Just airbrush me… please

How is it that newborns have the uncanny ability to suck the life out of their parents in the space of a few short weeks? I’m not complaining, not really, I just… well … ever since having children I seem to have aged a helluva lot.

The general consensus is: don’t do drugs and that hard drinking and partying completely f**k you up and when you’re over 40 your face will reflect the life you have lived. To be sure, I have lived a rather, er… shall we say full life. But I have not aged so much back then as I have in the past 3 years. 

The reason? No, my hard-drinking-partying-days are NOT catching up with me. Those past years feel, in fact, a good deal more sedate in terms of staying up late and wrecking the body than the rearing children ones. That lacrosse accident that I had in high school or that time when I partied all night with my friends, showered and then went to work for 8am in the morning have not caught up with me. You might think this is completely absurd but no! I tell you, these things are not ongoing sustained abuses of the body without the chance for respite and recuperation but that child-rearing is.

What I am trying to say is…

I used to be able to sleep in until 2pm if I wanted to and now I wake up at 6am (sometimes 5.30am) after I have been up and down during the night, as has my partner (er. ok, so NOT as much as my partner) and we do it cos we LOVE our kids but they are sapping all the collagen and vitamin young from our faces and, as a result I look like this:

What I am trying to say, is...

that I am getting OLD and WRINKLY and I have been seriously thinking about facial resurfacing for my skin and laser treatment for my rapidly diminishing eyesight  but I'm afraid that it will all go expensively and horribly horribly wrong and that I'll end up looking like this:

or perhaps even this:

(let’s just not even speak about my hearing cos we ALL know that Caroline is a COMPLETE DEAFHEAD).

wot? oh yeah.

I am popping vitamins like they are lollies and eating lollies like they are, well, lollies, and all in all my diet has gone to God as has my figure and so I am wearing those suck-in-underpant thingies that only OLD WOMEN wear

NO! not the sexy ones but more like, you know...

yes, more like that, but squishier and in black because I can't seem to consider wearing anything flesh-toned, although I am sure that will change (but only if I find some good ones at a reasonable price).

Grey is the new mousy-brown

I’ve dyed my hair blond for years, so many years in fact that I have absolutely no idea what my natural hair colour is. If the regrowth is any judge, then the true colour is somewhere between a dark, dirty blond and a kind-of nondescript auburn. It’s what most people call ‘mousy’ [squeek]
I guess there are probably a few grey hairs lurking in there, but I would really prefer not to think about it thank you very much. At least I’m not bald. (Apologies to all my balding friends)
I dye my hair and I don’t have to think, or care, about whether I’m going grey or not.

But shock, horror, [cue dramatic music] when I was in the shower the other day I found a grey pubic hair.

I wasn’t looking for one, I swear! It just seemed to glow with an unearthly aura around it, so much so that I couldn’t miss it. I didn’t know what to do. Should I pull it out and hope that the other pubes don’t notice? What if the shock of having Grandma Pube ripped out from next to them makes all the rest of them go grey? I suppose I should just leave Grandma P there in the hopes that she will talk to all her little P’s in a ‘don’t live your life like I lived mine or this could happen to you,’ kinda way.
I could just shave the whole lot off. Or wax it. I just don’t know that I could live with the resultant stubble or in-grown hair.

Many, many moons ago I used to date this woman who shaved off all her pubes. I actually think this is why we broke up. There was something quite disturbing about sleeping with someone who is completely bald in their nether-regions. (ok, ok, vagina) Whatever. It was completely bald. Every time I went down there I had this horrible sensation that maybe she wasn’t my age at all, maybe she was pre-pubescent.
I’m all for waxing and trimming and general maintenance but this was ridiculous. It made me feel like a dirty old perv. It freaked me out. I had to stop seeing her. So I did.
I never used to worry about getting old – I guess that’s the thing about being young – you feel that you are going to be that way forever. I think having kids has pushed me in to an early mid-life crisis. No longer should I be asking what am I going to do when I grow up. I need to be grown up.
And yes, this thinking is turning me grey… everywhere.

So, whatever happened to Grandma P? She left of her own accord, no coaxing (gentle or otherwise) involved. Good riddance.