I think I’m having a mid life crisis.  At least that’s what I’m calling it.  It’s not even a cool mid life crisis where I dye my hair and buy a Harley Davidson and have an affair with a much younger woman who will eventually tire of me and take all my money.  It’s a boring mid life crisis where I’m facing all sorts of changes in my life that I have no control over.

My Dad is dying.  In fact he’s been dying now for about 3 years.  My sisters and I have said goodbye to Dad so many times that we feel like call centre switchboard operators.  I have sobbed on his bedside and told him what a fabulous Dad he’s been and thanked him for loving me and raising me the way he did, thinking that by morning he’ll be gone, only to come to the hospital the next morning to see him sitting up eating his cornflakes and saying in his broad Aussie accent “I feel real good today!”.  It makes it awkward.  He is the Phoenix.  He keeps rising again.  Until the day he doesn’t and then it will hit me like a ton of bricks and I’ll wish he was sitting up eating those awful cornflakes. I can’t even imagine how my Mum feels, after being with the same man for over 50 years, to now be faced with the reality of life without him.  She refuses to imagine it which is another problem all together.

Whilst my parents are in their twilight years, we have twin sons who are almost 13 years old.  I recently saw a photo on twitter of a woman holding her premature twins in hospital and it looked so much like me (except of course I thought I looked more glamorous after giving birth) and our boys. I can honestly say that those memories are so vivid it really does feel like it was only yesterday.  Now those gorgeous little babies are growing pubic hair.  My adorable, giggly, chubby knuckled, sweet smelling little sweethearts are becoming teenagers and I feel like I have two strangers living in the house.  I remember them curling their little fat arms around my neck and snuggling into me like they never wanted to leave, and now when I hug them it feels like they’re doing me a favour by putting their long, limp arms around me and I can almost feel them wishing it was over.  When I ask them how their day at school was, I am lucky to get grunted at.  They speak about Minecraft (an online computer game which they’re obsessed with) to each other and I feel so excluded because; a) I don’t have any idea what the purpose of that stupid bloody game is – it has NO ENDING; and b) I actually don’t give a shit what they’re saying.  I feel like my purpose right now is just to feed two hairy, growing ball sacks.

I look in the mirror these days and see something very different to what I imagine I look like.  I notice that men don’t notice me anymore.  A gorgeous comedian that I work with recently thought he was complementing me by saying “In your day you would have been quite the looker”.  In my day I would have had the energy to throw a drink at him too!  In my day, I could turn a man’s head and on a particularly good day, even conjure up a wolf whistle!  Not long ago I walked past a building site and sneezed and a cute builder just said “Bless You”.  There’s no wolf whistling anymore.  Soon I’ll be wetting my pants when I sneeze as well.  There’s nothing blessed about that.  I have become one of the invisible women.  A middle aged woman who wears sensible clothes and who doesn’t push the boundaries of fashion anymore.  Hell, some days I don’t even shower until it’s time to go back to bed!  I take selfies, thinking I’ll send one to my husband,  only to delete every one of them because I never look good in them.  Problem is, that is exactly how I look.  I wish selfies were a thing when I looked the way I looked when I would have been proud to send a selfie to my fella!

Where did the years go? I remember my Dad being a fit, handsome, knock about bloke with a Reschs Pilsner in his hand and a pair of stubbies on.  I remember my boys sitting in their high-chairs going through their repertoire of animal noises for me.  Now all they do is the pig.  I remember when I would go into their rooms in the morning and their little faces would light up with giant smiles when they saw me.  Now they groan when I open their curtains in their dark cave-like rooms that smell like sweat and Lynx Deodorant.  I remember my husband and I sitting up until 2am or 3am playing Playstation Games!  Now we’re flat out being able to turn the bloody thing on and anyway, we’re asleep by 9pm now.

It’s a big time of change for me and I’m not ready for any of it.  I don’t want it.  I want my chubby little babies back, I want my active, funny, reliable Dad back and I don’t want these bullshit vertical wrinkles on my chest!  What the hell are they anyway and when did they arrive??

The Harley Davidson is looking pretty good right now.  If only I could get my leg over the seat....

George Clooney came to Australia recently and I saw women on television losing their minds over seeing him on the same continent as them.  I mentioned this to a girlfriend and casually commented over our coffee that whilst George seems like a really good guy, he doesn't really do it for me.  I may as well have said "I hate puppies" or "I punch old people", as was the reaction from her.  All levels of shock registered in her face as her mouth gaped open and she stated "George Clooney doesn't DO IT FOR YOU?  Is there something wrong with you?"

Personally, I kind of like it if I fancy a famous person and my friends think he's not that good.  Lets me think that I have more of a chance with him if we ever meet cause the competition isn't that great.

It got me thinking about how amazed some people get when someone doesn't see or feel the same as someone else.  I know folks whose minds would explode if they found out that I've never watched any of the Star Wars movies, or a Lord of  The Rings one.  I only read the first Harry Potter book, and that was only because everyone was raving about it.  It didn't grab me, okay?  I hated The Road by Cormac McCarthy, yet I had a girlfriend who said it changed the way she looked at life.  Seriously.  I thought it was a miserable piece of crap.  I've never watched any CSI or NCIS or any other show with an acronym about violent crime and never will.  I hate action movies.  All of them.  I can't watch an action movie without thinking (and often saying) "As IF that could happen", which evidently people who like those movies really, really hate.

My favourite movie is Love Actually and I don't care if it's not particularly clever or thought provoking, I just loved it.  When I tell people that, they almost spit their drinks out laughing like I'm some sort of imbecile who has a mental age of 14.  I still get tears in my eyes every time I think of the scene where Emma Thompson's character finds out her husband is having an affair and she has to pull herself together for the sake of her kids.  I love that scene and I love that movie.  I love Hugh Grant as the Prime Minister of England, dancing like a tool to a Pointer Sisters song.  That movie makes me laugh and cry the whole way through and that's why I love it.

I don't care if things are daggy or not cool.  I've always been a little bit daggy and not that cool.  I love Christmas, yet I have very good friends who hate the commercialism of it, and question why I celebrate it when I'm not Christian.  I tell them I celebrate it because it's fun and I like flashing lights, Christmas decorations, pulling open crackers, wearing a paper hat all day, playing backyard cricket with friends and family, and giving and getting presents.  That's why.  It goes no deeper than that.

Some of my friends would die before watching The Housewives of (insert name here), yet I love them all...except for DC and I have my reasons for that.  I like watching trashie reality TV, yet I also like watching hard hitting documentaries that make me despair at humanity.  I love reading books that keep me awake at night, as well as the odd trashie magazine while I'm at the hairdresser.

I also love all my friends who scoff at my movie choices, who laugh at my music taste, and who would never find a book on my book shelf that they might like to read.  Even the one that thinks there's something wrong with me because George doesn't do it for me.