4 Reasons Why You Won’t Find Love At Bikram

When you’ve got Tinder-fatigue and are tired of rejecting online dating candidates with the handle CheerfullySporty who are the antithesis of either cheerful or sporty, you’ll be casting about for a niche venue to meet vaguely interesting men. If your couch-bound viewing has included late-night ESPN you may have considered Cross-Fit, if you have any remaining faith in Pete Evans you’ll be googling your local Paleo café and if you are on a desperate quest to find a single, dateable bearer of XY chromosomes you might have considered perennially on-fleek Bikram yoga.

40schick has taken one for the team, done the research for the sisterhood and is here to tell you that Bikram is NOT THE PLACE to meet a life partner.

Whilst there is a promise that sweating out every last toxin whilst contorting a body that is about as bendy as a chunk of 4 x 2 might provide you a sweaty selfie that you can plaster on Instagram with a triumphant use of #fitspo, its not going to be the place where you meet someone that you are happy to split a green smoothie with over breakfast into your later years.

Here’s why:

Men in Lycra

I realise that you may be immune to the travesty that is men in a shiny faux-fabric given over-exposure via the weekend cyclists that invade beachside cafes with their barely-sheathed manparts on display like the rear-ends of lady baboons. If they are going to be there where you are slipping into your local to get a long black to accompany a read of the Sunday papers, you are unlikely to go all deer-in-the-headlights at the prospect of finding one in your local Bikram studio.

But it’s going to be tops-off girls.

And there’s no vanity here.

It may be that inner-city Bikram studios are filled with lithe male specimens who can totally own the baring of a shiny torso, but my suburban-based research exposed only dad-bods and a misguided Geoffrey Edelsten lookalike – none of which would ordinarily have dreamed of strutting shirtless, but feel that an overheated room provided adequate licence.

The breathing

There are 26-postures that are going to unveil everything you need to know about your male Bikram counterparts, but none are so telling as the very first breathing exercise.

If you did spot someone who might be an eventual housemate, any ideas of peaceful Sunday sleep-ins will be dismissed when you hear them attempt the breathing drill.

As a newbie, if coming grips with just where to point your elbows isn’t tricky enough, any thoughts of spending slumber time with any of your fellow uber-sauna-inmates will be quashed by the disconcerting throat breathing that is not just encouraged, but is mandated on the out-breath.

You can’t see what everyone looks like on their out-breath, given you are encouraged to bend all the way back to the point where you can count the tiles on the back wall but what you are hearing sounds 100% Voldemort.

Assumed intimacy

In the same vein that internet dating and snapchat seem to have implanted in the male brain unwritten licence to send you pictures of their favourite bits, something about being barely clad in an overheated studio seems to permit men to give you the complete up-and-down go-over in a way that would seem heinous in your normal social environment.

Sweating together appears to provide a permission slip for assumed intimacy, which just goes to show why so many Bintang-singleted Aussie males think that Bali is the natural home for lame-o pickup moves.

You’re not at your best

Assuming Bikram Choudhury himself has taken a beneficent view of your contributions to humanity and gifted you someone that is worthy of tops-off mini-lycra wearing glory, you are unlikely to be able to whip out a stunning example of your best-self to take him down. Why? As a Bikram newbie you will be:

•  Sweating into your hair at a rate that will render you drowned-rat before you can even say Trikanasana
• Wobblier than a night on Vodka and Red Bull during your attempt at emulating a Balancing Stick
• At extreme risk of projectile vomiting during the Camel pose
• Praying for Savasana
• Leaking mascara

None of this is attractive.

Probably better off cruising the sidelines of local footy looking to snag a Dad-bod.

 

 

The 40s Chick Guide to the Dad Bod

So, we’ve all moved on a little bit from the Hipster, having become vaguely concerned about the hygiene issues associated with the bushranger beard and before we had time to celebrate the demise of the overused mason jar, we have, the Dad bod. Described as being ‘a nice balance between a beer gut and working out’, its not belly-the-size-of-a-beer-keg schlepping around the mall in trackies, but more like the footy-guy you liked in year eleven with a little time in a decent paddock.

However you describe it, the Dad Bod is out there and we’re on it like white on nutritionally bereft rice.

Here’s why:

Their natural habitat? Everywhere

Whilst hipsters are strictly confined to inner-city suburbs, free-trade-coffee houses and the occasional paleo cafe, Dad bods are everywhere. They can be found wrangling the kiddies in hi-vis at Little Athletics, frequenting suburban golf-clubs and enjoying a beverage in the Bullring at the the footy. Dad bods are in abundance.

 Even celebs are into it

Dad bods are not merely a product of a few Coronas and a pie night at the local footy club, but can also be painstakingly crafted by the rich and famous via time spent on super-yachts and Mexican beaches. Seth Rogen, famed modeliser Leo Di Caprio and Mad Men’s Joh Hamm are all purveyors of the Dad bod.

If ever there was a hot-off-the-press example of the pulling power of the Dad bod –  our own James Packer has used it to snag the songstress for whom the term diva was coined – Mariah Carey.

Your own insecurities? #gone

If you are like 40schick, and prone to a sobfest over genetically inevitable arm fat, and can be occasionally seen sporting a triple-cream-brie baby, you are going to suffer by comparison with a partner sporting ripping biceps and a six pack. No such danger with a Dad bod. Sharing a little roundness at the edges means that you will feel like you are, by comparison, simply rocking ‘curvy’ with all the sass of a Kardashian.

Food choices

Dating the Dad bod means that you won’t be tied to a Paleo-led conversion that is championed by from-generous-to-gaunt Pete Evans.

You will be free to indulge in the odd pizza, to not run screaming from a basket of something fried and there will be no more demonising of the defenceless carbohydrate. You’ll also be pleased to hear that alcohol is a legitimate food group in the Dad bod world.

What’s not to like?

The 40s chick guide to The Bachelor Australia

Hello friends!  This week I posted some sisterly advice to the ladies of The Bachelor 2014 for my friends at Beamly.  Check it out!!

http://au.beamly.com/exclusives/2014/08/04/6-signs-wont-last-long-bachelor-2/

 

 

 

 

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.

Why you won’t find love in a supermarket

Dearest readers, I’ve been feverishly prodding you in a forward direction along that big dating parade of the post40s age group, helping you dodge the rookie mistakes, drawing on the quirky unanticipated learnings from the experiences of our local celebs and generally doing my level best to help you #findlove despite how vociferously every core of your being might protest the prospect.

But every now and then I need to go on the defensive and declare a certain area the no-go-zone, the Chernobyl-two-headed-fish of dating, the veritable Fu-Ku-Shima of coupledom.

And here I declare of one the prime DMZs of the dating world….

The supermarket

The supermarket is NOT a place where you will meet your #notebook Ryan Gosling, find a chance to press your fevered forehead against a protruding Hemsworth forearm vein, or frenetically swap sustainable recipe ideas with that delightful hipster chap from River Cottage Australia.

Here’s why…

Bad lighting

Just as you are never going to look your best in rehab, you are never going to look your best in a supermarket (and when it comes to deprivation and despair, these institutions are on par)

No one shines bright like a diamond under the industrial lighting appliances that our supermarket chains buy in bulk (their purchase order must read: ‘150 x the Lets Make You Look Like A Long Term Inhabitant Of Guantanamo’)

Unlike the skinny mirrors in the department store change rooms designed to stop you crying over swimwear, or the soft focus lighting of cosmetics counters, supermarket electricals are hard-core. Believe me, until Instagram launches a #supermarketfilter, there’s not even a remote Kardashian third cousin that will post a gluten-free-aisle selfie to the world.

It’s not designed to make YOU look good. The supermarket gods pick a carefully-patented hue that makes the mystery-meat in Chorizo appear caramel smooth and thrice frozen prawns dredged from Thailand look like freshly-deceased local crustacea.

You? You will look like every downtrodden before-pic of any one of the #realhousewivesofanywhere without the costly attention of a cosmetic-surgeon-on-retainer.

 

Judgement abounds

You thought you were scared of gymnasium mirrors or Eastern suburbs kindy drop-off fashion faux-pas?

In your local supermarket, there is judgement everywhere:

•  Paleo Guy is staring down at your basket, looking for an errant grain. A non grass-fed protein. a fish item with a loosely defined heritage
• Hot Vegan is scanning your purchases, searching for non-soy dairy.
• Fructose Intolerant Dude is turned off by your melons
• Average Aussie Bloke is deterred by your lack of burger mince or party pies and is quizzically eyeing your over-indulgence in greens
• The guy toting the Maggie Beer Quince paste only has potential to be your gay bf

 If they are in there, they won’t be for long.

Available men are about as likely to venture into a supermarket with any level of enthusiasm as 40schick is likely to spend quality time in either Bunnings or Baby Bunting.

If there is an available man in a supermarket he will whip in and out of there quicker than you can squeeze an out-of-season avocado (given you WILL spend time evaluating whether paying more for an avocado than a double shot expresso is worthwhile)

Blink and you’ll miss one of them checking out their big-serve Lean Cuisine and 1kg bag of grated cheese (the only thing that makes Lean Cuisine bearable) – even if they are slowish by virtue of being rank self-checkout amateurs.

97% of men are there under duress and not actually available

Most of these are easy enough to identify

•  They are toting sanitary products
• They are toting an infant in a sling

Your only shot?

Your only hope is to snag a hipster who hasn’t had time to tram it in to Mediterranean Wholesalers and who tried to sneak anonymously into Woolies. In this case your strategy is…Go Random

Stock up with any combo of the following

• Pearl Cous Cous
• 2 x cans imported lentils
• Wasabi in a tube
• Bassets Liquorice Allsorts
• Pocky

Or…. Just Go Kale. You will snag any well-researched male who is trying to Nutri Bullet his way beyond his 20s obsession with Alpine lights, forgive his early-apprenticeship ignorance of asbestos or thinks greenery will help restore a Jim-Beam-rotted liver.

It’s your only shot.

Just. Go. Kale.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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……

SATC for the Uninitiated

This weekend, 40s chick was on a running camp weekend.

Running camp weekend is dominated by females and is therefore also known as

• Eating cheese and crackers weekend
• Supporting regional wineries weekend
• Jaffas-as-breakfast-food weekend
• Sobbing over chick flicks weekend

With our ‘bunkhouse’ comprising 7 females, with *Donald (*name suppressed for many many reasons) being the lone male soldier and valiant partner of one of the other females (and somewhat north-facing in terms of the age demographic) he was always going to find it an interesting sociological foray. From about the South Gippsland Highway turnoff when Donald realised he was about to spend the weekend housed with 7 women, he was probably wondering how it was going to go down (as well as looking for the nearest haven of testosterone for some kick-to-kick and sports talk).

Instead, Donald found himself in the company of some endorphin-fuelled, carb-loaded females perusing a chick-flick selection that included When Harry Met Sally, 4 Weddings and a Funeral and Love Actually amongst others. (at this point, despite his running program not calling for it. I would have been unsurprised to see him flee at speed for the hills)

Instead, when the consensus was that the first Sex and the City Movie was the obvious choice, he looked mometarily startled, but, separated from his partner who had gone off for a solo short run hit-out or some such, accepted a glass of chilled sauv blanc, took a seat by the cheese platter and settled in for the afternoon.

Here’s what he learned:

Even a proposal can be too pedestrian

 Knowing what we knew, except for the one SATC Movie v1 virgin amongst us, we all understood that Big’s pragmatic proposal to Carrie was not the stuff of which NYC dreams were made.

 

Big: Would you want to get married?

Carrie: Well, I didn’t, didn’t think that was an option.

Big: What if it was an option?

Carrie: Why? What? Do you want to get married?

Big: I wouldn’t mind being married to you. Would you mind being married to me?

Carrie: No, no, not, not if that’s what you wanted. I mean, is, is that what you want?

Big: I want you. So, ok.

Carrie: So really, we’re, we’re getting married?

Big: We’re getting married. Should we get you a diamond?

Carrie: No. No. Just get me a really big closet.

Despite the mention of extravagant clothes-storage-real-estate, this does not reek of romance.

 

40s chicks have baggage, or at the very least a bunch of stuff that requires storage or removalists.

So much so that ‘it took four friends, three days to put twenty years into thirty-eight boxes’

So if you think that you can just spare three shelves and a metre of hanging space in your bachelor pad….

Think again.

The most sensible woman can go all Bridezilla

Somehow, in the space of about 17 minutes, albeit with Vogue Magazine and a bunch of couture designers egging her on, Carrie’s sweet little vintage dress (cue Antony ‘the bride wore no-one’) got kicked to the kerb by a coffin sized container of silk courtesy of Vivienne Westwood.

 

However unlikely this is to happen to your everyday 40s chick, be very very aware that the arrival of the dress-in-a-box will jack your intimate gathering into full scale nuptial-ganza and mean that your ability to name every guest sharing your dream-day is about as likely as Lindsay Lohan correctly listing her hookups (even non-chronologically) whilst sober.

Chicks will always cry, at random

In the manner of the best of running-camp-esque-relay, we all managed to turn on tears rather sequentially (no point in shedding hydration simultaneously). For some it was the Brooklyn Bridge scene where Miranda forgave Steve’s cheating, for the broody ones it was when Charlotte moved from apparently-barren to unexpectedly-pregnant, for others it was when Samantha gained a belly from emotional eating (hey, we’ve all been there right?)

The collective tears shed that afternoon over fictitious characters, if harvested and recycled would have rendered all our long-run-day electrolyte drinks redundant.

Hell hath no fury like the bestie of a woman scorned

After Carrie’s jilting, she was shrouded in a sea of tulle-clad bridesmaids, in the form of her three besties, who all plotted ways to ease Carrie’s pain and wreak revenge on Big in whatever form they could muster.

Kudos to Charlotte who taught our hapless observer Donald that upon ditching someone’s bestie you could expect a well-rehearsed ‘I curse the day you were born’ from a pregnant ally followed by the depositing of an unexpected dose of amniotic fluid on your lovely leather loafers.

 

Needless to say, Donald has signed up for the blokey-bunkhouse when 2015 camp rolls around.

 

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 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.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Can You Reconcile With Your Ex?

If you have just exited a long term relationship, the concept of reconciling with your ex is going to cross your mind sooner or later.

The only question is when:

•  if you were the dump-er, then it will cross your mind six months later when you’ve been on 13 unsuccessful first dates, been stalked by an online dater, been shrouded by a waft of unfounded office gossip about you and the new intern and you are feeling that somehow what you had before appears now to be a much simpler life to where you are now
• if you were dumped? The thought will emerge about 3 miliseconds after the event.
• if you claim it was an amicable separation? About 6 milliseconds after you were dumped.

However it went down, the question will still come up. Its there any chance you will reconcile with the ex?

Much depends on what went down in the interim.

Whilst you can emulate that grand US military tradition of ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’, there are some post-break-up events that will shatter the dream of reconciliation faster than Kim Kardashian exits a marriage.

There cannot be a love child

Nothing will crush a reconciliation hope faster than the insertion of a miniature human into the mix.

We could consult Hugh Grant, King of the Love Child, having fathered a child born to a Swedish TV producer, somewhat awkwardly book-ended by his first and second child with partner Tinglang Hong, the latter Grant-sprog happening along only three months after the love child.

But with an unmatched ability to demonstrate a hang-dog,’Geez, at least I’ve moved on from Divine Brown’ face,

….I suspect that life may have gone on and that the only fall-out is the need to tightly choreograph an ongoing set of kiddie birthday parties.

However I think that we mere mortals would struggle with this fallout.

No one goes to jail

 Readers, you can take great cheer that one of my non-negotiables is unlikely to apply to you unless you’ve been in a relationship with anyone who has featured in the Underbelly franchise.

However this could unwittingly happen to the best of us (and I’m pretty sure Anne Hathaway could be regarded as the best of us)

Poor Anne became embroiled with a slightly shady real estate developer that ended up entangled up with the IRS and the FBI and henceforth experienced the messiness that goes with shenanigans with any of the three letter acronyms of the US government.

We’d applaud Anne for her statement ‘I broke up with my boyfriend, and two weeks later he was sent to prison for fraud. I mean, we’ve all been there, right, ladies?’

So feel free to consider reconciliation unless you find yourself consistently lurking outside the Dandenong Magistrates Court.

Else, run.

There’s no tryst with your bestie

There can be absolutely, positively NO co-mingling between your ex and your friends. The point of no return is any kind of contact with your bestie. Whether it is lobbying for support in his sneaky tactics to have you return or a Facebook campaign to defame your image, this is NOT ON.

What is beyond NOT ON is hooking up with your bestie.

Just ask Heather Locklear – whose ex Richard Sambora moved on to her bestie Denise Richards in a rockstar-groupie-heartbeat and caused her to utter the most curious of statements like ‘yes, I got together with Heather’s soon-to-be ex-husband, but no, I didn’t have an affair with him’

Statements like that have L’Oreal revisiting the concept of a new kind of serum to apply to split-hairs.

No embarrassing re-invention

You cannot consider reconciliation if, in your absence, your ex goes through a complete image makeover and thenceforth bears no resemblance to that person with which you had a long term relationship. This includes but is not limited to

• transformation into a hipster.,
• re-invention on par with Shane Warne

It needs to appear as if nothing more untoward occurred than an innocent press of the PAUSE key on the remote, which means NOTHING like the full midlife-re-invent-enchilada.

Anything less than this set of transgressions? You can entertain the idea of a reconciliation, on the offchance of whatever that thing that split you is no longer likely to freak either you of you like the equivalent of the toothpick under fingernails that first caused you to divvy up belongings.

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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.