How I get ready ....

Me and Tom
Me: possibly having a mid-life crisis

I roll out of bed on a weekday morning when the dog stuffs his head under the duvet and talks to me in that peculiarly barfy-breathed greyhound way that either indicates hunger and/or pee time.

My night attire is usually by The Factory Shop (usually flammable) or M&S (usually flannelette) and my robe is a fuchsia pink fleecy number that caused Sonshine and my SIL to drop into quivering piles of suppressed laughter when I modelled it after birthday presentation from Juno in August.

I look like a particularly flamboyant flying squirrel in it.

After throwing the curtains open and staring balefully at the rain for a few minutes, I slide on my slippers (Tesco) and enter the ensuite for primary ablutions.

My skin care in the morning is very simple, dear reader.  It involves blankly staring in the mirror at whatever fire-hazard shape my hair might be on that particular morning and despairing at what to do with it.  This is followed by cold water thrown onto face because I can't be bothered waiting for the combi-boiler to send hot water all the way up from the kitchen. Then teeth-brushing using whatever toothpaste was on offer in Superdrug at the time.

Then it's a trudge downstairs to the kitchen where I throw Nero out in to the garden for his morning pee. If he's lucky, I remember that he is there and he gets let back in for his breakfast about 10 minutes later.  If he's unlucky and I forget, he can be confined to the top step in the pissing rain for about an hour while I drink coffee and peruse the all-important Livre Du Visage (facebook).

I listen to Radio Scotland as I get dressed and shout indignant things at the radio.  Most mornings it's like I have Tourettes.

If I am going out for a jog, I pull on a sports bra before braving the t-shirt and leggings look.  If I am facebooking for the day, I can still be found in my jammies at midday.  Once, memorably, also at 4pm in the afternoon when Sonshine came home from school.  That WAS a bit shameful.

A proper shower takes place after the jogging and also heralds my clothing choices for the day.  This is inevitably a sweater and jeans. Even in summer.  In winter I also add a scarf and thermal vest.  Sometimes a cardigan.  I call it my 'Lady in a Van' look.

My make-up routine is simplicity itself, dear reader.

First, sit in front of the mirror and wish that you have the skin of a 21 year-old. Not in a creepy Hannibal Lector use-it-as-a-duvet-cover way though.

Secondly, apply heavy brows to remove 'startled mole-rat' look that comes with grey hair and one's 50s.  Then eyeliner - so that one's eyes do not simply disappear into one's face like a monster from Dr Who.  No, far better to transform oneself into the monster that is Alice Cooper.

The look is topped off with some lippy.  If they day is to include a mid-life-crisis photoshoot with my cardboard Tom Hiddleston and my increasingly bemused son as photographer, the lippy may be quite colourful.  if it's purely to vegetate in front of lolcats, I find a slick of lipgloss suffices.

*whispers* Yes, newspapers actually do print this kind of trite drivel under the guise of Beauty - How I get Ready.*

What about you?