Forty.

I know it's been a while, and I've a hell of a cheek just breezing back into your lives like the prodigal daughter returning to the fold upon hearing the news that Mum's started talking to the plants but still knows how to cut a cheque.  I can assure you that I am back for good; (not my favourite Take That song, but Prey doesn't fit the theme I'm going for here.  Once my personal life is in such dire straits that I feel the need to beg a deity to pimp me out, Ill use it).  If you'll forgive me a small digression, I have an announcement to make.  While the title will remain the same, so as not to alienate my phenomenally loyal readers, I'm changing the theme of the blog ever so slightly.  Make no mistake, I'll still be offering my observations on dating past thirty and contemplating the deep mysteries of life, (i.e. bitching about Internet dating sites and asking rhetorical questions like 'Why does this dress make me look like an overstuffed Kranski when it looked so gorgeous on my twin Lily Allen'),  but I'll be broadening my subject matter so as not to do what I did last time and run out of stuff to say.

And with that odyssey of a preamble over, cop a brain-full of the following.

I sometimes get the feeling that time isn't so much marching on as it's dancing Gangnam-Style across my face in steel-capped soccer cleats, and I'm not ashamed to admit that I sometimes wish I'd been born a decade later so that I'd be young enough to sit on Zac Effron's knee instead of the other way round, but that doesn't mean that I hate being forty.  Although I have amassed a collection of complexion preservation products that would make Cleopatra dig her nails into the wood of her sarcophagus, I'm not interested in turning back the clock.  Believe it or not, fellow quadregenarians, there are perks to being born before Mark Wahlberg dropped his pants for any reason other than to go potty.  Today I shall list but five.  Feel free to post me your own.

1. People not only tolerate embarrassing behaviour - they expect it.  Remember how mortified you and your best friend were at your first parent/teacher night, when your mum's voices bounced off the auditorium walls as they giggled enthusiastically about your maths teacher's cute rear end?  (Or was that just me?).  Guess what?  I've discovered that the hormone-enriched fruit doesn't fall far from the tree.  Another mum and I were chatting while waiting to receive our kid's third term reports when a teacher passed by who was, to grossly understate it, very aesthetically gifted, and we remarked on it - rather more audibly than we'd intended.  Inexplicably, the teacher in question merely smiled and kept walking, as seemingly unaffected by the hungry eyes burning into the back of him as my maths teacher Mr Kenny was in 1985.

Coincidentally, that was also the closest I ever came to passing that subject.

2.  No one cares what music you listen to.  Trends come and go, and tastes change with every generation, but the youth of today are still bound by the same unwritten rules of maintaining positive public perception as we were at their age.  Publicly declaring your love for a 'Naff' t.v. show, or a song that came out more than a week ago is still akin to being seen in Sesame Street pyjamas, (a fashion faux pas declared null and void once one hits their thirties, according to Bra's 'N' Things online catalogue), but when you turn forty, it works the other way.  Next time you're using public transportation, take a sneaky peak at a young person's iPod when they're scrolling through their playlists, then compare it to your own.  While the dub beats or wrist-slashing emo ballads that make up your fellow passenger's iTunes library seem perfectly in character for them, for us, owning a Nano filled exclusively with My Chemical Romance or Skrillex tunes would probably be cause for brief-wetting laughter, if not downright suspicion.  My mini pink space Walkman boasts playlists like Arse-kicking Alternative, Hot Dance, and Rock Chicks (and yes, I do realise that makes me sound like a seventies DJ - shut up).            

3. You don't, I repeat DON'T, have to look perfect.  This is something my brain has managed to absorb only recently.  If you have a job, a marriage/relationship, a family, or any combination thereof, it's a bonus when you get any free time, so why on Earth would you want to spend it standing before a mirror, obsessing about how huge your arse has gotten lately, or wondering how long it will take to burn off that Tim Tam you took from the packet you have stashed away in the back of your wardrobe like contraband at a Turkish prison?  As long as you're healthy, you don't find yourself clutching your chest when you walk, and you can leave the house without the aid of a crane or a winch, who gives a rat's if you go on the odd choccy binge?  And as for those of us in the Southern hemisphere who have three months of beach weather coming up - the sarong was invented for a reason.

4.  We know how to use Social Networking to network...socially.  The whole point of sites like Facebook is to connect with old friends and make new ones through conversation.  This seems to have escaped the younger generation (oh god, did I SERIOUSLY just use that phrase?).  We wouldn't walk down the street screaming 'LIKE ME!  LIKE ME!'  It's even less likely that we'd respond to a friend's long but hilarious anecdote with a toneless 'LOL,' and if another friend shared some fantastic news with us, we wouldn't dream of ignoring them completely out of sheer laziness, then expect them to go off like a frog in a sock when we reveal our own Earth-shattering revelation.  The only explanation I have for this is that if we wanted to talk to a friend when we were their age we had to, you know, TALK TO THEM!  If you can't carry on a friendly, co-operative conversation in real life, how the hell are you going to type one?  

5.  Sex is WAY better.  It is a biological fact that women hit their sexual peek around now, and I could go into a big, scientific explanation as to why that is, but I honestly wouldn't be able to understand it myself, all I can say is that the genius who came up with the theory that women lose interest in sex with their partners as they get older completely fudged his findings.  It's also worth noting that his research was conducted several decades before the invention of X-Box and the Internet.

Played by your playlist.

Take a look at my Blogger profile picture.  I look pretty normal, right?  Your average thirty-something mum.  You'd probably assume, judging by the deep pink top I'm wearing, that I'm 'girly.'  My regular readers will know this isn't the case, but what if this was your first time reading my blog?  You wouldn't have the slightest idea that I have hairy toe knuckles, can belch on queue and can't start the day without the hard core stylings of Disturbed jolting my brain into action.  We all make assumptions, and assumptions make asses of us all, which brings me to something I found on my latest round of Google search bingo.  A study commissioned by Cambridge University in 2009, (I know that was two years ago, but if I only just discovered it, it's new), found that people judged one another by the contents of their iPod playlists.  The architect of the study warned that sharing your playlist could damage your social standing by 'reinforcing stereotypes and social prejudices.'  Why not take it to the next level and do a study on the effects of sharing your musical tastes with someone who you'd like to be pressing more than just your click wheel?  I'll pretend for a moment that I actually take these sorts of studies seriously, and share with you the top ten most played tracks on my girly pink Pod.  Judge me if you dare!

10.  APPLE STORE LOVE SONG - FATTY SPINS/RAY WILLIAM JOHNSON.  Who doesn't adore the idea of going shopping for a laptop and finding someone whose lap you'd like to be on?  To me, loving this song says that I have a fully functioning sense of humour, and that I believe in love at first sight, but I can see where a guy might find it troubling.  For one, almost anything baring the Apple logo is expensive as hell, so men with modest incomes and a tendency for taking things literally might find hanging out at the Apple store in anticipation of my arrival a tad intimidating.  They might also make the assumption that I have a thing for short men with brown eyes and a ribald sense of humour.  One of those assumptions would be wrong...I don't shop at the Apple store.
    
9.  BOSSY - KELLIS.  I'm no man magnet, the last time I wore 'grills' was when the orthodontist fitted them, and my toughness can best be summed up by the admission that I've seen Dumbo seventy times and it still makes me cry hysterically.  The reason this song is in my top ten is quite simply because it's an awesome track, but a read through the lyrics might lead potential suitors to picture me sitting on a velvet nightclub couch, dripping in bling, holding court over a crowd of rich, powerful men.  The last guy I dated was an accountant who was into The Little River Band.

8.  SPEAKING IN TONGUES - EAGLES OF DEATH METAL.  The rocking guitar on this song is what makes it essential listening when I'm having a bad day, but the title could imply something entirely different to the, ahem, nocturnally minded.  Contrary to what the title suggests, and I think I'm speaking for a lot of women here, any thoughts of an amorous nature quickly dissipate when I'm forced to use a napkin to mop saliva from my face.

7.  DOING YOUR MOM - FATTY SPINS/RAY WILLIAM JOHNSON.  This is one of the funniest songs I have ever heard, which says a lot coming from an armchair feminist, but lecherous younger men are warned here and now that any attempt to take the lyrics literally will result in me 'doing you' physical harm...unless you happen to be the artist.

6.  SIR PSYCHO SEXY - RED HOT CHILLI PEPPERS.  Yes, this song is the lyrical equivalent of an STD, but once again, it's just a song.  Whatever conclusions less astute men may draw about me from it, I do not want to know.

5.  DREAM A LITTLE DREAM - THE MAMAS AND THE PAPAS.  There have been many versions of this song, but Cass Elliot's rendition is my favourite.  I used to sing it to my son when he was a baby, and I like to listen to it on lazy Sunday afternoons when making a cup of tea and changing out of my pyjamas is the most activity I can muster.  Would finding it on my Pod alongside Hendrix, The Beatles and The Doors out me as Hippie?  Possibly.  Do I care?

4.  SMILE - LILY ALLEN.  Lily's songs sound like sweet indie pop, but her lyrics soon put paid to the idea of categorising her in any way, which is exactly what's so cool about her.  Before I play this to any man, I plan to explain to him that the only revenge I ever got on a guy was through my blog.  Yeah, that'll put his fears to rest. 

3.  THERE IS A LIGHT THAT NEVER GOES OUT - THE SMITHS.  A lot of Morrissey's tunes have a touch of that emo 'let's slash our wrists and bleed out together' sensibility about them, and I couldn't really blame a guy for being put off by lyrics like 'If a double-decker bus kills the both of us, to die by your side is such a heavenly way to die.'  I don't suppose chasing him down the driveway yelling 'Please come back!  I'm not emo, I swear!' would help matters, either.

2.  SEETHER - VERUCA SALT.  What does a song about a chick tending her own garden say about me?  Who the hell cares when the guitar's this good?  

1.  HE'S MY THING - BABES IN TOYLAND.  It's no secret that I love my 'grunge' rock, and Babes in Toyland are about as 'grunge' as you can get.  Lyrics like 'He's my thing, I keep on a hook,' might give men the impression that I have psycho sexual, homicidal tendencies, but hey, whatever keeps a relationship interesting. 

*Note: the above remark was a joke.  My house has no basement, nor do I own butchery implements with which to restrain unsuspecting men.  I still have to watch horror movies in the daylight, for Pete's sake!

The most any half way intelligent man is going to glean about me from this will probably be that my musical tastes are somewhat bi-polar, and there's nothing wrong with that.  I'll have no qualms about handing over my iPod to my next boyfriend and letting him scroll through three hundred of my favourite songs, because I don't happen to be attracted to judgemental people.  Besides, if anything is going to scare him off, it'll be my mother!