Growing up

So CG is out on his first date...official date. With a girl. I've laid down the law on what's acceptable and legal (PDA's aren't, and nothing is legal when you're 14).
And as I'm driving home, I realise, this is the start, this stage has been threatening for a while and now it's here. The girl stage. And I'm kind of dreading it but also so conscious of not being like my mother. In that everywhere she thought wasn't suitable for a young lady was banned and proclaimed to be the place 'where girls got pregnant'. This included: drive in's, pool halls, arcades and the list went on. I have to confess that I went to all of them and I didn't have any babies. I'm not sure why she thought this: after all a bunch of teenagers were hardly likely to have an orgy amongst the pool tables. And the more she stressed about hanging out with the wrong sort, the more they became attractive. So, I'm not going to be like that. Instead, I've made it clear, everything is illegal and you're judged by the company you keep. I've also stressed that honesty is rewarded and dishonesty gets you grounded. I kept most boyfriends away from my parents. They must have known boys liked me and went out with me. I can recall breaking up with a boy when I was 15 (and a bit of a brat, so I wasn't nice about it), Mom had liked him and therefore he thought it was perfectly acceptable to phone the house when I was out and cry down the phone to her at how much he loved me (he didn't love me at all). But it was never discussed.
But we didn't do 'dates' as a social group - it was just groups of girls and boys who hung out together and we kind of rotated who we went out with. Or so it seemed. Above boy did take me out on a date...highly embarrassing experience. I'm hoping CG's is better. I'm sure it will be. Kids these days are blessed with the kind of confidence my generation didn't have I don't think. Not that they don't have the same kind of hang ups we did but they appear to not take it all so seriously. Maybe I think that because I have a teenage boy in the house and not a teenage girl (which I remember being).
I'd like to think, in that respect, that I'm teaching CG not to be mean to that one girl that keeps phoning and asking for a chance.

Bloody hell

For the love of all that is sweet and sticky... why on earth do I fiddle with things I shouldn't. For example, I had quite a lovely picture of a rose here. It fitted in well with the layout and so on. I fiddled with it and not only can I not find that rose on my pc anymore (the picture, as the actual rose is long gone into mulch), but I can't get another to fit in the bits as well. So I fiddle around some more and now other bits have disappeared. Why do I do this? I start something I have no real skill in and end up with a botched job that looks pretty crap.

I reckon I have the mind of a magpie. I see something sparkly and shiny and new and HAVE to have it. Will have no real use for it, but it must be mine.

I thought that once I had given up Coca Cola (6 weeks you know) that I would zen a bit. Be a bit less manic. Not so. And I'm pretty much caffeine free now (can't shake that morning coffee just yet) and yet I'm still scatter brained, I'm still hyper and I'm still all over the shop.

Kind of nice to know that my personality wasn't aided and abetted by Coke and that I'm just naturally upbeat and freaky in my own way. I appreciate it gets on nerves. And I have to say I am largely intolerant of people who crave being miserable. It's in that song 'you get addicted to a certain kind of sadness'. Some people just are. They like the drama that comes with being sad and unhappy and pissed off with the world. I am glad that's not me. Oh that's not to say I don't get in a funk but I'd rather be funky (the good funky, not the bad).