I'm blaming it on the card.

This weekend has been a strange one for me. It started on Saturday in a card shop in my local town. I’ve known for ages that I needed to get my friend a birthday card but it was only when my mum walked past the display of open female cards and stopped at the adult age cards that I remembered I had to get  a 40^th birthday card. 40?! How did that happen?

 I can still remember the day I met this friend. (I’ll call her Helen to save her blushes.)We were five and her family moved into our street. It was a lovely warm summer’s day and I’d been playing quite happily in my garden with my doll and pushchair when my mother came and told me that Helen and her older sister had come to play and that was that, we remained friends from that day on.

Getting back to the point, it was only as I looked for a card that I realised that Helen is the first of our school year to turn forty and sooner than I feel comfortable with it will be my turn. Now, I know it’s only a number and I won’t be any different than I was the day before but the thought made me slightly hysterical.

I pushed the hysteria to the back of my mind when I got home as the usual humdrum of home occupied my mind. It was only this morning after tweeting about my lovely neighbours sharing their home-grown fruit and veg with us that the hysteria raised its head again. Instead of taking their gesture at face value as I would normally have I began to wonder what their motives were. Did they think I didn’t already provide my children with wholesome meals? I even joked about them wanting the peace that mealtimes bring to the house-with three boys in the house it does get very noisy.

I’m not normally prone to bouts of hysteria (quite the opposite in fact, I’ve been told I don’t worry enough but that’s another story.) I have no idea how to quell the hysteria so I did what any girl does in a crisis. I went to see my mum. She showed me the half decorated bedroom my dad has been working on all week, told me news from the rest of the family and gave me scones with extra jam on them. I told her about how buying Helens card made me feel and her answer? “If you think that’s bad, wait ‘til you get to sixty five and you still feel like a twenty year old ‘til you look in the mirror. That’s hysteria!” She gave me hug and we both laughed.

I’ve decided to get over myself, tootle along and hope for the best.

At least if you notice any bizarre tweets in the next few weeks, you’ll know why. Thank you for reading what I imagine look like the ramblings of someone deranged.