As you may have guessed from my last post, I am starting to feel old.

No matter how long I spend in front of the mirror pulling them out, the grey hairs continue to multiply.  No matter how long I spend pouting into the phone when taking a selfie (usually a matter of nanoseconds.  I find the whole concept of selfies excruciating, especially when you take one at the train station *below* to see whether you really do look hideous in the parka you have been wearing non-stop since the baby was born, and then someone rocks up at the station, just like that, and catches you in said act of extreme vanity, as though you were Kim Kardashian in the middle of a contouring session).

And being old, being the age when all the received wisdom says your fertility “falls off a cliff,” as though all my remaining eggs (hello to the three of you!) had entered into some kind of communal suicide pact upon realising that they would almost certainly never be needed, is depressing.

I wish I could say I am “embracing it.”  I wish I could say that I have never felt better*.  I wish I could say that I had achieved everything I want to.

But I don’t, and I haven’t.

FOR EXAMPLE, although this is hardly the end of the world, and there are clearly bigger things to worry about than this (hello, war in Syria), I am a teeny bit disappointed that I have not so far managed to get married.  Just a teeny bit.  *I CAN’T BELIEVE I HAVE JUST ADMITTED THIS.  CALL YOURSELF A FEMINIST?  WHO NEEDS MEN ANYWAY?* It’s probably for the best that I wasn’t married at twenty-four, as at that time I anticipated the venue being an imaginary pink castle; but I do still frequently window shop wedding dresses, and think about how if I ever do get married, I will by that time be so old that I will have to eschew anything vaguely frivolous in favour of a sensible white suit, like Carrie in Sex and the City (what do you mean the whole point of weddings is love?  It’s the dress, right?  Right?  SAY YES TO THE DRESS!)

I will also be so old that I won’t be able to have another baby.  Again, not the end of the world.  I am, after all, lucky to have Piglet and he is fantastic, but I should probably let go of the idea of having another.  Where would I meet someone in time?  If I have not met anyone in twenty years of looking, the chances of my doing so now, in my Mum Uniform of parka and leggings, with a grand total of two evenings out in the past year and a half, are diminishing rapidly.

And don’t suggest online.  Just don’t.  Yes I have considered it.  Yes I have many years of experience with it.  No I did not meet anyone.  If Match.com are still doing that six months free if you don’t meet anyone offer I must have built up about five free YEARS by now.  And anyway, how would I ever go on any dates?  Who would look after Piglet?  And my mother wouldn’t approve.  I can see her Face of Disapproval now.

When I said that someone in a tiger onesie chatted me up the other night and I was FLATTERED, I was not joking, although of course I would never have done anything about it, as the thought of anyone seeing me in my Mum State (i.e, as my mother so eloquently put it, “not as thin as you used to be”) is too hideous to contemplate.

So here it is, all my love is dedicated to Piglet, and he alone.  Hopefully he will not be too messed up by having a clingy neurotic mother who helicopter parents him at every turn and won’t let him leave home until he’s forty.

*Bit of a tall order at Christmas.  I’ve just eaten most of a pack of Santa-themed chocolate biscuits.