The 40s chick guide to being the new girlfriend

Amidst the deepest darkest aloneness of being newly single, there is always a tiny. splintery, glittery spark of hope that you might emerge from this status and become someone’s new girlfriend.

We want this, right?

We know that yearning to start afresh with all mistakes and regrets cast aside constitues a reinvention akin to Drew Barrymore’s transformation from troubled wild-child to serene baby mama.

Well, rejoice and clap like a deep south gospel singer because no matter how remote you think the possibility may be, it CAN happen.

Yet like anything that is new and great in the realm of dating encounters, sneaking out of the FB single status has its perils. And here, joyfully, I lapse into something that I am drawn to as fervently as a single chick to vodka….using D-list celebrities to illustrate
how not to do things

(I must apologise at this point to my blog readers outside Australia who don’t have a clue who I am talking about. But look at the pics and you will get it…)

Let me introduce the ‘new girlfriend of the moment’

Gabi Grecko

 

Unremarkable if she was the girlfriend of a

• Anonymous DJ
• Hairdresser that is still practicing how to get brassy out of blonde
• South Eastern Suburbs bogan

More remarkable as she is the new girlfriend of australia’s most oddball bachelor.

And that she supecedes his last model

..by seven years, thereby establishing an age difference between the two new lovers of a mere 47 years.

Here are the lessons we can all learn from the GG

One – Take a moment to QA your social media history

We can all learn from this. For us:

• Ditch the 1980s Contiki Tour Greek Islands Toga Party pics
• Delete the compilation of cute kiddie pics that your Dad threw together for your 40th birthday
• Take a digital sledgehammer to your recent pinterest obsesson with Channing Tatum, Ryan Gosling and Ryan Phillipe. Apply the lens of sheer unavailability (to you)

For Gabi

• Delete the weird yoga bendy poses.

• Understand you are not Lady Gaga

Get the name right

One of the perils of the modern digital age is that you may not actually speak verbally for a period. You may read screen names, attributes, positive qualities and backstory to the point where you feel you may be indulging in a book review rather than lining up a squeeze on Tinder.

Given Gabi likely snagged AussieGeoff$$$Guy101 on Sugar Daddies ‘R Us.com there was no handy prompt to remind her that her new prospect was actually pronounced ‘Jeff’ and she unnecessarily endured a short period where she unwittingly pronounced his name Gee-off.

(she actually fessed up to this little snafu)

Nail the first outing

The first time you emerge in public is a pivotal moment.

I don’t mean the period where you skulked around Starbucks trying to be anonymous, where you kept it all on the down-low, where you kept your new love protectively hidden from the public eye…or away from your parents while you tried to figure out how to explain that a) you met online and b) the other party is not a serial killer/Nigerian scammer.

It’s the first outing IN PUBLIC

If there was a 40schick guide to first public outings, my tip would be that it not involve

a) a funeral. (let alone a funeral of a much loved football legend) AND
b) you wearing an outfit that involved unrestrained cleavage overflow

 

Be dignified in the treatment of the ex

I’ve already blogged on the topic of exes. It warranted
a good 700 odd words in its own right

But here, I reinforce that you don’t go all big-time slander on the ex.

ie

“I want to make it clear I’m not trying to be her lookalike. I’ve had so many articles say I’m a Brynne lookalike. It’s so repetitive,” she says.
“Brynne’s style was trashy, mine is art. That’s the difference.”

I’m sure that if I had the interwebs-ability to construct an online poll, complete with flickery bits that indicated who was in front, that the audience would be completely unable to distinguish GGs style between trashy and art (something tells me that her throwback to the Madonna lace gloves might lean to trashy)

Beyond this she hashtagged a pic of her kissing her new aged-squeeze to her ex’s mother (if there was ever a rule that need stating out loud, it is that you would not do this)

Messy all round peeps.

But let it just serve to give you hope…that if you are poised with mesh-gloved fingertip above the keystroke that broadcasts to FB that you are ‘in a relationship’ that there is a bunch of missteps that you can bypass with all the finesse of a delicate tip-toe cha-cha.

Beware the tale of how Gabi Grecko got her Gee-off.

(I’m totes #TeamBrynne)

If you are taking your online dating a little more seriously than this blog, check out this website for fabulously simple online dating advice.

Single @ The High School Reunion

I’m here to tell you friends, that you WILL encounter many pitfalls in navigating through the process of being single in your 40s. The early stages, the rookie mistakes and the perilous mid 40s makeover.

But you will prevail. I promise. Onwards and upwards.

However there are a few things that can set you right back, hurtling you back into the vodka-as-a-food-group mindset of the newly bereft.

A stellar example would be your ex getting re-married. This will no doubt have you scuttling to Adele and trilling ‘I heard that your dreeeeams came true” Often. Emotionally. In the shower (which is like space – where no one can hear you scream)

Not quite up there, but certainly unsettling….

Being Single At Your High School Re-Union.

Odds are, that at the moment that you finally congratulate yourself at having achieved a level of stability, the demon incarnate that is Facebook will poke you with a stab as pointy as the shiv of the incarcerated with a little prompter about your upcoming High School Reunion.

But like the wingwoman that I am, I’m here to tell you….

….you’ve got this.

Here’s the 40schick guide to surviving the high school reunion as a singleton.

One – its not the 80s anymore

Take a moment to revisit the horrors of fashions past. You are not going out in public garbed in:

• The horrors of taffeta
• The insanity of lace gloves (amped up exponentially if they were fingerless)
• A slick of blue crème eyeshadow that gummed up your eyelids like an intense case of conjunctivitis

Instead you are quite likely to rock a skinny jean with a slinky top, a pair of Milanese suede boots that cost about half of your 1975 first-car-Torana and no doubt an improvement in hairstyle.

Single or not, you are going to feel way better about yourself than you did when rocking a bad 80s home perm.

Two – the hot guy has probably deteriorated

When you were the geekster with glasses and an embarrassing ability to analyse Shakespeare, you no-doubt had a teenage yearning for the football jock who grew tall, filled out and sauntered through the school with all the model-bagging confidence of a young Leonardo DeCaprio.

Shortly after arrival at said reunion, you will be doing an internal happy dance to realise that he’s experienced an early onset pattern baldness and an Achilles injury that has curtailed a potential career and has had his beer carbs redirected to his belly.

Three – the cool girls have plateaued

The girls that smoked brazenly in the girls toilets? The girls that had the ability to crook a Cutex-home-manicured finger and reel in the top-percenter guys in class? They’ve become an unwitting poster girl for the effects of smoking for thirty years, are experiencing the logistical challenge of navigating the child-support arrangements that result from the spawn of multiple partners and somehow their life seems a little more complicated than yours. (if that is possible)

Four – you can count the bullets you escaped

Oh yes, you could be married at this point.

You could be married to the moody musician that became a life-long stoner.

In some alternate universe you could have had your crush on the Phys Ed teacher turn into reality – in which universe you would now be married to someone 60plus that was now well instituted into the wearing of polyester tracksuits.

Five – there is alcohol

…and unlike the late 80s, where your access to alcohol relied on:

• swiping swigs of your beer-drinking Dad’s unloved Christmas-present-bottle of Johnny Walker
• that manipulated birth certificate, artfully mocked up on your Olivetti then bathed in a wash of blue food dye (80s kids know precisely what I mean)

this time round, its perfectly legit, and this time round you are unlikely to end up in the school sick bay after the year 12 social, claiming migraine-induced projectile vomiting.

Just sayin…..

 

If you are taking your online dating a little more seriously than this blog, check out this website for fabulously simple online dating advice.

What Your Celeb Crush Says About You: Robbie Williams

May is a tricky month.

As a resident of the southern hemisphere it is a dismal time, a moment where we plummet towards winter, a time where you realise that persisting with peep-toes in the office will signal to your colleagues some kind of desperation ie

• You can’t afford a closed-toe shoe
• You are hanging on to summer with that same level of denial you had when you clung to your battered Nokia when everyone else went i-Phone

Neither are desirable perceptions.

In the greyness of a May day in Melbourne, I was fortunate to be in the company of my besties. This is a crew who can turn around even the most potent seasonal affective disorder given that their stellar company is exacerbated by virtue of being accompanied by carbs and chocolate. In good company, I let loose with a plaintive cry.

I need a blog idea. Anyone?

A little bit of *crickets*, a little bit of chomping down on some excellent Vietnamese food, a little proffering of material from an acquaintance recently relegated to single. (but a little too recent to blog about given my rule that the singleton needs to be able to smile about it before I blog about it)

So I moved back into fertile territory, a place I can always probe for fodder without angst. Celebs.

And, lo, it spawned not just a single blog but something I can translate into a series of blogs with all the spin-into-a-franchise potential of the ‘New Housewives Of’ brand (with only slightly less commercial viability)

Here goes…

The ‘What Does Your Celebrity Crush Say About You’ series.

I should point out at the outset that this is not about what any given celebrity might SAY ABOUT YOU in the event that they met you/knew you/tweeted about you (because, lets face it, unless you are Lindsay Lohan and you featured on her back-of-a-napkin conquest list that ‘accidentally’ got into publication, this is not vaguely mutual)

This is a bit like as astrology in that ‘if you are a Pisces, this is what’s going down for you’ ie if you have a crush on Robin Thicke, this is what it means.

Let me put it all on the line and throw out a case in point.

 40s chick has an extreme obsession with Robbie Williams.

If you don’t understand how deep this obsession is, you should ponder this anecdote.

40s chick has a serious day job that involves major corporations. A major corporation recently introduced a new person into 40schick’s world that caused a little jolt, in that his first sentence was uttered in a such an authentic Robbie Williams Stoke-On-Trent accent that 40s chick whirled sideways, thinking that a rock star had entered her midst rather than simply a mid-level software geekster with a rather compelling tone of voice.

.40s chick now listens to status reports on recent software improvements with her eyes half-closed because the voice is the same is what she’s heard on her oft-replayed DVD of Robbie at Knebworth.  (the gentleman in question looks nothing like Robbie)

Moving right along…

Here is what you can discern about yourself if your celeb crush is Robbie Williams

You know that first impressions aren’t everything

Simply put

• Bad, bad hair highlights
• Untamed eyebrows
• A jumper over a soccer top, and
• God-forbid, a fob-chain

doesn’t preclude a pop-star obsession far beyond that youthful period where you realise that Froot Loops aren’t really breakfast, vodka isn’t really lunch and a toasted sandwich isn’t dinner.

You can wait out an addiction

I can distinctly recall a Christmas family gathering where somehow Robbie Williams came up (perhaps it was a little chit chat about Robbie’s Melbourne December concert) and I took advantage of the food-coma-lull between main course and dessert to declare

‘but Mumma, Robbie doesn’t do drugs anymore’

This was done with tremendous conviction as if I had fronted the pop-star to sit alongside Aunty Janet and needed to smooth the way.

Shortly after, the Rob-ster celebrated his 33rd birthday in rehab.

You are insightful enough to picture ANYONE as a daddy

This is about foresight. This is about belief. This is about optimism.

This is about a belief that the right woman can convert a man.

(unfortunately the right woman wasn’t a 40schick who grew up in the south-eastern suburbs of Melbourne but was a famous American soap-opera star with a lovely smile and excellent, excellent hair)

In any case, the bad-boy became a daddy.

The upshot?

• Robbie is still touring and hasn’t had to delay concerts in favour of rehab stints
• 40s chick has tickets to his Melbourne concert in September with some besties
• 40s chick can hear software updates delivered in Robbie-like tone on any given Wednesday

Therefore, all is good.

Your turn. Tell me your celeb crush and I will tell you what it means……

George Has Left The Building

It was less than 12 months ago.

I was in a veritable Magic Faraway Tree of topsy turvy worlds.

Why?

George Clooney had been ditched by his girlfriend

#stilldontgetit

This week, the media is awash with tales of how the seemingly-eternal bachelor has been nabbed/tamed/snagged by an uber-savvy brunette who has already earned the moniker of HRH (Human Rights Hottie) and at every opportunity is flashing dark locks and some seriously chiselled cheekbones

Amal Allamuddin

All the while:

•  single women the world over, regardless of the likelihood that they would have ever crossed paths with GC, let alone done any snaring), and

• every gay man who believed George’s procession of girlfriends was a carefully choreographed ruse

sighed…. just a little.

Let’s just put aside our feelings that WE might have been that ONE, and consider here what it would have taken to snare the world’s most eligible bachelor.

The Good News

1.  You don’t need to be blonde. Since 40s chick has a long history of the relentless pursuit of blonde in an ongoing battle with my genetic predisposition to mousey, and to the detriment of my credit card balance, this is cold, cold consolation.
2. You can have a major shoe shortcoming.       This will include inappropriate combining of short boots and beige stockings, (who does peep toes with stockings?)

.

 

and a very clashy approach to flats

The Bad News

1.  You need to be Oxford educated and speak three languages (and the Braille/lala-speak that comes out of you after 1.5 bottles of Veuve does not count as one of these)
2. You need to have clients that include Kofi Annan and Julian Assange, you need to have a role advising the UN and you might also need to be the legal adviser to the King of Bahrain. Being an occasional letter-writer to the Herald-Sun and a protester to the local council on the topic of inappropriate suburban medium-density housing (hello, City Of Boroondara!) may not count.
3. At the tender age of 36, when 40s chick was still trying (and failiing) to nail that pivotal decision point where you walk away from Tequila shots, you need to be capable of representing the interests of the entire population of the Ukraine.

Which only goes to prove, that instead of George being the one who got nabbed, it might just have been the reverse, that Amal was the uber-catch of the singleton world and that it is GC that is counting his lucky stars that he planted an ethically-mined sparkler on someone with slightly more ambitious life goals than a blonde lady-wrestler.

Just sayin….

If you are taking your online dating a little more seriously than this blog, check out this website for fabulously simple online dating advice.