La Creperie - Home of the Hags!

[QueenLush]

Are you all nursing hangovers or just clearing up the post Christmas mess?

I am one haircut away from being colour-free, but I just have a big, fat, grey streak (or two) in the front. I (or rather my ex-hairdresser) experimented with semi-permanent colour for 18 months, but it never covered the grey very well and seemed to result in my hair getting extra-specially fried last summer, so I am going to put up with or even possibly enjoy whatever is my natural hair state. However, my hair is generally regarded as a disaster zone, so I don't feel qualified to offer any advice on hair management. :)

Blackduck, hope you are feeling better soon. Be sure to let us know when your b-day is coming up so we can send you our crepey greetings to make your day complete

Dukes, thank you for "planet of the crepes". That made me

Planet of the Crepes - we have the title of our next thread!

You have all been very busy I see. We have just ushered out the last of our guests from our NYD party - it's never a late one, as most people bring their kids, and more than a few are a bit jaded from NYE (not me - I actually drove home from our friends house at 2am ). The dishwasher is humming, and DH and I are quaffing red wine and polishing off leftover smoked salmon nibbles.

The cupboards are still groaning with Christmas fare - chocs, biscuits and the like - I hoped most would be eaten this evening but it seems to have multiplied. Heaven knows when I'll get back to eating normally.

Can't help with any greyness questions, I'm afraid. I can admit to a slight sprinkling of grey hairs, but I have selective blindness where they are concerned (except when DH plucks one from my scalp and waves it at me with a shriek of triumph). There aren't enough to worry about yet, or, in other words, the wrinkles, gunt, nonsense periods and creaking knees are higher priority for the time being.

Two more days of relaxation, then it's back to the coal-face. Oh well, it was fun....

Hi alto I am grey, never dyed it thou so I can't really help. For me it has been a default position - my dad's side of the family go grey young (he was grey before I was born), so I never fought it as I assumed it was inevitable. Infact I went grey slower than my brothers, but am still pretty grey, like queenie I have it cut really short. I am never aware of it except when I see old pictures...
Love Simons cat - must send to my mum!
I have to get out of pit as it is dp's birthday tomorrow and I haven't even bought a card........

My hair is very very short these days and I will freely confess it is partly because at some point I shall have to stop sloshing red dye on it. I quite fancy looking like Judi Dench. Who is also short with very short hair. Which means, obviously, that if I stopped dyeing my hair I would be a dead ringer for JD [deluded]. The growing-out does perplex me: I was thinking I'd have to do non-permanent red dye but the idea of sloshing on grey instead has a certain demented appeal .

I am also facing the fact that with my 49th birthday looming up in June I really do look better with makeup on.

No grey hairs for me yet, but I think I am facing a future with Tena lady - just did the first day of the shred DVD (very badly and much to DS's amusement) and felt like I might leak at any minute

[blows dust off Shred dvd, looks at it]

I always decline to start any New Year regime until ds1's birthday is over on 11th Jan, since it would be rude not to make and then eat my son's birthday cake. I do need to shift some poundage though, as it has snuck up - or rather waged a full-frontal assault - while I wasn't paying attention. There was a diet in the Jan issue of Good Housekeeping which sounded like a good kick start (it involved skim milk and 2 days of strictness followed by 5 days of not so strict) so I thought I would try that for a month. My problem with diets in the traditional sense of the word is that they do make me very bed tempered, which is not really fair on the dcs - it's not their fault I eat like a pig am fond of my food. And I definitely need to jump about a bit more.

Re going grey - I'm impressed it everyone's mature acceptance and I have to say, if I thought there was a glam silver crop in my future, I would be v happy. Sadly, I come from a long line of rubbish hair (Granny 1 was a flaming redhead who just faded into a sort of apricot frizz, Granny 2 had unattractive gunmetal grey bits and then it all fell out around her 80th b'day) plus I am still clinging to a state of denial to the point where I was watching Fresh Meat and wondering whether one of the student's long hair with dip-dyed groovy streaks would suit me.

Blackduck - sorry you're feeling both ill and out of sorts. I think contemplating moving house can have that effect, especially if you feel you will be doing all the work and coping with the majority of the changes to established routines. Is there someone who will listen and help so you can unstiffen your upper lip? Speaking as someone who keeps everything buttoned up until it bursts forth in a ruinous flood, one of my 2012 hopes is to be a bit clearer about my needs and emotions in real life. I'm told the world won't end if I admit to struggling on occasion, so I am going to test that interesting theory out.

I'm going to have a 'no cakes, biscuits or crisps' January, just as soon as I've finished the current stash. Feeling foul and flabby, and bad-tempered. As for grey, I have something I like to think of as a Mallen streak at the front, but a lot of other grey matter also, currently kept at bay with Nice n Easy. I fancy a Dame Judi too, but will have to lose the double chin first, or I'll just like an elderly lesbian.

Wilbur - you sound just like me. Sweep everything under the carpet, then either have hideous stomach pains, a bout of mega self-pity, or a 'ruinous flood', as you say. Need to acknowledge and deal with feelings as they arise, or they don't get processed.

But DP and I have a slightly odd relationship in that we have never had a row, and never really discuss anything. It all seems to sort itself out in the end, but I'm sure it's not healthy...

Herbs, Wilbur, I've probably mentioned before I have no ability whatsoever to keep feelings buttoned up and have no hesitation in voicing my opinions, feelings and dissatisfactions to all and sundry. It's not all good, though, and I will often be subject to a stern "be quiet" glance from DH, who is one of those people who knows when things should be said, and when they shouldn't.

Anyway, I've found a great technique to make me wash the kitchen floor. Get DS1 to smash an entire bottle of wine on the tiles while attempting to winkle a bag of crisps out of the back of the cupboard.

I have no difficulty bitching about stuff to those who can do nothing about it, but absolutely CAN NOT say what I mean to the relevant person. Maybe that can be my new year's resolution: be assertive. What's the worst that could happen. CV? Do you still have friends?

One or two....

Wilbur I so do get the ruinous floods .. I have had some major meltdowns where the whole world has looked at me like I have totally lost it (which I have), but they don't get thats months, nay, years of frustration....... I am crap at telling people (who need to know) how I feel - fear of rejection I guess. But herbs, like you, dp and I never row (dp doesn't do rowing). I get all histrionic, we're over blah, blah, you must hate me, and he does the 'we'll stay together, let's sort this out' (sometimes I hate him :) ).
I also think after 25 years he should bloody KNOW how I feel.....but that's damn stupid too.... :)

I am a mass of contradictions. Depending on which way the wind is blowing, I may merely inwardly seethe, froth and fester in the face of something I should really deal with, be frostily polite, and then let all the backed-up resentment out later at some poor, unsuspecting person in my close family. And other times, I will be so massively over-the-top in my on-the-spot reaction that no one remembers the minor misdeed or unfortunate remark that triggered my reaction, just the fact that I am a scarily unreasonable old boot. I feel I should probably work on developing the frosty politeness angle and jettison the rest of it.

CV, you and me both!

BFF told me about her new truth and honesty policy - it has never occurred to me to not have one
DH and I have loads of rows. Mostly over the housework and other such stuff. I don't row with anyone else though
And I reguarly have histrionics. PMT-linked usually and was even worse before the HRT. The DC and DH bear the brunt, but a medicinal often helps!

Wilbur, I don't know how I will manage it tomorrow - my legs are stiffly in pain still.

I feel a diet beckoning, but am taking dp out for cocktails for his birthday tomorrow night (I know, I know, school night and all....but we'll only have two max) and then it's my birthday, and then it's the 20th and then it's my mum/sil's birthday, so that gets us to the end of January

Yes BD, I have similar problems. I could, of course eat sensibly on all the days/nights that I am not going out.....

We row all the time.

And our fridge is full of bizarre leftovers.

Our fridge never has many leftovers. That is why I am so skinny

MI, do your DD's tell you to "STOP IT!"

Just at the moment I am so cross with DD1 - who is succumbing to 10 year old Moodiness - that I wouldn't listen to her if she did.

I am spitting tacks over my dear mother. Our phone has been out of order for a couple of days - no longer, and I didn't notice, because most people call my mobile or text me. Cue my mother when she finally got through:

"I've been ringing you every day, on the hour every hour, and Auntie E tried calling you on Christmas day and Boxing day and was really worried because there was no answer, just some foreign woman speaking French."

I said that yes, there had been a problem with the phone for two days, that I hadn't noticed, but it had definitely been working until the 30th. At which point she screamed at me "I could have been lying here dead and no-one would have been able to get in touch with you."

I said I thought that highly unlikely, and why did she not just ring my mobile, as she has the number. She doesn't have money to throw away on calls to mobile phones, apparently, and it was all my fault for not knowing that my phone wasn't working.

I felt like telling her to fuck the fuck off to the far end of fuck, but merely wished her a happy new year, and said I would speak to her soon.

And she's not coming next Christmas to sit on her arse not interacting with the DDs and not lifting a hand to help. I asked her if she would take them skating, ten minute bus ride, rink in Christmas market, where she could have a happy mooch round for half an hour. She shook her head violently, said "oof" and put her hand up in a "talk to the hand" gesture.

I don't care that much about her not helping, but it would have been nice if she had spoken to her two granddaughters on occasion, apart from to say "you were stupid to do that" and "what a nasty little girl you can be."

Darling, you know telling her to fuck the fuck is the best option.

I'm smiling quietly to myself, thinking of my (normally resident) mother who's away staying with my sisters at the moment. We've had a week's respite from her constant picking on dd .

Sadly I wasted some of the benefit by getting cross with dd myself this evening when she 'realised' on the penultimate day of her holiday that she has a big DT project to hand in on the first day of term. That was just after her father had arranged to take her and a friend out for the day tomorrow.

So - I've spent the evening cutting out, tacking and stitching for her.

Thanks everyone, for the welcome and the advice - no bubbly for me, though. Have vowed to dedicate myself to the search for my Inner Goddess.

I want my Outer Goddess to manifest. Am feeling (and looking) distinctly Bacchus like at the moment.

Inebriata, darling, not Bacchus. Bacchus is a man. Inebriata is his wife.

I have purchased, in my wandering around large parapharmacy, a cream which makes my skin look better. Not less wrinkly and baggy eyed, but better. It is by Nuxe and is called Creme Nirvanesque.