Vanity Case

After 27 years I have decided to kick the habit....and in fact a  few other habits along the way....! Thats right people - suntanning is out, being pale is in. I know that the magazines have been going on about it for the past few years, models such as Lily Cole paving the way for the pale skin look, not to mention the Edward the Vampire look - but none of those things tempt me or indeed have persuaded me to change my ways and turn to the bottle (fake tan bottle). This is purely a matter of vanity and the reason? Wrinkles. And I dont want any. Having been on holiday recently in Turkey I saw a few suspect lines on my face and indeed on the faces of my peers. Shock shock horror and Im not yet even 30! As I get closer to being 30, those occasions of being ID'd in the supermarket are becoming less and less. The other casuality along the way is smoking. Having smoked on and off for the past 10 (ten - yikes!) years, its not the warning on the label, the pictures of blackened lungs and holes in peoples throats. It is purely once again totally shallow. I wont be young forever, but I may as well do everything I can to help retain my youthfulness.



A piece on the radio earlier this week reported that the one item of clothing that people do not throw away, despite the fact that it no longer fits, is jeans. When I heard this I realised that I was also guilty of this. I still have a pair that I bought when I was 19. They are now referred to as my skinny jeans, and not because they taper in all the way down but actually because I was skinny when I could fit into them. Why do I keep them? I am still holding out for the day where I can wear size 8 jeans again comfortably without giving me a stomach ache - and that’s only if I can get my legs into them! Face it, I said to a girlfriend as we were reminiscing about our “old” wardrobe, we are never going to fit into them again…we forget that of course when we could fit into them before we weren’t just thinner, we were also only 17 at the time! With age our bodies change, without exercise our muscles turn to fat much at a faster rate, metabolisms slow down, and everything becomes a little looser. Not just my morals I'm talking literally. Boobs, bingo wings, double chins, the skin under the eyes...you know it’s true!
Fundamentally you cant fight it. I am ageing. Every second of every minute of every day. And finally the expression healthy living is starting to make sense. And the casualties of the battle against time are the sun and cigarettes. Of course I will still go on sunny holidays, but Factor 30 all the way, and as for smoking, a little bit harder but then the picture of Dot Cotton comes to mind and I know I am making the right decision.

Two healthy looking characters

The "C" Word

Oh yes. The C word. No, not that C word! The C word - commitment.

Further to last posting, I have successfully managed to show my boyfriend that I am still incapable of any normal, rational behaviour by getting ridiculously drunk ( no idea how I got to bed last night) and being completely unreasonable, stand offish and generally attacking. Why? Well he certainly had no idea why either..

It all started with a few drinks after work over supper with some girlfriends - one of them just moved in with her boyfriend last weekend, the other going on amazing dates and being generally spoilt and loving it. Then the conversation turns to me

How are things going with you guys?

Fiiiiiiiiiiine

How long have you two been together for?

20 months or so

Nearly 2 years, thats aaaaaaaaaaages

Not really.......

So are you guys moving in together?

No no, not moving in, hes not ready

Oh. Dont you see each other pretty much every day? Whats the difference? Is he a commitent phobe?

And there we had it. The C word. If anyone asked me Id say no. He's not a commitent phobe at all. OK so he doesnt want to move in. He has a great flat, great location, fab house mates, if I lived there I wouldnt want to leave either. And fundamentally the pull of living with me, aka his girlfriend is not that strong. I know that things change when you start living together, excitement levels fall and you start seeing each others bad habits for what they are ( and I know I have plenty) But is it lack of commitment why he doesnt want to? When asked he said he's not ready. Im not even sure why but reasonable arguments would be

1. Why rush
2. What does moving in together means - doesnt mean extra "quality time"
3. Just because others are doing it doesnt mean that we should

All reasonable arguments. but do I think of any of these things before I get into a tizz-wozz? No. I manage to convince myself that in fact he's just not ready to have a girlfriend like me,he doesnt want to move in, doesnt want to settle down, his friends are more important than I am, we dont even talk about the future in a serious way so  is probably just going through the motions before he dumps me. Eeeeeek. So what happens? Barriers. Come. Right. Up. I get defensive. Everything he says is a personal attack. Dont touch me! This isnt working - alert - alert - I cant do this anymore - alert -  alert - maybe we should break up. RED BUTTON.

I woke up this morning, after having had this outburst and was suddenly very conscious of my actions and then I realised he was there sleeping next to me. Ok phew. Ok panic. What have I done? Flashes of last night cross my mind, what I had said, how I behaved. More panic. Somehow he wakes up, can tell I am panicking and we talk. At 6:00am after a few hours sleep we talk. We talk about moving in and why hes not ready, we talk about quality time together, we talk about our friends:us balance, we talk about commitment.

Embarrassed and disappointed by my own actions I can only apologise and it gets me thinking. If he was a commitment phobe  he would have let me press the red button - he would have left me by now and could have months back when this all first started happening. I dont know why but whenever anything goes wrong, or when it doesnt go to my plan I am the first to give up. I'm scared he'll hurt me so I push him thinking he probably will so why not now. I press every imgainable button possible because I am too scared to face the truth that I love him with all my heart. And because I am so scared about losing him I push him away so that he cant hurt me, I start arguments to back up my feelings, I dont let him in and then I distance myself from him in the vague hope of lessening the pain when it finally does happen. No wonder he doesnt want to live with me. And then it dawns on me.

He's not the commitment phobe. Its me

Getting over it...

What is it about an argument that makes it so hard to get over? Having had a multitude of arguments with the boyfriend over the past couple of months I know that this cannot go on. Arguments between couples, yes, are allowed. But it’s the way you deal with arguments which is the key. More often than not it is a misunderstanding, or a different way of working to the other - one persons principles and priorities are not the same as the other. For the person to whom something is important it is extremely difficult to convey to the other person when, to them it is not that important. Take said argument this weekend. We planned lunch, on Sunday as he was away all weekend, I was busy with dress fittings and we were both busy next weekend and funnily enough I love spending time with my boyfriend that doesn’t mean sitting on the sofa on a week night catching the end of a movie before we go to bed with the prospect of work the next day hanging over our heads....Anyway, 12:30 phone call comes in, "Hi, just checking times of the train and I wont be there til 3 as there isn’t a train for another 1.5 hours so lets have a late lunch?". Great. Surprised? No. Disappointed. Yes. Him apologetic? - not really. Me, livid. As I point out to him, it is a Sunday so you cant expect things to work according to the time table as they had on Friday, in addition he knew we were having lunch together, is it that hard to look at your iphone that you do go on about and actually use it? Maybe think about a little bit and check the times before hand - what could have been a nice Sunday afternoon just him and me ended in disaster. He did say he was sorry, but he didn’t get why I was so cross. More than anything I was so upset as to me it seemed that he didn’t really cared when he saw me or not, meanwhile at the other end of the country here I was counting down the hours til I saw him - outfit chosen, waxed, was even planning nice underwear - all to be dashed at the sound of his hungover and unenthusiastic voice.




And here is where it gets hard, should I have just accepted his apology for what it was. Taken it on the chin ( his favourite saying). Agreed to meet him when his train finally did get in? (Originally was going to surprise him at station now not looking so likely) And salvage what was the few remaining hours on a Sunday afternoon. Or- what did happen was rant, rage and cry about ruining my Sunday and not wanting to spend time with me. Yeps, black and white, cold light of day and all that I can see that maybe my actions weren’t ideal either. So he bodged up initially I did (and I admitted it) make it into something A LOT bigger. So, how do you get over it? How when the disappoint hits you, the tears well up and the anger spreads across your chest like you can’t breathe - HOW do you get over it?



What I wanted was him to be sorry, me to accept apology, us to meet up, me explain how it makes me feel when he does that, him to realise that despite not meaning it it has bigger implications in my mind and to reassure me that is not the case. We kiss, we make up, we have lunch a little bit later than planned and everything is great again.



Instead here I am, 2 days later wondering - does he actually see why I was upset ( understandably he was in no mood to listen to me after the toys went out the pram) and can I get over it and see from his point of view that it wasn’t intentional. He is a boy - he cannot plan to save his life - and actually he did want to see me.



I don’t want to fight, I don’t want to bear grudges or expect him to disappoint me cos that’s no way to be in a relationship. We both need to be a bit more aware of the others needs. This isnt the first time, and it wont be the last (although I wish it were). And when I say I am trying, I mean it, just when it happens it all goes out the window. So what's the answer to getting over it?

1. Breathe
2. Count to ten
3. See the big picture - see argument above about not spending any time together, we spent more time arguing and therefore spent less time together!
4. Be the bigger person and apologise - it takes 2 to have an argument
5. Laugh, come on, its funny in a ridiculous kind of way...!
6. And finally - Just let it go. Dont waste any more time being mad at each other and unhappy, especially as you know things are so much better when you are on the same team and not against each other.

On my part I am going to practice the count to 10 technique ( more like 10 minutes) to be calm and try to remember that actually, I am lucky to have someone like him anyway (just like he is lucky to have me) - yes his time keeping does suck and sticking to the plan is not his forte - but I do love him. And if you love someone, for better or worse,  you got to take the good with the bad because nobody is perfect.

My Obsession with Vampires

My obsession with vampires, ok maybe that is a little widespread, my obsession with Edward Cullen to be exact. Thats right, the Twilight Saga which everyone keeps on telling me is for teenagers - I know that and I dont care!!!! Having read all 4 books in the space of 2 weeks anything that makes me carry round a 3kg book round London has to be good. And I am not the only one, only this morning sitting on the tube a girl sitting next to me was reading Breaking Dawn ( Book 4) albeit I was ahead of her ( Lucky thing, she still has so much more to look forward to!), a number of my other 27 year old friends ( married or otherwise) have also confessed to their secret obsession! What is it that we girls love about him so? Where do I begin...He's gorgeous, perfectly frozen in time at the age of 17 but with a mental age of an 108 year old - who said boys were immature? Being born in 1801 he is a complete gentleman and likes to adhere to the gentlemanly conduct of opening doors for you, laying his cloak over puddles, no sex before marriage...that sort of thing. He doesnt play games and he knows what he wants, he hates being away from Bella ( his girlfriend) and watches her while she sleeps ( slightly weird but thats because Vampires dont sleep). The romantics call him protective, dedicated and loyal, the feminists call him creepy, controlling and stalkerish. For me, it is because he believes in unconditional eternal love - and when he means eternal he means forever. Thats the kind of love I am looking for, maybe not from a vampire necessarily (we could never go on a sunny holiday for a start), but someone who loves me just the way I am, no matter what and more importantly Forever.

Therefore its not really about Edward being a vampire at all or that I am nearly thirty and in love with a fictional character. Its the same thing, the same feeling we all want to have, the one that you cant describe, the one that makes you warm and your stomach jump, the one that when you see others have it you wish you did too, the one that makes us who we are. It must be love. A forever kinda love. Just like Ben Harper said.



(That said, it is still not going to stop me having a girly Friday night, watching Twilight the movie, drooling at Rob Pattison as Edward and my obligatory glass of vino!)