’m too embarrassed to be seen in public.

 

Bracing for Trouble

There can be few things more stressful than being a 15-year old boy. Between rampant hormones, peer pressure and the frustration of being surrounded by stupid old people who know nothing about life or the world, it must be a nightmare.

For the most part Hoss manages to keep it together bravely, but every now and then the effort of it all proves too much. I know, for instance, that he struggles daily to make sense of this darned obsession with sending kids to school – after all, no-one there has anything useful to teach him and it’s really all just a waste of his valuable time. My heart bleeds for him.

The latest drama is braces. Unfortunately it’s his second bout; when his top front tooth came in crooked and threatened to grind down its lower counterpart, he had to have that fixed, even though he still had some baby teeth left. So I do feel bad that he now has to go through the rotten process all over again. That’s more than even a non-hormonal, post-adolescent rational person ought to have to endure.

He keeps asking me to explain again precisely why they’re necessary, and I know this is the point at which any calm-headed, clear-thinking parent would dive in with a convincing and logical explanation. Unfortunately all I can come up with is “well it made sense when the orthodontist explained it”. Was there really a good reason, or was I just made credulous and manipulable by the ambient smidgeon of escaped laughing gas?

Being English I’m still not convinced about this obsession with orthodontics anyway. Crooked, yellowing teeth just give a person character, and frankly a mouthful of huge, perfect white chompers is just a little too Hollywood for my tastes. But, then again, who am I to argue with ten years of orthodontic training?

Ah well … only another 14 months and 24 days of complaining about sore teeth, broken wires and trapped food scraps. I’m sure it’ll fly by.