Do you ever look up and wonder when you’ll be as grown-up the people around you? Every flipping day I walk out and marvel at how adult everyone seems to be…except me!

I am the mum on the school run without makeup (or worse, the remnants of yesterday’s makeup because I didn’t tame the tribe long enough for a shower). I am the 33 year-old who still wears a backpack (and not a trendy Fjällräven one, a sensible, boring one from IKEA because it was ‘sturdy for the price’).

I am the nervous, try-hard at the hair salon who’s not quite sure of the etiquette and intimidated by the twenty-something stylists with their multiple layers of black clothing, spiked shoes and haircuts that look shit and so are actually très cool.

This is me, pretending (and miserably failing!) to be an actual grown-up; but I am taking some steps to try and rectify it.  Before I take you through my action plan, you have to understand that I have a pretty poor track record at trying to change!

I gave up trying to be cool when I found myself looking at those little rings you wear halfway up your finger whilst sporting a pair of slip on Sketchers trainers. Never going to be a Cool Kid.

Then I tried to become a bit more crunchy.  The extended nursing thing got me quite far but when they started talking about green (matcha) lattes and Mooncups I ran back to my condo, binge-watched The Bachelor and ate a family bag of Cheetos. Not an Earth Mama.

My most disastrous foray into a ‘new me’ was surely the time I thought I could pull off the intellectual, Zen type. Back in Toronto I had Fridays all to myself (aah…them were the days) and I liked to make the most of them. One such Friday (probably after watching a teen rom-com where the lead guy is a hot, brooding, loner who reads under a tree and attends poetry recitals) I decided to take my Macbook to the über cool Balzac’s coffee shop at the iconic Toronto Reference Library. Not only did I not understand the drinks menu, I got asked to turn my music off. Why? Because even though I had my headphones in my ears, I’d not connected them to my laptop so Justin Beiber was blaring like a beacon of Canadian cheese. CRINGE. Nope, nothing Zen about me, either!!!

I like to think that I can put these failures behind me and take a slow, steady approach to becoming a real life grown-up. I already have a secret penchant for classical music (no one needs to know it’s all because I bought Fifty Shades of Grey, The Classical Album) and in my eyes, that’s definitely a step in the right direction.

Also, last week I bought a hairbrush for the first time EVER! I have been using the same travel-size, pink plastic brush for almost twenty years.  It was free with a Bodyshop Christmas gift set which my friend (Sara, I think) gave me. This may look like just a hair brush to you; but to me it was momentous occasion!

I have started to wash my face properly too! I am (as always!) a little very late to the cleanse, tone and moisturise club; however, thanks to Liz Earle and her amazing Hot Cloth Cleanse and Polish, I am now two weeks into a proper, grown-up skincare routine (most days anyway!)

I am still struggling with the whole handbag vs. backpack thing, though. I just can’t seem to justify carrying both and can’t fit enough bananas into my handbag (the Lord is obsessed with them at the moment. Bananas, not handbags)

Still, we are in the (very long, tedious, drawn-out) process of buying a house and am sure as soon as I drop six-figures on that bad boy I will age about twenty years!

Next on my grown-up hit list are:

• an age-appropriate hairstyle (are braids acceptable at 33? I think possibly not)
• not eating Munch Bunch yogurts (or Quavers, or fish fingers)
• buying a pair of grown-up shoes (Converse work for cool mums but I just I look like a try-hard in them!)
  

  Trying to rock the Converse…whilst pushing a scooter!

• watching a documentary, the news or anything vaguely more intellectual than Pretty Little Liars
• stop fantasising about randomly meeting McFly and becoming best friends with Giovanna Fletcher
• Start doing some of the things on my Pinterest boards instead of pinning yet more chuff that seeks only to remind me of my lack of time and talent to achieve anything more than dressed and fed children each day.

Share your secrets people, what makes you a grown up?

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