How The Brangelina Wedding Really Went Down

40s chick has been a bit AWOL. It started with a diversion to writing for a fun blog that necessitated seriously weekly scrutiny of The Bachelor ,
a little dating advice for the guys on the Big Bang Theory
and a jaunt back into the 80s and 90s episodes of Neighbours. This then overlapped with some well-earned downtime in a remote part of Western Australia where it was too ridiculously beautiful to sully beach time with the presence of technology.

However, I’m back on a plane to Melbourne and feeling like I need to give the 40s chick blog a little lovin.

What I didn’t fail to miss during my time beachside, was the fact that, despite their protestations that they wouldn’t wed until there was marriage equality for everyone, Brangelina bought into the urgings of the marital mafia and tied the knot.

Given I felt the need to keep sand out of my iPad, I know nothing of how this shindig went down. I only saw the news through that flickery ticker tape thingy on the bottom of the screen while I aimed to wrestle away the pool comp title at the local pub.

I’m sure the interwebs and some lucky publication with the exclusive have the deets, but in the absence of all that, here’s what I think NEVER happened at the Brangelina wedding.

Shiloh went frou-frou

From birth, Shiloh has demonstrated an anaphylactic-style aversion to girl clothes. Early on, she became the natural antidote to Suri Cruise and just kicked some androgynist stylin’ butt.

So I’m tipping that this wedding did not see Shiloh clad in emerald taffeta, with carefully custom-dyed silk shoes and a prom-worthy corsage.

If it did, I’m thinking she kicked down some doors till she found the waiter’s ante-room, funded a superannuation fund for some poor local with this week’s pocket money in exchange for his uniform, and then happily attended the rest of the celebrations in trousers, albeit a little generous for her tiny frame.

There were Team Jen protesters

Jen’s supporters are still hurting from the way Angelina ALLEGEDLY/TOTALLY snared the married Brad during the filming of Mr and Mrs Smith.

No one wanted the golden couple torn asunder by the predatory Angelina – it spawned a Shenzen-province production line of Team Jen T-shirts and a Twitter hashtag before really understood what a Twitter hashtag actually was.

Just as the sad SaveAlbertPark clan are still attaching yellow ribbons to oak trees to protest the Melbourne Grand Prix some eighteen years after the Grand Prix took up residence around the track, there are no doubt similarly resolute Team Jen die-hards waving their T-shirts aloft.

I suspect they are still drinking NY coffee over old eps of Friends rather than picketing Chateau Miraval, but I’d like to think they are still there staging a teeny but heartfelt protest nonetheless.

Ange and Brad’s outfit

 Designers would be slitting the throats of their first born children to be dressing the couple for their matrimonials. However I’d like to think of Brad and Ange defying tradition by rocking a little double denim a’la Brit and JT

Or Ange shucking skinny shoulders into a Diana-style gigantic sleeve.

Oh Yes.

The Celebrant

 Given Brangie’s indifference to the Moses commandments,  eg coveting those married elsewhere, I suspect that they may have engaged the services of someone less religious, but rocking the following elements in their CV:

• Served as s spiritual doula, presiding over serene home-births, creating the most zen imprint on the birth of blessed children
• Apprenticed dutifully to the Dalai Lama, emerging as an enlightened prophet
• Meditated in a cave in Bhutan for a year
• Curated Gwyneth Paltrow’s green smoothie recipe collection on goop.com

No. I want the guru of the Brangelina nuptials to have been a chain-smoking, Wild Turkey-swilling Elvis impersonator, a little on the fuller side and likely to bust out of the white suit at any given moment.

How YOU doin’?

The history

 I’m pretty sure that the Brangelina celebrant, Elvis-impersonator or not, would have acknowledged the journey that brought these two together, including:

• The W magazine spread (so soon after the Aniston split that it made us all a little queasy)
• The Rainbow Jolie-Pitt children
• Childbirth in Africa – only a Hollywood actress would figure that for a safe concept

Instead, I’d like to think they ritually emptied Billy Bob Thornton’s blood from that vial that Angelina used to tote around and re-used it as receptacle to throw down some quality Tequila shots.

 

I don’t know, you tell me, what did you expect from Brangelina?

 

 

 

 

 

In Sickness And In Health

40schick is sick.  Not that well-deserved sick that comes from a riotous night on the vino with the besties or the body meltdown that comes from a marathon of consecutive school-night social festivities. On the contrary, it actually occurred on the first day of Dry July which I suspect was my body’s way of protesting against its very own human rights violation.

Just your average, someone-sneezed-near-you-on-the-tram kinda sick – but it packed a punch. Quarantined from work and banned from running (surely the coach could get a defibrillator into a backpack and we could just wing it?), I  was left with waaaay too much time on my hands.

By Day 3, it was very clear that I had some real sick-girl quirks.  This prompted some codeine-fuelled musing about just another of those dating-in-your-40s rituals like meeting the parents for the first time –   being super-sick in front of your new significant other for the first time. To avoid anyone experiencing that horror unprepared, here’s what it looks like.

Delicate lungs

Although you wouldn’t know it from my ill-advised propensity to belt out a karaoke tune, my lungs aren’t up to much. (actually, you WOULD know that if you had heard me try to nail Sweet Home Alabama or Dancing Queen) These lungs will latch onto a single stray atom of cold germ and draw it deep into lung tissue with the enthusiasm normally demonstrated by an 80s Wall St type with a line of cocaine.

Once there, the germ finds an ideal haven in some lung tissue that has been decidedly dicey since my birth – given this birth took place in an era where smoking during pregnancy only warranted a single eyebrow-raise rather than a blaring cigarette-packet warning and the engagement of Child Protection Services.

This culminates in a hacky cough that will convince anyone sharing a couch with 40schick to half expect to find themselves suddenly seated next to a glob of forcibly expelled lung tissue.

Never happens in The Notebook.

Tendency to over-dramatise

Just as there should be a breathalyser app on the iphone to prevent drunk-texting, there should be a thermometer on the keyboard to prevent you invoking Dr Google if your temperature is even a mili-degree higher than rock-solid normal (which is 37 degrees as I learned this week from Doc G)

No good can ever come of this. Do this and you’ll know that coughing is not designed to cleanse your lungs of germs but is in fact evolutionarily favourable to the bacteria by spreading it far and wide. I will naturally skip past the entry that suggests coughing is favourable, to the bit where it suggests malignant lung tumours may be to blame.

I even found myself doubting the highly trained staff at Epworth Hospital this week and began staring intently at my chest X-rays sticky-taped to a window, looking for sneaky shadows, applying everything I’d ever learned from weekly instalments of ER.

No one likes a drama queen. Romance over – faster than you can say acute interstitial pneumonitis.

There’s no glamour

No one looks glamorous when sick. Some of us however, are able pull off a pallor with the skill of Cate Blanchett. I am not this person.

By day 5, my unwashed hair had taken on additional thickness by virtual of a few feverish night sweats and now had a touch of the 80s Bon Jovi about it. And not in a good way.

I had also taken to schlepping round in a bathrobe. Not a classy Egyptian cotton waffle-weave, but a 10 year old beige concoction in a fabric not found in nature but now favoured as a foundation for animal-print onesies. Said bathrobe has long since lost its belt to the bottom of the wardrobe (where a seething morass of shoes have devoured it in that cannibalistic way they regard rival accessories) and is now held closed with a clothespeg.

Glam-factor-zero.

Weird food habits

Being unwell makes me contemplate everything I may have done to contribute to this state, most notably inattention to a balanced diet.

It is at this point that overcompensation kicks in ie I

• subscribe to Gwyneth Paltrow’s food blog
• codeine-drunk-dial myself up a Nutri Bullet (anyone who watches daytime TV knows what I mean)
• make my famous vegie-lentil-all-in broth known affectionately as poop soup (so-named given the colour of the lentils conquers all the greenery)

None of this maketh a Nigella-style domestic goddess.

 

In short, it’s best that you grow up together in your 20s, experiencing gradual and well-spaced shared episodes of sickness generated by great nights out with multi-coloured cocktails, when the only help you needed was a scrunchie to keep your hair out of the action and youthful enthusiasm to do it all next weekend. Somewhere in this journey you sign up for ‘in sickness and in health.’

Far easier than coping with your new 40-something girlfriend turning into a barking, tatty-fleece-clad hypochondriac overnight.

At least I’ll never be ill enough to think I can rock a onesie.

The 40s Chick Guide to Footy Dads

If you are still in the depths of despair or trapped in one of the four stages of breakup grief, be supremely confident of this fact.

You. Will. Date. Again.

It WILL happen.

From the combined knowledge of a Glo-Mesh clutch of 40s chicks (now there’s a collective noun if ever I’ve coined one) I’m told that a 40s chick rite of passage is to date one of the following:

•   A Hipster

• A footy dad

If it’s the latter, and this is new territory for you, there are a few tips for the uninitiated.

The kiddies ALL look the same

 Even if you have navigated the first six months of dating a dad, just as in ten years you are not going to pick that kid out of a juvenile delinquent line-up, you have zero chance of cheering on the right kidlet in a game of under-9s.

They all look the same. Scruffy. Muddy. Unidentifiable.

40s chick tip: ask what number the kid plays under so you have some chance of ‘Whoohoo’ing at the right moment.

Write it on your hand if you must #highschoolthrowback

Sunday Morning Coming Down

Kids’ footy involves Sunday mornings. Yes. Sunday Mornings. Google them if it’s been a while since you’ve seen your last one.

Your previous life: you’d be shaking off a hangover and checking facebook to fill in the gaps about what went down the night before.

New life: you will be squinting into lacklustre autumn sunlight trying to feign interest in a small kid running round after a footy.

40s chick tip? Everyone carries a travel mug or takeaway coffee cup. Good? Maybe a Gwyneth-esque lemongrass and ginger tea in your travel mug. Better? A Bloody Mary with a little extra vodka to mute the impact of 36 humans yelling (and that’s just the parents).

The Chicks Frock Up

This is incomprehensible.

In an environment which screams you best layer up, snuggle a scarf and slide into Skechers, the chicks are rocking Sass and Bide, cashmere-merino blends and suede boots.

Suede boots, I ask you!?

Dust. Mud. The likelihood that a red-Gatorade-fuelled kiddie will step on you and imprint footy studs on your suede. None of these are a place where you parade a light-coloured suede item of footwear.   A lamb has donated its life and the underside of its skin for your footwear and you take it to a local football field, subjecting it to unpaved paths and random spatter?

If there was a PETA equivalent for the protection of animal by-products once they have left the animal, they’d be ALL OVER these chicks.

There is no logic, as far as I can see, in frocking up for kids footy.   It’s a desperate attempt to have a WAG moment, with nary a Brownlow Medal red carpet nor Beckham in sight.

Yet still they do.

Canteen food

There’s a chance that you have not yet shed your 40s chick lifestyle and there is indeed a Bloody Mary in your travel mug. This is the ONLY scenario that would see you appreciative of footy canteen food.

On the upside, you can get a hot dog, a bucket of chips and a drink for less than the lunchtime CBD prices of a ham and cheese toastie. The downside? You will have to wait behind a couple of 8 year olds who ONLY want a red/green giant snake, causing Meg from the canteen to madly sort the blue/green, orange/yellow and blue/purple gelatinous rejects with grudging precision to get to the coveted red/green ones.

During this time one of two things will happen:

• You’ll have moved on to a craving for a banana fritter which will have you sneaking off to the local suburban chinese restaurant

• You’ll be devouring the reject snakes

Either way, your BMI will not thank you tomorrow.

It never ends

Whilst you think your obligation is over by midday, you will have only bought yourself time for lunch and a nanna nap, as you’ll be right back there at 5pm for a curious phenomenon.

‘Match Report’

Yes. This is a thing. One where the under-9s coach, fuelled by an unrequited desire to be the next Mick Malthouse, will be silencing the room with a look, then imparting the benefit of his decades of football knowledge via the match report.

There are a lot of other things that you could be doing at 5pm on a Sunday. I know this as I realised long ago that this is the witching hour of the weekend, the border between weekend happiness and despair as the Pre-Monday blues set in. I’ve developed many a technique to stave off the malaise of 5pm Sundays. It used to be the window for ironing work shirts until I realised that this just brings on the malaise with a furious potency (I also discovered that the application of a hair straightener to the visible shirt elements – lapels and collar – was much quicker and just as effective)

Far more joie de vivre can be obtained from a glass of something chilled and an episode of Postcards.

Nothing joyous to be found in observing an under 9s coach relishing his 15 minutes of suburban fame.

40schick tip? Go all 50s housewife and offer to stay at home and tend to dinner. Whack something into the oven and give yourself the Postcards treatment.

Above all? Don’t worry. You’ve smashed glass ceilings, negotiated major contracts and nailed public speaking. You’ll be fiiiine. You’ll know this once you find yourself applying business transformation techniques to the operation of the sausage sizzle.

You’ve got this.

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Consciously Uncoupling, the Most Zen of Break-ups

A couple of weeks ago, I observed the first ‘we’re in splitsville’ announcement on facebook. Not by any rockstar, supermodel or reality TV D-lister, but by an everyday person. It was written in the style of a celebrity breakup, minus the ‘request for privacy at this difficult time’, and inclusive of a statement that the message was not posted in a call for sympathy, but just to avoid having to tell everyone one by one when they next met. A momentary quandary ensued as I contemplated whether pressing ‘like’ was appropriate. But there’s something efficient and appealing in this mechanism, and having been a person who announced her marriage breakup to her parents by text message some three months after the event, I can relate to delivery of news in that fashion.

What is far more tedious is the procession of celebrity breakup messages, and this week they were all topped by Gwyneth Paltrow announcing the end of her marriage to Chris Martin. Now I find Gwyneth particularly loathsome at the best of times, and on more than one occasion have wanted to inform her what she could do with her authentically-ancient rustic earthenware bowl of quinoa, hand-roasted grain by grain and nestling meditatively in a nest of shredded kale, but I have a general philosophy not to stoop to twitter trolling. She topped it this week by trying to out-zen every celebrity breakup that has gone before, describing it as a decision to ‘consciously uncouple’. In a week bereft of any kind of humour this proved to be fodder for every radio station, comedian and commentator as we all tried to understand if this was gluten-free-speak for divorcing.

From someone who has named her website after nothing (Goop) and her child after a fruit (Apple) we should be unsurprised to note new phraseology emerging from the Paltrow camp. However it seems to be very Gwyneth-esquely grounded in its origin from a term used by two divorce specialists in LA who aimed to bring ‘wholeness to the spirits of both people’ during the process (which is about as LA as you can get)

I’d imagine Gwyneth has had some time to contemplate (whilst inhaling bergamot essential oil and pondering the perfection of a lotus flower) the best wording of such an announcement, with the benefit of reviewing the announcement content alongside subsequent behaviour on the part of the couples in question. Here’s what she could have learned from those who inhabit the celeb-stratosphere.

Kim Kardashian and Kris Humphries

From Kimmy,

“I had hoped this marriage would be forever” (cue collective groan as we all understood that it had been 72 days, which meant at flat-line amortisation rates the grotesquely OTT engagement ring had cost close to a lazy $28,000 per day)

“We remain friends and wish each other the best”, slightly at odds with Kris’s ‘I’m devastated to learn she filed for divorce” and comprehensively at odds with their subsequent behaviour which included him suing her for a divorce based on fraud whilst Kim worked simultaneously on a new handbag line and becoming impregnated with Kanye West’s child.

Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher

From Demi:  ‘there are certain values and vows that I hold sacred, and it is in this spirit that I have chosen to move forward with my life’

ie – you cheated on me, you SOB, and its going to be messy. And expensive.

Jennifer Aniston and Brad Pitt

I realise we are going back to the archives here, but there was a nuance in this breakup announcement that was a little unique ie ‘we would like to explain that our separation is not the result of any speculation reported by the tabloid media’, said media being in a frenzy much like a Western Australian shark population circling a coconut-oil-basted clutch of surfers.

Sure, it was not a result of that speculation but a more fact-based scenario where Mr and Mrs Smith were taking their conjugal duties seriously off-screen.

For the record and in the interests of full-disclosure?

I’m #teamaniston.

Marc Anthony and J-Lo

J-Lo…the roots of the Anthony downfall were grounded in the fact that she ever ditched Ben Affleck in the first place (actually, that whole thing was incomprehensible to me…)

However once the Anthony era was done, her statement that she had ‘come to an amicable conclusion on all matters’ seemed to only have the tiniest discrepancy – that the scope of the amicable conclusion was unlikely to extend to her installing boy-toy back-up dancer as boy-toy back-up daddy to the Lo-Anthony twins.

As for you Gwyneth? My predictions are these:

One – You will shortly understand that immediately after conscious uncoupling you will undergo a period where

• your blender moves away from green smoothies to hi-octane margaritas, and
• shortly thereafter conscious uncoupling becomes unconscious coupling

Two – You and Russell Brand will be swapping yoga mats and harem pants in a Hollywood heartbeat.

Mark my words……

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

Tinder. No. Just no.

So.  I have this friend who feels like her early 40s single life has hit rock bottom.  Why does she believe this? Not because her dates comprise men with the looks of Sheldon Cooper, the intelligence of Joey from Friends and the relationship longevity of John Mayer.

No. She thinks she has bottomed out because she is trawling for love on RSVP.

But I have tremendous news.  It’s on a par with the glad tidings of comfort and joy that we celebrate at Christmas (and who doesn’t love a festive free pass for unlimited alcoholic beverage intake and a day-long calorific binge, punctuated by naps?)

It’s a short message. It’s going to be ineptly expressed. It’s scientifically and statistically unproven, but I am here to tell her that I have executed an experiment that proves that she has not in fact hit the true dumpster-diving low of online dating.

My dear friend, you have not hit rock bottom.  Why?

Because you are not yet on Tinder.

I can’t discount the fact that Tinder News linked to one of my previous posts,
which makes this one the equivalent of:

•  Kicking Zuckerberg  in the head in the playground then hoping Facebook ads will make me millions
• Holding out on Steve Jobs until the 4s in 2012 and then going all i
• Dissing James Packer , and therefore never getting even an entry level job in his media emprire.

But I do believe firmly in there being something a teensy bit more involved in finding true love than playing a version of ‘Snap’ online.

If RSVP is the equivalent of a fairly harmless one-too-many Sunday afternoon Sauv Blancs or a dabble into the lightest of recreational drug habits, Tinder is the moment that you look sideways at crystal meth and think that ‘heyyy…… that sparkly stuff ain’t all bad’

Why?  There are many perils my friend.

 One – its entirely about photos, not words.

I get the ‘picture tells a thousand words’, but I’d like at least, MAYBE, the 25 words or less that it takes to win a supermarket cat food competition in order to snag me. Tinder makes this entirely optional. In fact, in your haste to sign up, you can just throw in any old selection from your facebook pics and need not say a word about yourself.

So instead of scanning a written profile for your top 5 danger words?  You’ve got nothing.

You have, instead, a hastily, app-generated concoction of photos.

What will this mean?

In many of these photos, you’ll be unable to discern who the chap of choice actually is.  Is he that hot guy in the middle of the three? Or one of the two very average blokes serving as bookends? Although slightly more likely to be successful than Tatts, it’s still not the kind of odds that would have you dashing to the TAB.

 Two – he’s local

 If you don’t pay due attention, your Tinder settings mean you sign away your location rights as blithely as your Friday night check-in at Ponyfish Island.  So anyone you swipe in the affirmative knows the approximate location of your abode with all the potential menace of that regrettable fling that is now the subject of an intervention order.

So if you haven’t taken pains to only post on Tinder your Masquerade ball pics or the brunette moment you had in July last year, you may very well be recognised at the local Safeway.

 Three – There’s no ‘I take that back’ button

The tinder universe is a minefield, just waiting for a rookie mistake,

You have to be on your guard and have military-sniper-like concentration to avoid pulling the trigger prematurely on the Heckler and Koch and SWIPING RIGHT ON THE WRONG GUY.

If you do this, please understand that if you fire without due consideration, there is no going back.

I now understand, that if your focus was momentarily distracted by a Sunday afternoon re-play of The Blacklist, or a lunch where carbohydrates were outweighed by Cab Sauv that your Tinder hotlist now comprises of a guy:

• in full Gene Simmons Kiss makeup
• wearing a beanie with bear ears
• who has no visual identity and has chosen to portray himself as a cute Whippet

If you do this, be aware that the Tinder gods give you no ‘Undo’ button to allow you to STEP AWAY from the consequences of your inattention.  Gene Simmonds guy is now going to pursue you to the ends of the earth.

At first glance, there is no unfriend button on Tinder

 Four – Shared Friends

 In some ways this might be good, in that the guy where you squint your eyes, look sideways and take into consideration the cuteness of his whippet makes you think that he’s worth consideriing…then heyyyyy… he knows someone you know!

Instantly there is an avenue where you can validate his single status, his lack-of-stalker-ism and his level of prior baggage.

Alas, this is only useful if your friend in common is someone with whom you are in recent contact as opposed to someone you might have shared a West Coast Cooler in the 80s whose opinion was only valid when it came to the social validity of white-ankle-boots in high school.

But there’s upside………….

But hey, there is always an upside! You can revert to semi-content-rich RSVP, or the attraction-algorithmically charged e-Harmony at any time.  And if you are feeling down about yourself?

Just swipe LEFT at will and plaster a big fat NOPE on all of them until you feel better. You aren’t at rock bottom if you are dispensing rejection at will…..

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

Why you can’t be friends on Facebook

So many conundrums exist today that didn’t exist when you were last single that you are going to spend a certain amount of time, tears and tequila navigating rookie mistakes.

Amongst those myriad questions … at what point in your fledgling relationship do you become friends on Facebook?

If it were me, I’d only be handing over the keys to the Zuckerberg kingdom of my digital history after the prenup was inked, the formalities executed and we are tootling off into the sunset with the tin cans and shaving cream indicating we’ve successfully navigated the  nuptials.

i.e.  once its too late.

Why?

So many perils, friends.

Your history

Open up your profile to your new flame and you give them access the national gallery of your recent history. Unlike your friends, who have gradually negotiated your many transitions in facebook from:

Some key anniversary with mandatory hashtag #soblessed (just so few consonants away from #sobfest)

Some obscure saying about letting go to find love

Some term about the joys of unhindered single life

Something spiritual that tries to give the impression you are now a grounded, non-intervention-order-requiring individual able to function in regular society.

Seeing it unfold in one hit could be unnerving.

Beware – Just as the vague feelings of embarrassment and instinct-to-apologise fade after a big night out (in about the same timespan as the accompanying hangover) you will forget that there was ever evidence posted by you and your friends on FB. If you do not have a robust policy of reviewing and archiving your weekend’s boozy adventures, you need to bear in mind that they are STILL OUT THERE.

So unless you are going to create an entirely fake FB profile that reads like Gwyneth Paltrow’s insanely organically balanced blog, complete with a convincing number of fake FB friends, you do not want someone trawling your entire history. Especially not the one male who was game enough to move on from your carefully chosen online dating pics, handcrafted profile and witty online repartee and thinks you are an extraordinarily grounded and accomplished female. They’ll figure out that you are human eventually, no need to reveal it in one click.

His history

Although you will, as soon as digitally possible, have stalked to the ends of the interwebs your new squeeze, there are certain things that even the most thorough digital exhumation of publicly available information will not reveal. From the entry-level view presented by Linked-in right through the depths of your trawl through the first 25 pages of google search results, you are unlikely to reveal anything near as illuminating as the chardonnay-fuelled scan of the first five albums you have access to if you two become facebook buds.

Things like

• a predilection for posting pics of tattoo models that indicates an obsession with something to which you have no insight, having never approached artificial coloring anything more permanent than having your eyelashes tinted.

•  an ex that has either arms/abs/cheekbones/ankles so perfect that you feel obliged to bury your head under a pillow and sob at your poor form by comparison

•   a collection of mates that indicates he is part of a rebel outlaw motorcycle gang the subject of a current police crackdown

A new and unnerving source of paranoia

As sure as the fact that Lindsay Lohan will again make a mugshot appearance is the fact that once you become FB buddies, you will monitor every new female friend addition with microscopic scrutiny,

If he dare go on a work trip and run into a second cousin, cementing the family reunion via a FB pairing with the noble intent of bringing lost family connections together, you will note this on your daily scan. Following this you will secretly subject her name to CSI style internet forensics to determine WHO ON EARTH IS THIS NEW FEMALE. This will continue to the point you will be executing a drive by of every location evidenced by her blatantly unprotected FB check-ins before your partner even has his car out of the airport car park.

The conunudrum of declaring your relationship on FB

From the moment you link up, you’ll hear a ticking that sounds like low chime of the doomsday bell. Its not your biological clock or throb of the vein on your left ring finger yearning for a Kardashian style rock to crush it into silence.

No.

It’s the heartbeat of facebook waiting for this first of the two of you to falter in the gigantic game of chicken that is updating your relationship status on FB.

I’ve never done this, so I don’t know if someone goes first in saying xxx is in a relationship with yyy and if there is any element of consensus required as there is in the friend request step (or in fact in your generally accepted marriage proposal process).

Perhaps it is a matter of the most digitally-adventurous going first with the declaration and the absence of any objection by the other being accepted as a ‘yerr, alright’

But if you do this, its there forever, until such time as you FBily disentangle yourself and restore yourself to single. Although this is less expensive and requires far less paperwork and judicial intervention than a divorce, it does place a gigantic heartbreak symbol update in the newsfeed of yours and every one of your friends.

FB is democratic in this scenario, caring not which party created the digital disconnection and therefore never knowing whether you feel heartrbroken or not. This will cause all your friends to offer you pitying comments, the unedifying digital version of the cheezels, wine and DVDs that real friends brought over last time your heart was in jeopardy.

It also allows your less charitable acquaintances to pore over your history and declare that they saw the seeds of doom were sown from the beginning and be infuriatingly smug – but in this case at least you can unfriend them

.

In short, your FB friendship is gold, don’t just give it up.

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

Dodging the Wrecking Ball

The recent train wrecks amongst our more junior celebrities has caused me to ponder the advice that I would now give to my 20 year old self about to who to date and how to conduct myself.

Although there’s plenty to learn from in my own history, learning from one’s own mistakes is nowhere near as much fun as indulging in celebrity disaster stories. Besides, mine aren’t plastered across the interwebs for google to find (and my facebook account only goes back to 2008)

Dear 20 year old version of 40s chick, 

Have vision

I know you have no apparent psychic tendencies, but you need to be aware that what is appealing now can turn bad as quickly as you can say Disney starlet meltdown.

…..

There’s a theme here – it’s the talented clean-cut ones that seem to go horribly wrong. Pick a Mr Average and they are unlikely to do a Bieber on you.

Resist the bad-boy

Just as every head of lustrous locks could be sheltering inner demons and beneath glossy sparkling skin there could lurk a layer of festering rebellion, there’s no reason to go the opposite direction and date the out-and-out bad boy. It might seem like dating the unapologetic damaged rock star or your local recreational weed smoker at least means you know what you are up against, but no.

Take Pete Doherty, lead singer of a band that no one can remember, proven to be even too rock and roll for Kate Moss in her hard core rock chick days. Largely credited with Amy Winehouse’s downfall. You don’t want this.

You might find your local equivalent of a Charlie Sheen, refreshingly upfront about his womanising tactics, to be a known quantity and consider a dabble on a light hearted basis. Consider his philandering ways as an inbuilt safeguard which will eventually grow tiresome for you, hopefully long before he starts to look like someone you’d report to the police if he was hanging round a primary school when the kiddies are let out.

Never overlook the power of a decent wardrobe and a haircut

Even with the beer goggles on, there are some candidates you would never give a second glance. I don’t want to be all Nanna about judging and books and covers, but remind yourself that it is ALL ABOUT THE RAW MATERIAL.

Poor Jon only needed to tone down the animal print and barber the bouffant.

Even George was in trouble whilst he was dabbling with polka dots and a mullet and benefited greatly from letting go of the eyebrows and indulging in some stubble.

Recognise that a moustache is disposable – just know there’s a risk they’ll re-grow it in the 2013 hipster craze

Dear younger version of 40s chick – I promise you, someday the 80s will end

For you? Here a are couple of words of advice.

No vodka before lunch

Much can be learned from the tribulations of Lilo. Most notably, that booze before lunch is a slippery slope. Start early knocking off the vodka and OJs, everything starts to resemble your favourite tipple – orange tan, orange hair

orange jumpsuit

Above all, embrace your inner Disney Princess

Bear in mind that there is nothing wrong with hair extensions, a friendly smile and some prom style fashion.

Shiny polyester in a nude colour does no one any favours and the only person who thinks Miley Cyrus looks better in the second photo is Miley Cyrus.

Good luck!
Love 40s chick xo

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

The missing link in online dating profiles – vices

There’s a gaping hole in the configuration of online dating profiles as far as I can see. No, its not the presence of a lie detector test to flush out the cads that are in fact still married and seeking a fling (although a little x box that glowed a little red light about that fact would be a welcome addition)

It’s a little section that would allow you to elaborate on your vices.

For your vices give a glimmer of insight into your personality far greater than anything that you could verbalise within your written profile. Vices give insights that demonstrate baggage far more vividly than a veiled reference to a desire to live a drama-free life, compassion more instinctive than the profile pic with your World Vision sponsor kid, and a diversity of character far greater than what you can conjure up by vomiting adjectives such as fun-loving, compassionate, caring, genuine, honest, fair etc etc zzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Vices give an insight into the areas where you see yourself as slightly less than perfect but can easily transform into something more endearing that this week’s best cute kitten video on youtube. Every vice has a silver lining.

Try these for example. I’m not saying these are mine. Ok, yes, they are mine.

Vice #1 Lockdown for weeks while the Biggest Loser is on

Like a Kardashian drawn to a body-con leopard print, I am dragged into this reality sob-fest drama year after year. After an anxious orientation period resembling to the first term at high school, I will spend at least the first three episodes seeking a couple of champions to cheer and will be sucked in by reality-TV selective editing to feel scorn for a contestant akin to the need to boo-hiss a panto character. I will watch from the couch, usually downing carbs, (see Vice 2) issuing forth a verbal version of #biggestloser twitter feed to no one in particular as my slightly overfed new friends suffer at the mercy of the trainers and the elimination episodes.

Cue gratuitous Commando pic.

But from this you will gain an insight into my softer side. I will cry for their history of being bullied, their banishment to the bigger ladies fashion department, their beaten-down lack of confidence and the brutality of the episode where it is revealed that their lifespan is shortened to a point that it is more likely that Lindsay Lohan will grow old than they will.

Vice #2 Carbs

My name is 40s chick and I am a carboholic. My addiction is selective – confined as it is to the white carbs – the emptiest, glycaemically-overloaded, nutritionally void, overprocessed grains that bear no resemblance to anything found in nature. Present me with a wholegrain and I will sneer and toss my head like a purebred Persian cat rejecting house-label tinned tuna. Observe me after an ill-advised dabble in an Atkins or South Beach high protein diet and I will appear as crazed as a meth addict but seeking the embrace of a slippery linguine rather than a crusty crystal. If you try to show empathy when I’m on some protein-fest by eating an ostensibly healthy Caesar salad, bear in mind that all the while I’m mentally gouging out your eyes just to get at your croutons.

The upside? When I let go of the calorie count, you’ll share in my indulgence in risottos, *home-made lasagne (* but yes, with the béchamel from a jar), spaghetti slathered in pesto sauce and slightly over-engineered toasties. And I’ll indulge your child with Froot Loops – purely so I can filch a handful here and there.

Vice #3 Creams

Risk a glance into my bathroom cabinet and you’ll be suitably reassured by the lack of prescription pill bottles but in the same instance appalled by the oversupply of face creams. From AHA to BB to Zinc, they are all there. From my endless quest for an eye cream to dispense with puffiness, to the guilt-tripped purchases from the nice lady who does my eyebrows and casually makes reference to under-exfoliation, to my obsession with travel-sized kits induced by their sheer cuteness and portability.

The advantage? My every move I make will be improbably fragrant, there’s a chance I won’t resemble a croc-handbag once older, and you’ll be able to swipe a little Elizabeth Arden 8 hour cream if you are having a metrosexual moment.

Vice #4 Running

This and Vice #2 go hand in hand but not in the order you’d expect. I’d don’t carb so that I can run, I run so that I can carb.

It’s a tad unsocial in that my weekend schedule will revolve around training, that despite my terror at the prospect of sub-five-star accommodation I will ditch you for running camp in a heartbeat. You will find that weekends away will inexplicably tie in a rural running event before I can kick back with you and enjoy regional produce.

But it does allow a pleasant indulgence in event T-shirts which in themselves provide reassurance that in the case of nuclear holocaust we’ll be able to clad ourselves for days in fresh T-shirts without the aid of laundry. If I get sucked into one of my hell-hole periods at work, you can be assured that even if the fridge is barren of a scrap of milk or the pantry bare of bread, you will survive in my house via the supply of running gels and powerade.

 

So I get that online dating profiles are all about highlighting karaoke skills that are second only to Beyonce’s, your ability to bust a glass ceiling as if you had the power of Wonder woman’s bracelets and Masterchef-style skills in the kitchen, but its your vices that make you real. Just keep em a little less extreme than Mesdames Cyrus and Lohan and its all good.

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

The 40s chick guide to hipsters

There are puh-lenty of new things you are going to need to navigate when you are suddenly single in your 40s. You’ve probably already figured out social media, and if you are anything like me, made your fair share of rookie mistakes.,

Beyond all that, here’s another NEW THING in town that did not exist when you and I were last single. Listen in closely friends, and I’ll share what it is.

The hipster.

Enter the current era-dating scene and you WILL
(cue Attenborough accent) …. enter the natural habitat of the hipster.

I’m not sure how to describe this to those of my era, except to relate it back to what we know, which is to say that hipsters have:

• the hairstyle of Morrissey but lacking in the ability to feign anything but the poorest imitation of his mid 80s, brooding, veganaemic, yet absurdly compelling ‘Every day is like Sunday’ angst
• the skinny jean reminiscent in cut of that acid-wash Faberge era, but without an acid-wash element in sight and now either black or maroon or bottle green
• the geek glasses that we eschewed in the 80s in favour of contact lenses so that we had a better chance of seeing through pop-video style smoke machines and the haze of lets-smoke-indoors carcinogens that were entirely sanctioned in the era before we understood lung-cancer.

But they’re here, and since even the best of the true blue footy-dads are reinventing themselves as hipster, there’s a chance you might date one.

So here’s the 40s chick guide to understanding a hipster.

The outfit

The original hipster fashion vibe was the province of impoverished souls, suffering for their creativity, forced to scavenge cast offs from the local charity shops so that they could still authentically pursue their art and pay their rent.

These days, it’s a tad easier since the mainstream stores have cottoned on to this and will deck a guy out from the comfort of the high street on credit without them ever having to brave the recycled-dry-cleaner-hanger, mothball-fragranced, cash-only ambience of their local thrift shop.

And, slice off my shirtsleeves and call me vintage if the flannelette shirt of your south-eastern suburb boganista hasn’t reinvented itself as hipster chic. Lordy.

The drinks

Don’t EVER try to hit your hipster with a gutsy Barossa shiraz or a gooseberry-asparagus-nosed Marlbrough sauv blanc. No. You’ll only nail one of these bad boys down with something named to the effect of Fat Armadillo –  “an organic pear and apple cider, blended with the purest water of a World Heritage Tasmanian river, where that organic fruit has awoken daily to the melodic cheep of grain-fed free-range hens basking in the unadulterated morning suns’ rays.”

If you must cheat, whack any old cocktail into a jam jar and you are gold. Hell, even the 80s, crème-de-menthe based Grasshopper will have them smacking their Dali-moustached lips in satisfaction by the mere fact you’ve served in this era’s go-to receptacle.

The hair

I had occasion recently, in support of my younger sister’s birthday, to venture into a veritable haven of hipsters. (if it hasn’t already been coined, mark me down as having nailed the collective noun for hipsters)

For a moment, and here’s a feeling that is entirely unique to me, I felt like I had become Katy Perry (about 18 months ago) in that no matter where I looked all I could see was Russell Brand.

It was made even more disorienting that I was there in month of Movember, so that I had no idea as to whether all that facial hair was intentional or was charity-inspired.

Either-way, it was everything I could do to prevent myself screaming for my hair-dresser to help me stage a hair-washing intervention to allow everyone in the bar to shed several kilos of hair-grease and to breathe freely at some point down the track.

My tips for those dating a hipster?

• Revel in being released from having any kind of tan in your skin. Let your pale, scone-dough skin rejoice in the knowledge that you will only ever venture out
  • under cover of darkness or
  • in opaque tights
• Indulge in your secret desire to date a red-head, knowing that the hipster culture has now deemed the ‘ranga the height of desirability
• Give yourself latitude on hair-washing, now that your hipster-beau is going to have either the follicular hygiene of Katy Perry’s ex, or an abundance of Trilby hats / trucker caps, any of which you can swipe to conceal your lack of hair-care-factor.

It’s all good. Give a hipster a whirl.

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

When Twitter knows you’ve split before you do…

It used to be a little simpler to pick up on the signs that your relationship was coming apart at the seams. A gradual drift apart, longer working hours at the office, a moving van appearing unexpectedly at the marital home….

In this era, it is entirely likely that social media is likely to register your impending relationship implosion before you do, and everything you needed to know about your couple-doom will be delivered by this chirpy little fellow.

For the uninitiated, prone to some new-age rookie mistakes, here are the five twitter clues that might indicate you are headed for #splitsville.

Early warning visuals

Body language is a funny thing, right? A reliable but subtle indicator that all is not well – and Twitter conveniently dishes this right up to you in photographic form. Take these examples….

At the point you become more interested in holding your handbag with both hands rather than one of your boyfriend’s hands, disaster looms.

It is no defence to cite the fact that said handbag cost you more than a small luxury car.

Slightly further north on the scale of awkward body language is something like this.

Death-ray stare from Katie, something between fear and sheepish from Tom and even the kiddie knows she doesn’t want to be there.

The warning signs need not be pictorial. Some of us have very predictable behaviour around a breakup. Daily infusion of Lindt almond chocolate anyone?

Despite her youth, no one demonstrates more entrenched breakup response behaviour than Taylor Swift. I give you:

• ‘I knew you were trouble’

•   ‘Better than revenge’, and

•  if you were any doubt about potential reconciliation ‘We are NEVER. EVER. getting back together.

So if you were entangled with her and you saw this status

you know its over and another #splitsvillesong is about to hit itunes.

Aberrant behaviour

Next step along from the early warning body language signs are the deliberately posted images of defiant behaviour.

A clear sign that perhaps you are not the same people as you were when you first coupled up is when you wake to a tweet that shows your significant other has morphed from this

To this

…potentially in a bid to deliberately move away from the image they knew you fell in love with. If you hadn’t detected the subtle hair and wardrobe change, they are now visually bludgeoning you with it with all the subtlety of a Donatella Versace spray tan.

Alternatively it may come in the form of a reminder that they have joined a new crowd that you are no part of.

It could even be the simple donning of an outfit/coat of armour that screams I NEVER WANT YOU TO TOUCH ME AGAIN.

Cryptic Tweets

Nothing says its over like not saying its over.

The twittersphere abounds with quotes from the vintage sayings of relationship gurus such as Elizabeth Taylor and Marilyn Monroe, to new age chaff that spews forth from the google relationship quote generator faster than you can brew a pot of tea.

A touch of obscurity there. With any luck you may be less in the dark if you are on the receiving end of something more robustly obvious like Seal simply tweeting #theend.

Radio silence

There are risks in dating someone who needed to go through tabloid humiliation to learn that flirty texts to someone other than your partner are messy when made public. That said, you might feel that the risk is mitigated when he went on to reform himself into a bit more of a monogamist and moved onto twitter knowing that everything said was public. Hello Shane Warne

If you then proceed to play out your entire lovefest on twitter, the way you will recognise its demise as  this

*crickets*

Complete radio silence –thus proving that someone is obeying Mamma’s advice that if you have nothing nice to say……………

You are unfollowed

Unfollowing someone is the overt gesture that demonstrates that you don’t care to hear from them ever again, even digitally. (although there is nothing to stop you from routinely checking his twitter postings anonymously every hour thereafter. No evidence, and no stalker charges under ANYONE’S  jurisdiction)

If your twitter following is limited to your immediate clan only, it may equate to a number where you will probably notice you’ve lost one and can reciprocate immediately in the hope it gives an air of mutuality to the decision.

If you are Liam Hemsworth, with a following of 443,403, you won’t personally notice a decrement of one, but the entire world media will let you know.

_____________________________________________________________________

If all of this seems to be overwhelming and you feel you lack the savvy and commitment to apply these learnings to your twitter feed, close your account and go back to Facebook.

There’s no room for doubt the day you see this little icon pop up in your feed from your now-former flame.