In two month’s time I’ll be 42. I had a discussion the other day with a friend about what constitutes being ‘middle aged’. He is nearly 60 (I think) and says that he feels he is ‘middle aged’. When I hit the big 4-0h I thought I was initiated into the club too. So that’s a pretty big time span – 40ish to 60ish is apparently ‘middle-aged’. Now when we’re talking about middle, I’m presuming there’s a beginning age (which must be from birth to forty if forty marks the end of the first age), and a… what? An ‘end age’? ‘Old age’? Things usually have a beginning, a middle and an end, so… I dunno. Anyway, I’m waffling here, and I’ve nearly forgotten what this post was going to be all about.

Oh, yeah. That’s right – I was going to talk about this feeling I’ve had lately, since becoming ‘middle aged’. Maybe I’m just weird, or maybe everyone secretly goes through this. I distinctly remember, as a kid, thinking about how old I’d be when the year 2000 came around. Thirty two – that seemed so ancient, but also so far away. I also remember having a feeling of ‘it won’t happen to me’ – ah… that wonderful, youthful invincibility. I would never get old, wrinkly, fat, grey haired – all that happened to others, and was so far away from me that it just seemed inconceivable.

But it did happen to me. Here I am, nearly 42, with my silver hairs creeping through my scalp despite my best efforsts with hair dye, frown lines between my eyes which make me look eternally crabby, a flabby belly which has gone through too many pregnancies and too much chocolate and iced coffee. All that is a physical sign that I’m ‘middle aged’, but the sign that has really disturbed me has just emerged lately – the mental signs, the feeling of time ticking on, speeding up. The feeling that I’d better get on with things because I’ve reached the top of the hill and I’m about to topple over it and the roll back down is going to be fast and uncomfortable.

Maybe I’m just feeling it more now because I really don’t feel as though I’ve achieved whatever it is that I’m meant to achieve. The clock is ticking, and yet I’m still feeling unfulfilled and unsuccessful. I can totally see why people have a ‘mid-life crisis’. No, I don’t want the stereotypical sports car, or to run off with a ‘younger model’. I just want to feel as though the forty odd years I’ve been on this planet counts for something. Am I alone in feeling this, or is this what turning forty is all about?

Sheeple

I went shopping today for some clothes for my kids. I often go clothes shopping and more often than not I come home without buying anything. I’ve been wanting to buy some clothes for my nine year old daughter but each time I’ve taken a look around the junior clothes section of various stores, I’ve left empty-handed and disgusted. The clothes these days which are meant  to be worn by little girls are tacky, slutty and designed to be out of fashion within three weeks. What happened to nice, classic, pretty clothes for young girls? Why is the fashion industry intent on providing street walker style outfits for youngsters? What is this world coming to? Why am I channeling my grandmother?! I must be getting old or something…

Anyway, as I was saying, I went clothes shopping. After a recent growth spurt, my fifteen year old son has very few clothes left that fit him. I took him shopping a few months ago and he screwed up his nose and shook his head at just about everything on the clothes racks. Eventually he left with just two t-shirts and a pair of shorts – hardly a full wardrobe (plus a portable speaker system which took up more than half the budget I’d allocated for his clothes – how’d he swing that?!). So I thought I’d buy him a couple more t-shirts at least today, but the memory of his specific standards meant that I was passing over decent t-shirts too.

Well, the whole point of this post is to talk about how gullible people can be. Today I saw numerous expensive t-shirts emblazened with advertising from various famous corporations. Now I know for a fact that advertising is expensive. If you want to advertise on television you’re talking thousands of dollars for a mere thirty second spot. Try advertising your yard sale in a local paper and even then you have to shell out quite a few dollars for a measly quarter inch space. Advertising costs A LOT, and yet here are these big companies designing t-shirts with their logos on the front, charging $49.95 for the privilege of wearing them, and people are actually buying the things!

Company executives must rub their hands in Scrooge-ish glee every time they see the screen print of the latest ad on a new t-shirt design.  Since when did we all become such dumb, unthinking trend-seekers that we actually pay money for the privilege of walking around advertising some big already-mega rich corporation’s product? Do we really want to fit in that much that we can be pushed into paying for Coca Cola, or Nintendo, or Twilight’s advertising by becoming walking billboards? Gawd people are stupid. If you have to follow trends and have such little confidence in your own unique worth that you have to be up with the latest fads, step back and think for a moment what the instigators of those fads are doing to you. They’re not making you trendy or fashionable – they’re making you a deluded sucker who is helping to pay their advertising bill.

In reality, your need to follow fashion with the rest of the sheeple is making rich companies even more money than they already know what to do with, while the simple truth is, you’re down $49.95 for a crappy t-shirt with an advertisement on it.  Would you pay fifty bucks to have your neighbour’s yard sale ad printed on the front of your shirt?  No?  I didn’t think so.

PS… If you’re still unconvinced and you REALLY want to wear what will be the epitome of fashion (I swear – one day), then I can sell you a really spiffy wafflelogue.com t-shirt for a bargain $49.99.  Let me go find my Hobbytex – I’ll be right back!

Today I reformated my laptop and it is nice and squeaky-clean. On the inside anyway. The keyboard still has it’s fair share of chocolate and cherry turnover crumbs stuck amongst the keys. That’ll have to be tomorrow’s job. I had to reformat because something sinister had managed to get into my system and cause the left click key to cark itself. I couldn’t even click on the start button any more.

I quite like reformating. It’s a bit like spring-cleaning. You grit your teeth, um and ah and finally toss out some old thing you’ve been hanging on to forever but haven’t touched in ages. It feels awful the moment you are chucking it, but once it’s gone, and you realise the world hasn’t imploded without it, it’s quite cathartic.

And so it is with getting rid of all those files you stick away ‘just in case’. I always create a tidy folder because I hate icons on my desktop, and I shove everything in the tidy folder. I have no idea why I kept half the crud I had in there. But, anyway, it’s gone now, and I’m feeling quite pleased with myself about the big clean out. If only I could start on my wardrobe…

So now, as I said, I have a squeaky clean laptop, but there’s one problem. I have so many passwords, which were all saved on the computer before I wiped it, and now I’m having trouble remembering them. I’ve been pulling my hair out going through all the possible combinations I might have (cleverly) used in the past – all the way back to the kind of passwords I used when I was a naive internet virgin. (Passwords like ‘123abc’ or ‘Lucy’). Not a lot of luck, although I was able to remember the password to this site (obviously). One day I shall invent a password so clever that even I will remember it.