Definition of Success?

I had lunch with my 17 year old daughter last week and as I walked away I smiled to myself and thought was a successful time it had been. And then I laughed out loud as I realized how my views on what constitute "successful" have changed beyond all recognition since having kids. Here is a brief summary of our lunch:

We met at a restaurant near to where we both work that serves lovely pasta. While I was waiting for her to appear (of course, she was late) I looked at their menu and and decided to choose something off their very reasonable 'Lunch Specials' menu. When Emma arrived, she was starving and took a very brief glance at the Specials menu before declaring there was nothing there she liked. No problem, I said, choose what you want from the normal menu. After perusing for a few minutes she decided on a Gorgonzola pasta dish. I knew she wouldn't be able to eat a normal-sized portion so offered to share it with her and just order a salad. I wanted the Mixta salad, which I'd fancied from the Specials menu, she wanted the Caesar salad, as usual (what is it with all teenagers - why do they always order bloody Caesar salad?). We ordered the Gorgonzola pasta and the Caesar salad. I ate most of the salad as she disliked their homemade dressing.

She then spent most of our lunch texting on her phone, which is supposed to be forbidden, but apparently it was "Just one more text, it's very quick, just making important social arrangements". We did, however, manage to squeeze in a few conversational sentences without getting into an argument, in between her texting and shovelling food in her mouth, before we got the bill. As we were leaving she somehow managed to extract $7 cash out of me to go back to her work (a fashionable clothing store) as she absolutely had to have this bracelet which was the last one there and she'd left her wallet at home.

As we left she smiled happily, told me she loved me (hmmm, wallet-love?) and actually allowed me to put an arm around her and graciously leaned her head towards me so I could kiss her forehead. This was thrilling as I am not normally allowed to touch her. I walked away thinking what a nice lunch it was before giving myself a mental head slap and reality check.

How has your thinking changed over the years? What do you accept now that would have been completely unacceptable a few years ago? (Like farting when you cough, no longer being able to do star-jumps - did I ever want to? - or longing for bed at 9pm, to sleep not for any hanky-panky.)

Please remember to check out the Write On, Mamas! Indigogo Campaign - see the button on the right. Thanks.

Sex, money and rock 'n' roll!

Hellooooooo! I'm back ... again! What a weird and wonderful couple of months it's been. Lots of fun, lots of de-cluttering and a little bit of drama. I can't believe how completely crap I've been when it's come to blogging though. Every day has been packed to the gunnels with exciting, boring, fun, tedious and exotic things I had to do, which somehow made it impossible to write. So much so, that I started not to think of myself as a writer ... which was a bit sad. So, I made a new resolution to properly schedule time to write. Not a New Year's Resolution, as I never bloody keep those, but maybe a Nearly Halloween Resolution. Hmmm, we'll see. But I digress. I am scheduling writing time and top of my list is blogging.

The Write On, Mamas! at Lit Crawl 2012

The slight problem, well, not exactly a problem, but one of the reasons why I haven't been writing is that my AMAZING writing group, the Write On, Mamas! has just launched its brand spanky new, incredibly wonderful website, and I am in charge of editing it and general maintenance. The only incy-wincy teensy-weensy issue there is our new site is Wordpress and I knew sod-all about how to work in effing Wordpress. All I knew was that Blogger and Wordpress don't play nice together. In fact, they're a little like my hormonal teenagers - sometimes sweetness and light and at others nasty, horrid vermin. So, another bloody steep learning curve ... and now that I'm the big five-oh, I really thought I wouldn't have to do that learning thing anymore. Drat and double drat.

Then we launched an Indigogo campaign to raise money for our fabby Anthology project and I somehow got roped into helping with the video as my son did the filming and editing. If any of you have any spare cash fluttering around your undies, and you fancy giving it to a bunch of VERY talented writers, please click here. You can even have some of us Mamas invade your home and perform at your request. Although no requests for pole-dancing in g-strings please. Strictly reading. However, we just successfully performed our "Your Mom had sex" theme at San Francisco's Lit Crawl to a packed house, so we are happy to be a bit risqué.

We even passed out these condoms, which went down well with passers-by. Oh, maybe I should re-phrase that! My piece started: "I opened my underwear drawer and recoiled in shock." I may upload the full script and video soon.

And if that isn't enough, my fellow bloggers in The Kindness Project decided that, instead of posting every 2nd Wednesday, we would have our very own site and blog about kindness all the time. Please go and take a look. I will let you know when I am posting, but all the contributors are inspirational. We shall be doing lots of exciting things in the future so watch this space.

I've also been to see a ton of bands, including America, The Tubes, Ed Sheeran (at last) who was playing free in San Francisco with Philip Phillips and Alanis Morrisette. I'm seeing Bob Dylan this week with Mark Knopfler, Muse in January and Ed Sheeran again in February.

Ok, so that's some of what I've been up to recently. What about you? What have I missed?