Characteristics of the main character …

Extract from yet-to-be-completed fake it ‘till you make it …                            by Hayley Muirhead

• She is in her late 40’s, overweight but not obese yet she has great self-confidence and enter a room as if she is a size 8 and a yummy mummy of 32. On the QT /between you and me:  don’t you feel so bad when you arrive at a social engagement wearing the same outfit as the real yummy mummy but a couple of sizes bigger – shame – I feel so bad for her feeling so … much less ……
• Generally genteel, generous, thoughtful but most certainly not always.  She is usually gregarious and outgoing but can be quiet and shy, leading to a dark brooding appearance which is not particularly approachable. 
• She can head down the path of hypochondria with a skip and a jump, and usually takes all her allocated sick days with a few more added on for VAT calculations.
• She feels like a colouring in book, there is an outline but often not the energy and concentration to follow it though and complete any opinions.  However grey is a colour that she likes, so there is another conundrum …..(conundrum 653).
• 70% calm and thinking about her actions, rational, calm, cool head. 30 % give into impulse of that 15% spontaneous fun, 10% a touch of mean, 3% unhinged and / or irrational and 2% selfish.
• Touch of ADD when she doesn’t take her anti-scratch pills and then scratches the shite out of her hands and feet – lovely look!
• When her marvellous C (family house keeper) goes away for any time longer than 2 days, her inner Bree comes out.  For those of you not hooked on the American series Desperate Housewives in the early 2000’s, Bree was an over achieving, OCD, A type personality who turned into the perfect domestic goddess in her spare time (OK …. she also like guns, and leather and chains etc …. But hey she wasn’t all bad).  Being more of a “Lynette”, her Bree side does come out with a vengeance followed by frantic scrubbing, moving, clearing…. (Who keeps this mush shite ….is a regular shout heard while she squirrels away in her house dress – how 70’s is that ….)
• Loves new experiences / adventures / road trips with people she cares about or finds fun.  People who are always keen to try something new and different to the norm is her kind of tribe ….  THE FUN WILL FIND YOU is another of her mottos ….
• As the saying goes – “a boer maak a plan” but as her mom always said “maar a boer se vrou – sy maak a beter plan” (English / Afrikaans for “a farmer makes a plan but a farmers wife makes a beter plan!)   She can help cater for hords of hungry hunting/fishing/shooting type men, she can change nappies when and where needed, she can make a spoon out of a toothpick, she can be fierce when it comes to helping her children with any problem and … she can unblock a toilet in Thailand …..
• She eats her chocolate in parking lot of the local store immediately after buying it because:
• She is shaking with anticipation and
• She does not want to share with the YOS child after she picks him up from school.
• She does not buy treats for her family while doing grocery shop because she can only really think of one thing at a time – she is doing grocery shopping and focuses on that …. Her favourite coffee mug at the moment says DO ONE THING AT A TIME ….
• She is lazy about getting out of the car for errands so always send the kids or HF into the shop to “run in”….but the HF is a BIG chatter and feels it very rude to interrupt or even hasten a story along no matter who it is he is talking to …. Here the serving lady behind the take-away chicken strips que take his time and attention, to the detriment of me sitting cross legged in the car afraid to sneeze or cough.
• She loves her sleep – it is her favourite place and if you ask her anytime of the day where she would like to be – it is in her bed, sleeping! ….  fresh linen is the bomb ….
• She was an achiever at school – academics and sports wise although she went to a very small private school which was going through a tough time with pupil numbers being right down ….but that is no excuse …
• Sometimes gets uncontrollable rage towards kids and HF but never towards friends and only very occasionally towards service providers (this is because normally she knows she is in the wrong or because she is not totally committed to fixing the issue with the SP who is currently allocated to her query) – her 10% mean ness and her 3% unhinged come out with 100% enthusiasm.
• She thinks she is so organised and on top of the various schedules that when she does drop the ball (which is surprisingly often) she can not understand what went wrong ….
• She loves the smell of rain and to wake up to a grey rainy day with rain on the roof is great. But only one day of rain as too many grey days will make her very depressed.
• She needs sunshine to be happy – like a sunflower.